Mighty Morphin Power Rangers, Season 1, Episodes 26-30:
S'been a while since I did one of these. Five more episodes, and these... are honestly not the best episodes I've seen, even by MMPR standards. Let's go, I guess?
Episode 26: Gung Ho!
The premise of this episode is pretty... interesting. There's a "Team Ninja Competition" going on, and Jason and Tommy are part of a team that's joining said martial arts match. A lot of the complaints directed at MMPR is how toothless and bland most of the main characters are, and it's actually refreshing to see Jason and Tommy actually argue at each other. The main cast of the Power Rangers have always been portrayed as squeaky-clean best buddies forever that the only times we've evre seen inter-personal conflict between our main cast is if mind control (or, well, that one terrible birthday surprise) is involved, so it's genuninely surprising to see some conflict come between two main characters. Hell, it's even a believable conflict, too -- I can totally see these two dudes going at each other over testosterone-fueled macho nonsense.This does go on for a while, mostly as an excuse to show off the two actors busting out action sequences and accidentally knocking each other on their asses. Trini gives the titular advice of "gung-ho", which is a phrase that means "working together" in Mandarin, and... and I am genuinely surprised to learn that "gung ho" originated from Chinese language. Power Rangers is educational!
But the whole gung-ho speech really doesn't amount to much, particularly when Bulk and Skull show up with Skull dressed up in what can only be described as a flamboyant pimp that moonliights as a rapper. And you'd think that Bulk and Skull are going to join the competition, because we're 26 episodes in and that's the obvious formula... except, no, they're not the ones entering the competition. Bulk has ninjas. Let me re-iterate this again. Bulk has ninjas. Somehow, this high school bully is able to employ two gosh-darned real ninjas. In Angel Grove, California. And said ninjas show up decked out in full gear and everything and they're ready to throw down in a god damned martial arts competition. We don't get any explanation to where they come from, what their names are, just that they're ninjas and Bulk employs them. This end up becoming an excuse to pad things out as the ninjas basically do more martial arts.All that insanity sort of gives away when we get to the space witch plot, thogh, which isn't something you'd think would happen. We do get a pretty neat nod of continuity as Rita and Finster are making a new monster with the super putty material Rita mined last episode... and Finster's making Super Putties. Okay!
Granted, it does give us some neat little fighting footage, including a neat one where Black Ranger uses his shotgun-axe to slice a putty into two and it just goops into two more putties like a Mega Man boss. The Jason/Tommy stuff doesn't work quite as well, though, the two just sort of bicker while they're holding two halves of a map that look like they're meant for five-year olds, and when they arrive at the weapon stash... a giant brachiosaurus robot attacks! Wait, aren't these dinosaur robots supposed to be on the good guys' side? Well, Titanus, as he's known, is shooting missiles at our heroes. Jason and Tommy transform into their ranger forms and basically sort make up, decide to work together, swap weapons and end up distracting Titanus long enough to get the weapons, which are never actually named in the episode. Also, they clearly have "ZYURANGER" written on the side. And in a very anticlimactic way, we just cut away to the other rangers fighting the putties, Jason and Tommy teleport in and deliver the New Toy(tm) Guns, and they just one-shot the Super Putties.
Then we cut to the ninja tournament... which... doesn't really deliver on the zaniness of ninjas being employed by local school bullies. The fight scene is decent but it's pretty bog-standard, and blah blah Jason and Tommy learn to work together and win the match. The other rangers also learn from Zordon that the whole freaking episode is a test, and that Titanus is apparently one of them all along. Which honestly leads me to wonder why Zordon hasn't activated Titanus before, or had the Power Rangers bugger off and get those New Toy Weapons. I dunno. The whole episode's moral seems to be that Zordon's a huge fan of convoluted plans just to try and get two dudes who had an argument to make up together.Ultimately, despite the silliness of Bulk and Skull employing ninjas, and the novel (for this series) idea of the Super Putties, the execution of the episode is definitely lacking. The conflict between Jason and Tommy felt pretty bland, and the way that the Titanus and Super Putty fights ended was insanely abrupt.
