The Subject: Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. Debuted in 1987 and ran for about 10 years.

Plot in two sentences: Four baby turtles are mutated into anthropomorphic, pizza-loving crime fighters who are taught martial arts by a ninja master who mutated into a giant rat. The "forces of evil" are the evil ninja (The) Shredder, his mutant goons, and everyone's favorite -- the megalomaniacal brain from Dimension X, Krang.

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I still remember the exactly how I discovered this show in my youth. I was spending a hot, sunny summer afternoon playing around the coolness of our basement, where I kept a lot of my stuff. Bored, I turned on the old brown television (with dials!) and clicked the UHF dial over to one of the stations that I knew carried some decent cartoons. But what the heck was this? Those are turtles… with ninja weapons… and they're fighting some guy with a talking brain where his stomach should be?

There was a distinct moment of "Okay, TV, you have my attention."

I hung through to the next commercial break, where I discovered the name of what I was watching. Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. Really? That sounded kind of cool. I settled in to watch the rest of it, but then my mom started calling for me to come upstairs, which I eventually did after arguments in support of satisfying my cartoon curiosity fell on deaf ears. But I would be back for more…

(When I say "more," I should clarify that it means I watched the show on weekdays and Saturday mornings all the way through 1991, when I saw the second feature film The Secret of the Ooze and then decided I had better things to do with my time. I remember thinking that the dynamic of the cartoon had changed for the worse after the first movie anyhow.)

So now, nearly twenty years after my initial discovery, I have just finished a complete re-examination of the first two seasons on DVD. Frankly, I'm really not sure how I feel about it. I mean, in all my previous looks back at these shows, there's been a clear cut feeling of "hey, Thundercats is still kind of great!" or "Jesus Christ, if I never see an episode of Inspector Gadget again, it'll be too soon." But TMNT hasn't really done much for me either way.

Okay, in terms of positives, the show is still kind of fun. The humor is goofy, and the dialog is laced with puns, which represent a form of comedy that I can seriously identify with. There's even references to things that kids aren't necessarily going to get, like an occasional nod to The Three Stooges. It's pretty easy to sit and burn through a couple of episodes before you really feel the need to watch something else.

The story writing in these earlier seasons is also pretty good -- plenty of exploration of the series' mythos, there are several story arcs that are played out across many episodes -- things that would gradually disappear in favor of "one off" episodes where the bad guys hatch a plan and are foiled within 22 minutes of its inception.

I think the thing that bothered me the most was the character development, or apparent lack thereof. Devotees of the show can probably recall the theme song with ease -- "Splinter taught them to be ninja teens: Leonardo leads, Donatello does machines, Raphael is cool -- but rude, Michelangelo is a party dude!" Well, that was about it. That was their bit. You apparently didn't need much beyond that, a rule that must've extended to the other characters in the show. Splinter was the font of wisdom. April O'Neil, the turtles' human friend, had the task of getting herself into trouble. Shredder pretended to be seriously badass and blamed other people for his failures, his henchmen Be-Bop and Rocksteady alternately shot at and hit things with little effect while being depressingly stupid, and Krang… well, for a giant, sarcastic brain, he actually might have been the most complex character on the show.

That was the drill, and you really didn't see much character depth in the show until the first movie came out, Raphael screamed "Daaaaaaamn!" and mothers everywhere had fits about kids being exposed to language and violence the likes of which we had surely NEVER come across before.

Uh huh.

So in the end, it strikes me that TMNT served its purpose well in that it was a great show for youngsters. It managed to be different, goofy, and always had good action. But it's a lot like a sugary breakfast cereal in that it's pretty insubstantial, is carried mostly by the novelty appeal, and while you can enjoy it as an adult, you're kind of left with a feeling of needing something more. Oh, I'm sure there are adults out there that still love the show, but honestly, finding one might be like playing a shell game.