BRIEF STORYLINE: The Technodrome is stuck in the frozen tundra of the North Pole, and meanwhile, Krang moans and argues that Rocksteady and Bebop will not make his deadline to come back with the "Bindex 3", which would load the mutagen into a rocket ship's fuel containers before take-off. Krang's latest evil plot is to mutate all the city's civilians into grotesquely disfigured beings caused by the vapour trails of the fuel from the rocket, which will launch into space.
Bebop and Rocksteady mess up the plan. Shredder argues with them constantly, until a messenger boy named Seymour Gutz, from the Fly By Night messenger service, arrives with mail from the "Touch of Romance Flower Shop". Its a puzzle to the 3 villains how the boy got into their hideout. Bebop and Rocksteady try to scare him away with their blaster guns.
All of a sudden, the platform that Seymour is standing on gets blasted by laser fire and he tumbles into a large vat of mutagen, and his body reacts fiercely, by splitting up! Krang and Shredder have some decency to create a body suit that will keep his body in place. However, he doesn't look human anymore. What they all find out, is that Seymour has a special power where he is now a shape-shifter, meaning he can look like anyone he sees. It only lasts for a few minutes though.
Seymour Gutz is bitterly unhappy. Rocksteady and Bebop see the bright side of his new appearance. They find him cool, and call him "imaginatively" Mutagen Man. Shredder makes a promise to reverse the mutagen effect and make Seymour human again...only if he completes this little task- go to Ace Scientific Company and snatch the Bindex #3 chemical.
Mutagen Man morphs into a security man, to easily enter the Ace Scientific Company, and grabs the Bindex#3. However, he zaps back to Mutagen Man before he is totally free from detection. He unexpectively bumps into April and Irma, who are reporting at the scene. Mutagen Man disposes of Irma and locks her in the cupboard. He changes into a spitting image of Irma. April tells the fake Irma that they must rush back to Channel Six, and invisible to her eyes, takes the Bindex#3 off fake Irma and takes it on board the News Van. Mutagen Man cracks under the pressure when he starts to feel him changing back and bolts away from the scene, back to Shredder's HQ.
At Channel Six, April is suspiscious of Irma's unlikely behaviour. She uncovers the Bindex#3 canister and contacts the turtles, after the "real" Irma turns up distraught because April suppoesedly locked her in the closet.
Mutagen Man ponders over a way to get into the Channel Six building. His eye catches the turtles and shape-shifts into Michaelangelo and follows in unnoticed. He finds out the turtles know about the Bindex#3 canister and he must steer them off the scent of the trail for it. Mutagen Man quickly shape-shifts into an old lady and on purpose cries for help as she is stuck in traffic.Two turtles come to save her, but now they are the ones in trouble.
Mutagen Man re-forms into Michaelangelo, and pretends to the other 2 turtles that a construction worker needs their saviour at the top of a construction site.
Meanwhile at Channel Six, Mutagen Man clones himself in Vernon and lies that the Ace Scientific Company called him to come over and return the Bindex#3. April thinks something fishy is going on. Not long after, Vernon becomes Mutagen Man again, and April sees the disgusting appearance and screams. Mutagen Man gets a hold of her and is strung up to the ropes of the East River Sky Tram Company. April in distress once again, can the turtles save her before she gets walloped by a Sky Tram? Will Mutagen man shape-shifting ability give Shredder the victory of his life? And will Shredder make this freak look human again? He's so ugly.
TMNT REVIEW HQ COMMENTS: A decent episode. The beginning is sharp, and quite fast-moving, as the turtles are already in danger, when Donatello wants to have a little nosey peek at a new scientific rocket getting developed, and they get spotted by a security guard.
The first scene we arrive at with Shredder, Bebop and Rocksteady is just fine. Bebop and Rocksteady give a long story to Shredder when he wants to know if they have the Bindex#3. There's a good build-up to the clanger or funny bit when Bebop and Rocksteady tell of how they enter the labs, steal the Bindex#3 and then...stop by a candy vending machine, which proves costly.
It's quite a surprise to see this nerd-boy messenger to barge into their usual abandoned warehouse headquarters. So a break from the norm. The transformation of Seymour Gutz to Mutagen Man has mixed editing. His limbs seem to split up when he trips into the vat of mutagen but with no graphic detail. The gruesome image of Mutagen Man, which would've been made to look more graphic if it was a more adult cartoon, looks a little like Krang but with bigger eyes and teeth, with a cord going down his see-through upper body. He still has his arms and legs as well. Seymour Gutz, get it? we can now see the inside of his stomach area because it is see-through, where the guts would be. However, you don't see bloody guts, just the pink cord inserting the green mutagen inside.
His new-found shape-shifting technique, makes for an entertaining, seeing confusion or fooling people like Shredder and April posing as Krang and Irma. It's amusing to hear Seymour's cowardly voice interpretated by different voices like Shredder's, Krang's and Vernon's.
A good addition of a minor character in this episode, featuring an Irish cop called Butcher Reilly(Reilly, typical Irish name) who holds the turtles hostage and is going to turn them in to the police. Some scenes are badly edited, but the whole scenario is pretty funny, when he bets on throwing a police badge away if the turtles gets away...they do, and the cop freaks out comically.
More quality moments include Mutagen Man locking Irma in the closet and pretends to be her to April, and morphing into an old lady to dispose of 2 of the turtles. The other scene showing Mutagen Man becoming Michaelangelo to rid of the 2 other turtles is not so well done.
Good excitment is created when April is tied to the ropes that are used for these Sky Trams, and the saving of her, by the turtles of course is quite exciting. A good line from Donatello follows, disregarding the hard work the other 2 turtles have done, saying "stop goofing off". There's a couple of exciting fights between the construction workers and turtles, which could've been done better, and the final resistance by Krang, Shredder, Bebop and Rocksteady, which feature some cool ninja kicks which do connect.
You feel sorry for Muatgen Man as he gets cruelly treated by Shredder, who will not reverse the effects of the mutagen. He is also highlighted as a fragile character too. However it's a happy ending for him, and turns back to human but is into someone better looking, and gets a date with April. The ending though, is one of the worst edited parts of the episode.
"ENTER: MUTAGEN MAN" GETS A: 3/5 RATING.