Episode 27: Wheel of Misfortune
Another pretty bland episode, and one that I won't spend too much time talking about. In this episode, we get our main characters performing in the school play of Rumpelstiltskin, and after a sequence of actually well-executed bad-acting, Bulk ends up breaking the spinning wheel prop... and Kim freaks the fuck out because apparently that spinning wheel is an antique that belonged to her grandmother and why the fuck are you bringing such a sentimental, irreplaceable item as a prop in a shitty high school play? Kimberly, you dunce.Speaking of dunces, Rita has been watching and is inspired to use a spinning wheel to menace the Power Rangers this week. Okay then. While Kim is drinking her sorrows away with some milkshakes in the Youth Center, Goldar and a bunch of goons teleport down to the school to steal the spinning wheel. Between this and the float-model destroying episode, Rita has it out for Kimberly personally, huh? The Rangers return to the play room and find that the wheel is gone, and we... cut to a pretty bizarre scene where Tommy is helping Kim ask random people in the Youth Center if they've seen a fucking spinning wheel. It's pretty odd, and really should've been a scene they shot at the school set.
Rita, meanwhile, has transformed Kim's grandma's wheel into the monster of the week, the titular Wheel of Misfortune. Meanwhile, Tommy, whose first appearances in this series involves him kung fu fighting putties, gets attacked by putties... and they hog-tie him onto a tree, which is our Tommy excuse of the week. Silly Tommy. Because the plot needs to go on, Zordon calls the Power Rangers, fills them in about both Tommy's hostage situation and the fact that Rita's turned Kim's wheel into a giant flaming sentient wheel.We get a fight-scene between Scorpina and Goldar versus the five original Rangers, then Rita shows up and makes the two monsters grow. For some reason, the Rangers summon the Dinozords but do not combine, causing the hilarious visual of Goldar tossing a giant net over the T-rex Zord... and that's about it. Wasn't there supposed to be a Wheel of Misfortune involved? Okay. Meanwhile, Tommy breaks free because the plot demands he show up now, beats up the putties, and Zordon tells Tommy to bring together all their robots to form the "Ultrazord".
Tommy and the Dragonzord show up on the battlefield, the Wheel of Misfortune show up and is insanely underwhelming, but freaks Jason out that he combines the other Zords to make the Megazord. And... and it's a pretty oddly-cut together battle, because the dialogue has Rita reacting like the wheel's doing something and the rangers are like 'look out' and 'oh no', but the Wheel of Misfortune's just... kinda hovering around? It's not even attacking the Megazord like the way it attacked the T-Rex and the Dragonzord a couple scenes before. Somehow this segues into the creation of the Ultrazord, where the Megazord, the Dragonzord and Titanus (who shows up) sort of combine together into a robot-man standing on a platform, and the combination sequence causes explosions to spontaneously erupt. It's supposed to be this huge badass final form of the entire Power Rangers arsenal combined into one, but the debut and the scenes leading up to it is so underwhelmingly bland that it becomes pretty unimpressive as a result.
Oh, and the titular Kim's Grandma's Wheel of Misfortune we spent half the episode angsting about? That thing was sort of forgotten, was it? Not even a token line from Kim angsting about the precious family heirloom being an enemy, or a determination to destroy the monster or something. And because the series hates stakes, somehow the spinning wheel shows back where Goldar originally stole it for absolutely no reason. You can't even have "the moon crew beamed it back since they have no use for it" like they did with the statue in the park from that bug episode, because Rita explicitly turned the spinning wheel into the monster they blew up. Gaaaah this episode. Oh and the episode ends on the Rumpelstiltskin drama, but basically Bulk bumbles his way through his lines, tries to flirt with Kim and rips his pants on stage, exposing his underwear.What a fucking mess of an episode, honestly. It's just pretty bad, the 'spinning wheel is gone' thing is terribly handled, the play seems to be shoehorned in, the Wheel of Misfortune is a shit excuse of a monster, there's the terrible ending, the action scenes aren't super impressive and the debut of the Ultrazord is crap. Pretty terrible.
