It seems out of character for him. For anybody that actually likes their personalities, anyway. The 80s cartoon just makes them all act the same.
Well...to be fair. The Fred Wolf toon did try to give the guys a modicum of distinctive character as time went on. From Leo being an obsessive/compulsive sort of individual (which often was the direct antithesis of being a good, responsible leader, like when he got obsessed with an arcade game), to Mikey digging comic books (which is what led to various eps involving Bugman), Donatello being the genius (which even had him using Irma as a surrogate to get into college) to Raphael being the wise-ass that landed him in a variety of situations, such as when he met Mona Lisa, the salamander girl who was never seen again after one ep (and yet was enough that people wanted to force the romance angle between two new versions of the chars in the Nick series...*BARF*).
The problem was, as could be expected for a syndicated series like this one, characterization varied from ep to ep. Chars learned lessons, but were forgotten the next. The guys never acted like a family unit anyway, so it was hard to care about any interaction between the four and Splinter otherwise. And by the time they tried to make things more compelling with the likes of the final Red Sky seasons, it was largely too late. Most kids had already moved on to watching Power Rangers and those who were left didn't like the abrupt change in the show's tone.
Yet, this is the show that still endures as the "standard" for the TMNT for a lot of people. And so long as Viacom is insistent on modeling their current movies and toons after it, it's little wonder why the TMNT will never have a chance of going toe to toe with the likes of WB-DC and Batman, or with Disney-Marvel and the MCU. The brand's never going to be taken seriously.