The Purple Jacket

**"The Purple Jacket"** is the nineteenth episode (Episode 11A) of *Rise of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles*. It first aired on January 26th, 2019.

## Characters

* April O'Neil (Kat Graham)
* Donatello (Josh Brener)
* Purple Dragons
	+ Jase (Eugene Byrd)
	+ Jeremy (Kyle Massey)
	+ Kendra (Tania Gunadi)

* Carly Balmaceda (Candi Milo)
* Leonardo (Ben Schwartz)
* Michelangelo (Brandon Mychal Smith)
* Raphael (Omar Benson Miller)

## Plot

Donatello has crept into the school at the request of his friend April disguised by a hoodie in order to help her with the last review of her school science project. Donatello, however, first focused his enthusiasm on the school itself, which for him represents a new ground of unlimited possibilities for his intellectual maturity. His enthusiasm increases upon seeing a group of students who wear purple club jackets at the school under the name "Purple Dragons". April tells Donnie that they're all jerks who look down on everybody else, but Donnie is only excited by such an exclusive tech club.

Believing that it has something to do with intellectual equality, Donatello boldly presents himself to the Dragons in defiance of April's objections, and to show them his worth, he proudly presents his home-made combat gear. Impressed by the candidate's technical abilities, Kendra, the club's leader, accepts Donatello as a new member of the Dragons. Donatello proudly displays his new Purple Dragons club jacket in front of his brothers at home; but after he finally goes to bed, a transmitter hidden in the jacket activates itself, hacking into Donatello's drones and hijacking them.

A little while later, Donatello is awakened from a bad dream before he gets a call from April and made aware of a flash message on TV about a series of high-tech burglaries that have just been committed. On the surveillance videos of the stolen electronics stores, Donatello is horrified to realise his own equipment is at work, and so overwhelmed by the now-revealed true nature of the Dragons, he and April track down the trail of the Dragons by bicycle. April tells Donnie that she warned him the Purple Dragons were bad news, while Donnie points out that she gave an *opinion* of them being stuck-up jerks, and had no idea they were criminals.

Donatello then suggests that the Purple Dragons are committing these small heists to get the technology for something bigger, and they quickly come to the conclusion that the Dragons are planning a break-in at Nakamura, the largest computer chip producer in the world.

When the two arrive, the Dragons have already entered the building and made their way to the company's main computer, which they have hacked into to gain its source code and free access to all computers in the world. They arrive too late to prevent the Dragons from downloading the code, but as the Dragons try to escape, Jase and Jeremy are stopped by Donatello and April, relieved of their stolen equipment. Then the two hurry after Kendra, who wants to get away with the code, which leads to a wild flight-pack chase in the air above New York.

Due to April's lack of flight experience, the pursuit ends with a crash landing in a back alley; but before Donatello can fix the device, Kendra hacks into his gear with the stolen code and uses it against her pursuers, then blows him a mocking kiss, telling him she now plans to hack into a global bank. To stop her, Donatello has no choice but to sacrifice his precious club jacket to sabotage the rotor flight pack. It brings Kendra crashing to the ground, April smashes the laptop, and the two friends make up, then gather up Donnie's damaged tech and run for it, just before the police arrive to take Kendra into custody.

## Trivia

* The episode, along with "Pizza Pit", was leaked early on iTunes on December 7th, 2018, and was also posted on Nick.com one day later.
* Donnie is seen without any of his gear on for the first time in the series.
* Leo was also seen unmasked in this episode.
* When Donnie was being attacked by his Battle Shell, he shouts out, "Alpha Bootyyyshaker9000! Three Y's!" This is a refence to his password in Stuck on You
* April references her 1987 TV series counterpart right after she steps on Kendra's computer by saying, "Bam! I should write for the news".
* This is the first episode to air in 2019.
* When April rides the bicycle with Donnie in the basket, it is likely a reference/parody of the movie "E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial".
* The kanji on the Nakamura Corporation building's signage (計算 業界) translates to "computing business".
* The tools Donnie refers to as "jazz hands" and fails to use to scale the Nakamura Corporation building are tegaki.
* The gesture Donnie does during his line, "Superior minds, glorious jackets—" is jñāna mudrā ("knowledge seal"), used in Buddhism and Hinduism. An Indian alternative medicine system called Āyurveda explains the body as being comprised of five elements; fire, air, ether, earth, and water. The thumb represents fire, the index finger represents air, the middle finger represents ether, the ring finger represents earth, and the pinky finger represents water. Jñāna mudrā is used to connect the air element (index finger) to the fire element (thumb).

## Goofs

* For some reason Donnie rides a bicycle with April to go after the Purple Dragons, despite having already built both the Turtle Tank and the Shell Hogs. Presumably the writers wanted the reference THAT badly.