Episode 28-29: Island of Illusion, Pt. 1-2
This one is a two-parter who borrows the Sentai footage from what's apparently a pretty huge event series in Zyuranger where the villains actually enact the world-domination plan that they have building the series up to. In Mighty Morphin, though, it's just a pretty mundane two-parter. And a pretty shitty one at that, too. And... I don't have a high standard for MMPR episodes, I really don't -- otherwise I'd probably have stopped at episode 3 or something, but there's just something about "Island of Illusion" that felt so painful to sit through. Partly it's because of the length of the two-parter, but there's also the fact that the plot in this is all over the place and things are introduced and sort of ignored for the story in what I felt was a fair bit more egregious than most MMPR episodes. I'm not sure if "Island of Illusion" or "Wheel of Misfortune" is more poopy, though.
The high-school civilian plot for the two parter focuses on Zack again... and it's sort of a rerun of his previous focus episode only substitute "fear of bugs" for "arbitrary insecurity". Y'know, it'd be great if they had actually taken the couple of times that Zack has had terrible luck with women and actually built it up to be his insecurity for the two parter, but no, the source of his existential angst... is a dance competition. Where he's going up against Bulk and Skull. Bulk and Skull, who, obviously, make goddamn fools out of themselves by falling over within a minute of showing up in the episode. There's perhaps some poignance to be made out of insecurities showing up in the clearly-talented Zack, but the episode really doesn't show it well at all and throughout the dance-off scenes Zack just seems like he just didn't have his morning coffee or something.
Oh, and there's a random sub-plot with Tommy teaching random kids how to do karate, which is just an excuse for Tommy to do more spin-kicks and give the same "remember, kids, martial arts is about self-meditation and improvement" speech that Jason and Zack have given a million times before in this show. A sentiment that rings insanely hollow since everyone uses karate to solve every problem in their lives.
Meanwhile, Rita and her goons prepare to summon two of their mightiest minions, and this Lokar dude is apparently a monster with the ability to send people with shitty self-esteem into the Island of Illusion. There's a bit of neat build-up of Rita's goons being all panicky about how scary and dangerous Lokar is and how they nearly wiped them out the last time he showed up, which is neat. The summoning ritual to bring Lokar into Angel Grove causes and earthquake, and we learn why Tommy had to tutor karate -- the writers wanted an excuse to get him out of the way. So Tommy sort of... stays behind in the Youth Center to protect the kids instead of, y'know, grabbing them and running the fuck out of the building when an earthquake is happening.
The four Power Rangers then proceed to completely forget about the earthquake as they meet up with the moping Zack in the park, where everything is absolutely peaceful. Insert a generic putty fight at this point, and I feel like the episode missed a big opportunity by not showing Zack, like, missing a beat in the fight or something. If you wanted a premise of Zack having shitty self-esteem, the least you could do is at least commit to it, y'know? We then cut to a very awkwardly-spliced fight between the Rangers against Goldar and Scorpina, which was rushed as all hell before Rita summons another monster, Mutitus (Mutatus? Mutitis?), who looks pretty damn neat.
Goldar and Scorpina disappear off-screen as Mutitus fights the Power Rangers in their Megazord, which is apparently a distraction on Rita's part, as she telepors to earth, creates a pretty cool apocalyptic set-up with dark skies and lightning bolts and fireballs and whatnot as she summons Lokar, a giant demonic floating head with spiky hair. Which I guess is different? It's not a dude in a rubber suit, at least. Lokar doesn't actually do much but float in the sky and occassionally shoot lightning bolts, but he uses his 'breath of evil' on Mutitus to upgrade him, leading to a pretty damn badass form where Mutitus's original skull face seems to have split open to reveal a hideous boney worm face within. Terrifying but cool. Zordon calls Tommy to stop dicking around (he's literally just standing in the Youth Center with Ernie and the kids) and show up.
And at this point, it actually feels pretty epic (the dance-off plot aside). Mutitus was already beating the Power Rangers in the Megazord, this is now him upgraded with a floating head buddy to boot! It's a neat sense of threat, and even when the Dragonzord shows up we still get Mutitus holding his own against the two robots, eventually winning by... uh... shooting white foam that shuts down the Zords. Okay? (Lokar just laughs, he's kind of just there). And then Rita unleashes her master plan. No, it's not the giant demonic head in the sky. Or the evolving Resident Evil monster that can clearly hold its own against the two Zords.
