BRIEF STORYLINE: Michaelangelo awakes suddenly after a disturbing dream. However, he has one of those familiar experiences of not remembering what was so disturbing about it. Splinter helps him through his power of hypnotism. Michaelangelo soon finds out, the dream was about the day that his brothers as normal turtles fell down the sewer, and landed on the green ooze. Something different was there. A small lizard was sneaking about nearby through the ooze and then a human picks it up and is taken away. Splinter remains calm about this, and tells the turtles to refer back to bed.
Michaelangelo feels so restless, he can't sleep. So he goes for a stroll in the sewers, and maybe making a guess of the wherabouts of the tunnel in his dreams. He is successful in finding it, but a burglar alarm wails noisily from above the sewers, and he "beats feet".
Michaelangelo reaches the street and encounters three youths fleeing from the Second City Bank, with hordes of money. He tries to stop them, but is unsuccessful. Back to the sewers, Michaelangelo lands into more trouble as one of the bank robbers tramples him with a moving skateboard. He goes in pursuit of the felon into a dead-end. The robber, to his surprise, is a mutant lizard named Mondo Gecko. This mutant lizard is familiar to Michaelangelo. However, before he can work it out, Mondo Gecko ties him up like a meat rack and leaves him dangling there and escapes.
A humiliated Michaelangelo salvages to rescue himself and proceeds in the chase for the lizard. He follows Mondo Gecko's skateboard tracks and they lead him to a deserted warehouse, where he eavesdrops on Mondo Gecko talking to the other 2 robbers, Basher and Sluggo. They seem to be getting their instructions from a voice who calls himself Mr.X. Their next job is to hijack a dangerous army truck that contains a top secret explosive.
Michaelangelo tries again to seize Mondo Gecko but is foiled again by the mutant lizard. Basher and Sluggo want to throw the captured Michaelangelo in with the sharks, but Mondo Gecko over-rules that route and wants to take him to Mr.X. Yeah, let the big cheese decide what to do with our green hero.
The punks manage to hijack the army vehicle. Meanwhile, Michaelangelo attempts to contact the "luckier" turtles via his Turtle Com. He fails to mention the address to the others, because Basher bashes it. April then contacts the turtles, and repeats what Michaelangelo has already said about the hijacking.
The crime posse are at Mr.X's hideout, and Mondo Gecko to present the secret explosive to Mr.X, and tells Basher and Sluggo to keep an eye on the truck with Michaelangelo inside. And, oh my god, the truck goes over a 1,000 foot cliff. Is it doom for Michaelangelo, with the other turtles nowhere to be seen? Will the mystery of the dream/nightmare be solved? Will Mondo Gecko realise Michaelangelo is like very similar to him in character?
TMNT REVIEW HQ COMMENTS: This is an episode which starts off badly but gets better in the as it progresses. So the part when Michaelangelo sits up and awakes from his flashback dream suddenly, isn't too good apart from the scene when Splinter hypnotises him with a small pocket watch, swinging it like a pendulum. The quality improves when the flashback to Michaelangelo's dream comes on., and when he searches for where this dream may of taken place in the sewer.
The flashback scene is like a part from the turtles very first season in 1987, when they showed how they became these half-human, half-turtles mutants, but re-worked or re-made with some extra bits added, like the lizard and Mr.X(How did he get in those sewers?)
Michaelangelo taking on the bank robbers is well done, which includes a quite silly insult from Basher, the big robber, "fish-food breath". Michaelangelo doesn't eat fish, the closest to that, is probably anchovies he might have on his pizza.
April's TV news report is respectively edited, with some amusing dialogue from a cop, who did not notice the bank robbers at the time. The first scene Mondo Gecko and Michaelangelo is ok with some interesting exchanges between them, including Gecko to use his long tongue to stop Michaelangelo's grappling hook driving right through him. The appearance of Mondo Gecko is quite slick and cool looking and the clothes that he wears. One funny thing is, most mutants wear more than the turtles like Bebop and Rocksteady. Gecko is wearing a reversed baseball cap on his head, sunglasses, T-shirt and shorts, while all the turtles wear is eyemasks, belts and bands around their arms and legs.
There is an attempt to make the other 2 bank robbers, Basher and Sluggo less stereotypical as they give the larger one Basher a high-pitched voice and the smaller one has a deeper voice.
It seems silly for Michaelangelo to say Mondo Gecko looks familiar. How can he know, when the last time he saw Mondo was when he was just a normal, small lizard, and now much bigger and his face is not completely unveiled. Or on the other hand, what are the chances of meeting more than1 mutant lizard when really the mutagen has not come in contact with many creatures, so of course it's very likely that its the same lizard that was the one present with the turtles during the mutation.
There's more action to follow, which is commendable, when Michaelangelo gets thrown into the truck and inches away from the whole truck falling off a cliff, until Mondo Gecko saves him, confusingly. A nice outlay of excitement follows also when April is travelling on her Channel Six motorbike, communicating to the turtles and getting to the woodlands, where Michaelangelo has been smuggled to.
We don't see Mr.X until near the end. Before that we only hear his voice. It's nicely built-up before he swivels around in his chair and reveals who he is, like a James Bond villain. He's actually the same guy in Michaelangelo's dream, so it becomes more clear that the dream was real-life. The reason why Mondo Gecko can't and won't let Michaelangelo die is, that they have went through the same experience, and with little of the same out there in the world, he feels they should join together as they are of the same species. Mr.X comes out with a funny line to his reaction of Mondo Gecko saving Michaelangelo, "you're suppoesed to kill the turtles, not cosy up with them!"
This is an episode that becomes more solid at the end, with appreciative action like Mondo Gecko steering away Mr.X's laser gun to miss-hit Michaelangelo, and they become friends. This was not Mondo Gecko's only episode, he appears in another 1 or 2.
"MICHAELANGELO MEETS MONDO GECKO" GETS A: 3/5 RATING.
