OH JESUS THE FARMHOUSE IS EXACTLY THE SAME!

The barn, same architecute. Same placement. Windmill, exactly the same. Farmhouse itself: run down in exactly the same way. For all I know, all they did was trace over one of the old illustrations.

…

How unexpected.

I mean. There’s faithful adaptation, and there’s… something more than that.

Basically the only real alterations so far, from Mirage volume 1, have been for the better — expansion of Shredder’s and Stockman’s roles; the addition of Hun; an extra half-season of character building before the first big showdown. All of the TCRI stuff saved for season 2 (after season 1 will have focused on the entire original Shredder storyline).

Looks like the Stockman stuff from volume 2 will be worked into the upcoming Return to New York plot. Fine enough. Not a bad place for it; just get rid of all of the key season 1 villains at the same time, so we can get some closure and move on to the next big plot without any regrets.

I imagine that there should be more than enough material with the Fugitoid (assuming he’s around) and Triceratons and the Utroms to fill up season 2 — especially given the way that the animation team’s been operating so far. They’ve proved that they can run with a concept and flesh it out better than Easman and Laird ever really did.

What’ll that leave us with, for season three (assuming it’s coming)? How about City at War? Seems perfect; a return to Earth, and the setting of the first season. The remaining Foot will have been in chaos while they’ve been gone (in this case, whatever corner of space the Triceratons are found — as opposed to Northampton, lounging around for several years).

It’s the next big plot arc in the official canon. The series will be closing on episode fifty by the beginning of season three. Issue #50 is where the C@W arc begins, in the comic (although there’s about thirty issues of one-off meandering by random authors, in place of the paced development of the TV series). Yes! This will be a good thing.

…

I need to calm down.

Ahem.

Now I’m going to watch North by Northwest. And then, maybe the semi-yet-not-really-restored version of Nosferatu (for the sake of contrast with the other version that I own).

And then — hell, maybe Secret Agent? I don’t know.

I’ll just play it by ear.