Nope, Rita just teleports the six teenagers to the Island of Illusion, leading to the characters just dicking around in said island for the rest of Part 1 and the majority of Part 2, where they theoretically face off against their 'worst fears' or something. We get some pretty obviously spliced-together footage of a komodo dragon and the Power Rangers pretend-reacting to it as they wander aroud the island looking for their Power Ranger equipment. Also, by the way, there's some random dwarf in a shitty Robin Hood cosplay watching the kids. That's someone's first D&D character, some dude named Quagmire who hates Rita, is stuck on the island, and is a straight-up elf or something I dunno, because he speaks in obnoxious rhyme, teleports in and out of the plot and honestly makes me go "why?"
Speaking of "why?", after getting blueballed from the fight against Lokar and Mutitus, Goldar's giant head appears in the sky and talks about how the Rangers are all going to die and shit, and summons five past monsters that the Rangers have faced off before (and these are monster suits that the US crew has access to). Shellshock! Eye Guy! Pine-Octopus! That one lizard dude Kim single-handedly killed! And the best creature of all, Pudgy Pig! Holy shit, okay, that's pretty neat, it's an excuse to get past enemies to show up and fight the Rangers while they are un-morphed.
...except it's all just an illusion, and they disappear withot even throwing a punch. What's the point? No, really, what's the fucking point? Even if the suits aren't in good enough of a condition to do elaborate stunts with, at least do something with them, y'know? Instead we get... a shitty 'your true fear' nonsense plot where Goldar gives a gloating speech about illusions (that our heroes ignore), Zack gets scared of a snake (that's an illusion) and then is about to disappear (with the usage of shitty 90's effects). That's our cliffhanger. And then the next episode starts, where Quagmire shows up out of nowhere, the other Rangers make a friend out of him by saying "no, we hate Ria too" and he's like "oh okay, fine then" and then the way that Zack can avoid slow disintegration? Think happy thoughts.
Which he does, and "Island of Illusion, Part 2", does yet another terribly cheap thing. It's a clip episode. God. Zack flashes back to the Nasty Knight fight, but the way it's cut makes it look like Zack defeated the Knight on his own (he didn't, he quite literally got his ass handed to him in that episode until the other Rangers showed up) and then he doesn't disappear.
Of course, we basically have the same thing repeat for all the other five Rangers, with Quagmire offering inane advice every single god damn time. Speaking of pointless filler scenes, we cut away no less than three times to Alpha trying to fix a computer or some shit in the Zordon-Cave and accidentally zapping himself in the butt. Which is not funny, and neither the physical acting or the voice acting is endearing enough to make me appreciate the joke.
The writers shoehorn some mumbo-jumbo by telling us that Billy is using the wind velocity and the light reflected off from the power morphers to decide where they should go, because... uh, okay, that's so stupid it ends up being funny. Okay. The next illusion, Kim's worst fear, is actually quite hilarious, mostly because it involves Bulk and Skull, a duo of characters who manage the "do the same joke over and over again" far, far more successfully than Alpha Five can ever hope to be. Bulk and Skull... are dressed up all prim and proper, with Skull having a Scottish accent out of nowhere, and they're helping little animals in the woods while speaking properly. It's ridiculous, it's funny, and the fact that this is apparently Kim's greatest fear somehow ("If Rita can make those two be decent, she can do anything!") is just such an absurd concept, I love it.
Sadly, the payoff is terrible. Quagmire tells Kim to remember the fight against the Terror Toad (how would he know?), Kim doesn't want to because it's gross (oh, '90's feminism) and she does so anyway. And... credit where credit's due, Kim does defeat the Terror Toad single-handedly because Kim's actually got a fair amount of episodes where she's a badass.
The other four rangers then basically go through the same thing, but the episode had a really terrible cut to Tommy's phase, going from a scene where Tommy congratulates Kim on beating her fear, to a random shot of Putties in a distance, to a random zoom-in on Tommy's face, and it's just bizarre editing. Anyway, Tommy sees his friends as Putties and starts fighting them, because Tommy spends most of his screentime either brainwashed or making up inane excuses to avoid the second act, apparently the only significant thing they can draw from is "being tied up by Putties last episode". And then he remembers that, hey, "Green With Evil" had like three extended Tommy-beats-up-Putties scenes and his confidence is restored.
