Some fictional characters, like Harry Potter and the rest of Hogwarts, age along with their audiences. Others, like a certain quartet of irradiated amphibians, do not, choosing instead to luxuriate, as we all wish we could, in the carefree abandon of their teen years—it’s hard to imagine a 46-year old Leo landing front-flips with two katanas in hand, after all.
During Saturday Night Live’s remote show this past weekend, an animated short aired that transplants the Turtles from sewers to the suburbs, where they’re living lives that perhaps better reflect the people who grew up watching them on Saturday mornings in 1987. The gang grimace at the bathroom scale, shop at Whole Foods, and dump their stockpile of liquor in the kitchen sink, all while longing for a spark that’s undoubtedly diminished by the vanquishing of their arch-nemesis, Shredder.
Kyle Mooney, no stranger to ‘80s and ‘90s nostalgia, co-wrote the sketch with Dan Bulla and Steven Castillo, and its straightforwardness suits the simple premise. The sight of tears welling in Donatello’s eyes as a doctor calls to tell him about the lump on his spine is infinitely funnier than any of the broader gags they could’ve pursued.
What’s even more impressive is that, per Castillo, the short was animated in less than a week by the team at Visual Creatures. “It was an impossible task,” he wrote in the below tweet, “but they pulled it off.”