Then Trini hallucinates the events "High Five" where Billy's about to fall from a cliff, and unlike the previous three, apparently we ran out of budget at this point because instead of a visualization of the hallucination, we just see Trini screaming at the groud. Trini doesn't have a lot of spotlight episodes either, because her flashback's basically exactly that scene from the episode where she conquered her fear of heights. And then Billy disappears because... at this point the writers ran out of fucks to give and didn't even bother with a hallucination. And then Billy flashbacks to the fight with Madame Woe, which... like Zack and the Nasty Knight, Billy didn't defeat Madame Woe by himself like the episode claimed.
We end with Jason, and... at least there's some thought put into this instead of "haha snakes lol" because Goldar's head shows up, mocks Jason about how he's not a good enough leader since he can't save his friends, and Jason ends up sort of questioning himself... and it's not helped by the fact that the illusion he sees is of his friends disappearing. That's actually pretty neat. Of course, one obnoxious Quagmire speech, a flashback to the King Sphinx fight, and everything is fine and dandy. Despite the whole island supposedly being a creation of Rita's, this somehow causes their Power Ranger gadgets to appear before them. And also a giant Rita shows up, picks up the island and smashes it just as the Power Rangers call Zordon and teleport away.
...back to the Zords. Right. Mutitus and Lokar. That inane nonsense made me almost forgot the giant monsters. The Megazord and the Dragonzord combine into a new form, the Mega-Dragonzord, which is... the Dragonzord being worn on top of the Megazord like a large-brimmed hat. Okay! The Mega-Dragonzord's pretty cool, though, and it faces off against Mutitus, ending the fight almost instantly by summoning a spinning glowing ball with a "Z" on it (gee, it would be cool if the show's title started with Z, huh) and then it spins around and does some cool-looking Dragon Ball explosion that obliterates Mutitus from the face of the earth. Not going to lie, it's cheap 90's CGI but it's a pretty cool scene.
Lokar's still there, floating and laughing, but the Rangers just summon Titanus and form the Ultrazord. And... and it's such a better debut for the Ultrazord than the half-assed nonsense we got in Wheel of Misfortune. Judging by the slow panning shots of the different parts of the suit's appearance, this is definitely the Ultrazord's first appearance in Zyuranger, because that sort of "dun dun dunnnn!" shots are reserved for a new form's debut in tokusatsu. And, sure, Lokar's not the most eventful enemy out there, but he sure is a whole lot more threatening than a goddamn flying wheel that has maybe 20 seconds of screentime.
Anyway, that almost washes away the 40 minutes of dire nonsense that came before it. The shots of these plastic dinosaur toys combining into the Ultrazord, the shots rotating around it, and then it just unloading a frick-ton of firepower to scare Lokar into brunning away like a bitch? That's cool.
Oh yeah, and there's the dance competition or whatever t the beginning of part 1, which the writers and the characters completely forgot about throughout the Island of Illusion. Boy, wouldn't it be great if Zack's huge moment in the Island of Illusion was him coming to terms with his self-esteem? Maybe he could think that the other Rangers are better off without him since he keeps bumbling around, or something along those lines? Nope, have a fucking snake. Anyway, Zack wins the competition and inexplicably Quagmire survived the island to become the DJ of the party. I am not making that last bit up.
Overall... it's not terrible, but there's just so many random concepts shoehorned in that they didn't follow up with, between Zack's self-doubt or an island of fear or the cockblock of the return of a bunch of past monsters or, hell, even the island of illusions itself. Throw in the absolutely obnoxious Quagmire, and the clip show, and the two-parter just drags on and on. There are some neat moments in the two-parter like angelic Bulk and Skull and the Ultrazord's proper debut, these two episodes ultimately end up continuing the pooh-poo streak MMPR has lately.
The high-school civilian plot for the two parter focuses on Zack again... and it's sort of a rerun of his previous focus episode only substitute "fear of bugs" for "arbitrary insecurity". Y'know, it'd be great if they had actually taken the couple of times that Zack has had terrible luck with women and actually built it up to be his insecurity for the two parter, but no, the source of his existential angst... is a dance competition. Where he's going up against Bulk and Skull. Bulk and Skull, who, obviously, make goddamn fools out of themselves by falling over within a minute of showing up in the episode. There's perhaps some poignance to be made out of insecurities showing up in the clearly-talented Zack, but the episode really doesn't show it well at all and throughout the dance-off scenes Zack just seems like he just didn't have his morning coffee or something.Oh, and there's a random sub-plot with Tommy teaching random kids how to do karate, which is just an excuse for Tommy to do more spin-kicks and give the same "remember, kids, martial arts is about self-meditation and improvement" speech that Jason and Zack have given a million times before in this show. A sentiment that rings insanely hollow since everyone uses karate to solve every problem in their lives.
Meanwhile, Rita and her goons prepare to summon two of their mightiest minions, and this Lokar dude is apparently a monster with the ability to send people with shitty self-esteem into the Island of Illusion. There's a bit of neat build-up of Rita's goons being all panicky about how scary and dangerous Lokar is and how they nearly wiped them out the last time he showed up, which is neat. The summoning ritual to bring Lokar into Angel Grove causes and earthquake, and we learn why Tommy had to tutor karate -- the writers wanted an excuse to get him out of the way. So Tommy sort of... stays behind in the Youth Center to protect the kids instead of, y'know, grabbing them and running the fuck out of the building when an earthquake is happening.
The four Power Rangers then proceed to completely forget about the earthquake as they meet up with the moping Zack in the park, where everything is absolutely peaceful. Insert a generic putty fight at this point, and I feel like the episode missed a big opportunity by not showing Zack, like, missing a beat in the fight or something. If you wanted a premise of Zack having shitty self-esteem, the least you could do is at least commit to it, y'know? We then cut to a very awkwardly-spliced fight between the Rangers against Goldar and Scorpina, which was rushed as all hell before Rita summons another monster, Mutitus (Mutatus? Mutitis?), who looks pretty damn neat.
Goldar and Scorpina disappear off-screen as Mutitus fights the Power Rangers in their Megazord, which is apparently a distraction on Rita's part, as she telepors to earth, creates a pretty cool apocalyptic set-up with dark skies and lightning bolts and fireballs and whatnot as she summons Lokar, a giant demonic floating head with spiky hair. Which I guess is different? It's not a dude in a rubber suit, at least. Lokar doesn't actually do much but float in the sky and occassionally shoot lightning bolts, but he uses his 'breath of evil' on Mutitus to upgrade him, leading to a pretty damn badass form where Mutitus's original skull face seems to have split open to reveal a hideous boney worm face within. Terrifying but cool. Zordon calls Tommy to stop dicking around (he's literally just standing in the Youth Center with Ernie and the kids) and show up.And at this point, it actually feels pretty epic (the dance-off plot aside). Mutitus was already beating the Power Rangers in the Megazord, this is now him upgraded with a floating head buddy to boot! It's a neat sense of threat, and even when the Dragonzord shows up we still get Mutitus holding his own against the two robots, eventually winning by... uh... shooting white foam that shuts down the Zords. Okay? (Lokar just laughs, he's kind of just there). And then Rita unleashes her master plan. No, it's not the giant demonic head in the sky. Or the evolving Resident Evil monster that can clearly hold its own against the two Zords.
Nope, Rita just teleports the six teenagers to the Island of Illusion, leading to the characters just dicking around in said island for the rest of Part 1 and the majority of Part 2, where they theoretically face off against their 'worst fears' or something. We get some pretty obviously spliced-together footage of a komodo dragon and the Power Rangers pretend-reacting to it as they wander aroud the island looking for their Power Ranger equipment. Also, by the way, there's some random dwarf in a shitty Robin Hood cosplay watching the kids. That's someone's first D&D character, some dude named Quagmire who hates Rita, is stuck on the island, and is a straight-up elf or something I dunno, because he speaks in obnoxious rhyme, teleports in and out of the plot and honestly makes me go "why?"Speaking of "why?", after getting blueballed from the fight against Lokar and Mutitus, Goldar's giant head appears in the sky and talks about how the Rangers are all going to die and shit, and summons five past monsters that the Rangers have faced off before (and these are monster suits that the US crew has access to). Shellshock! Eye Guy! Pine-Octopus! That one lizard dude Kim single-handedly killed! And the best creature of all, Pudgy Pig! Holy shit, okay, that's pretty neat, it's an excuse to get past enemies to show up and fight the Rangers while they are un-morphed.
...except it's all just an illusion, and they disappear withot even throwing a punch. What's the point? No, really, what's the fucking point? Even if the suits aren't in good enough of a condition to do elaborate stunts with, at least do something with them, y'know? Instead we get... a shitty 'your true fear' nonsense plot where Goldar gives a gloating speech about illusions (that our heroes ignore), Zack gets scared of a snake (that's an illusion) and then is about to disappear (with the usage of shitty 90's effects). That's our cliffhanger. And then the next episode starts, where Quagmire shows up out of nowhere, the other Rangers make a friend out of him by saying "no, we hate Ria too" and he's like "oh okay, fine then" and then the way that Zack can avoid slow disintegration? Think happy thoughts.
Which he does, and "Island of Illusion, Part 2", does yet another terribly cheap thing. It's a clip episode. God. Zack flashes back to the Nasty Knight fight, but the way it's cut makes it look like Zack defeated the Knight on his own (he didn't, he quite literally got his ass handed to him in that episode until the other Rangers showed up) and then he doesn't disappear.
Of course, we basically have the same thing repeat for all the other five Rangers, with Quagmire offering inane advice every single god damn time. Speaking of pointless filler scenes, we cut away no less than three times to Alpha trying to fix a computer or some shit in the Zordon-Cave and accidentally zapping himself in the butt. Which is not funny, and neither the physical acting or the voice acting is endearing enough to make me appreciate the joke.The writers shoehorn some mumbo-jumbo by telling us that Billy is using the wind velocity and the light reflected off from the power morphers to decide where they should go, because... uh, okay, that's so stupid it ends up being funny. Okay. The next illusion, Kim's worst fear, is actually quite hilarious, mostly because it involves Bulk and Skull, a duo of characters who manage the "do the same joke over and over again" far, far more successfully than Alpha Five can ever hope to be. Bulk and Skull... are dressed up all prim and proper, with Skull having a Scottish accent out of nowhere, and they're helping little animals in the woods while speaking properly. It's ridiculous, it's funny, and the fact that this is apparently Kim's greatest fear somehow ("If Rita can make those two be decent, she can do anything!") is just such an absurd concept, I love it.
Sadly, the payoff is terrible. Quagmire tells Kim to remember the fight against the Terror Toad (how would he know?), Kim doesn't want to because it's gross (oh, '90's feminism) and she does so anyway. And... credit where credit's due, Kim does defeat the Terror Toad single-handedly because Kim's actually got a fair amount of episodes where she's a badass.
The other four rangers then basically go through the same thing, but the episode had a really terrible cut to Tommy's phase, going from a scene where Tommy congratulates Kim on beating her fear, to a random shot of Putties in a distance, to a random zoom-in on Tommy's face, and it's just bizarre editing. Anyway, Tommy sees his friends as Putties and starts fighting them, because Tommy spends most of his screentime either brainwashed or making up inane excuses to avoid the second act, apparently the only significant thing they can draw from is "being tied up by Putties last episode". And then he remembers that, hey, "Green With Evil" had like three extended Tommy-beats-up-Putties scenes and his confidence is restored.Then Trini hallucinates the events "High Five" where Billy's about to fall from a cliff, and unlike the previous three, apparently we ran out of budget at this point because instead of a visualization of the hallucination, we just see Trini screaming at the groud. Trini doesn't have a lot of spotlight episodes either, because her flashback's basically exactly that scene from the episode where she conquered her fear of heights. And then Billy disappears because... at this point the writers ran out of fucks to give and didn't even bother with a hallucination. And then Billy flashbacks to the fight with Madame Woe, which... like Zack and the Nasty Knight, Billy didn't defeat Madame Woe by himself like the episode claimed.
We end with Jason, and... at least there's some thought put into this instead of "haha snakes lol" because Goldar's head shows up, mocks Jason about how he's not a good enough leader since he can't save his friends, and Jason ends up sort of questioning himself... and it's not helped by the fact that the illusion he sees is of his friends disappearing. That's actually pretty neat. Of course, one obnoxious Quagmire speech, a flashback to the King Sphinx fight, and everything is fine and dandy. Despite the whole island supposedly being a creation of Rita's, this somehow causes their Power Ranger gadgets to appear before them. And also a giant Rita shows up, picks up the island and smashes it just as the Power Rangers call Zordon and teleport away.
...back to the Zords. Right. Mutitus and Lokar. That inane nonsense made me almost forgot the giant monsters. The Megazord and the Dragonzord combine into a new form, the Mega-Dragonzord, which is... the Dragonzord being worn on top of the Megazord like a large-brimmed hat. Okay! The Mega-Dragonzord's pretty cool, though, and it faces off against Mutitus, ending the fight almost instantly by summoning a spinning glowing ball with a "Z" on it (gee, it would be cool if the show's title started with Z, huh) and then it spins around and does some cool-looking Dragon Ball explosion that obliterates Mutitus from the face of the earth. Not going to lie, it's cheap 90's CGI but it's a pretty cool scene.Lokar's still there, floating and laughing, but the Rangers just summon Titanus and form the Ultrazord. And... and it's such a better debut for the Ultrazord than the half-assed nonsense we got in Wheel of Misfortune. Judging by the slow panning shots of the different parts of the suit's appearance, this is definitely the Ultrazord's first appearance in Zyuranger, because that sort of "dun dun dunnnn!" shots are reserved for a new form's debut in tokusatsu. And, sure, Lokar's not the most eventful enemy out there, but he sure is a whole lot more threatening than a goddamn flying wheel that has maybe 20 seconds of screentime.
Anyway, that almost washes away the 40 minutes of dire nonsense that came before it. The shots of these plastic dinosaur toys combining into the Ultrazord, the shots rotating around it, and then it just unloading a frick-ton of firepower to scare Lokar into brunning away like a bitch? That's cool.Oh yeah, and there's the dance competition or whatever t the beginning of part 1, which the writers and the characters completely forgot about throughout the Island of Illusion. Boy, wouldn't it be great if Zack's huge moment in the Island of Illusion was him coming to terms with his self-esteem? Maybe he could think that the other Rangers are better off without him since he keeps bumbling around, or something along those lines? Nope, have a fucking snake. Anyway, Zack wins the competition and inexplicably Quagmire survived the island to become the DJ of the party. I am not making that last bit up.
Overall... it's not terrible, but there's just so many random concepts shoehorned in that they didn't follow up with, between Zack's self-doubt or an island of fear or the cockblock of the return of a bunch of past monsters or, hell, even the island of illusions itself. Throw in the absolutely obnoxious Quagmire, and the clip show, and the two-parter just drags on and on. There are some neat moments in the two-parter like angelic Bulk and Skull and the Ultrazord's proper debut, these two episodes ultimately end up continuing the pooh-poo streak MMPR has lately.
Episode 30: The Rockstar
...and it doesn't change with "The Rockstar". I don't think it's as bad as the previous three episodes, but it's still pretty dire. If Quagmire was a shitty Jar Jar Binks, then Jeremy in this episode is a shittier Episode 1 Anakin. And... and this is a Jason-centered episode. For a show where Jason's supposed to be the main character, our Red Ranger actually has never had a focus episode outside of "Green With Evil", and even then those are just parts of a longer five-parter. Except that like Trini before him, Jason ends up being saddled with babysitting some kid cousin called Jeremy. Who, by the way, is dubbed over, and I had to wonder just what the kid actor did wrong that they had to bring someone to dub over every single one of his lines.The rest of the rangers make a brief joke about how gross escargot are (ha ha foreign culture is gross and funny HA HA HA HA '90'S JOKE) before they pile their stuff into the Radbug and bugger off for a holiday somewhere. Tommy's also inexplicably absent without any reason this time around, and they couldn't even bother to have one of the other actors record a line about how Tommy's, like, karate-ing in the woods or something.
Jason and Cousin Jeremy show up at some random set where Bulk and Skull are eating some gross sloppy joes pizza or something, and apparently Jeremy knows that these are the "famous bullies" that he's heard so much about or something? Kid's kind of a dick, isn't he? Anyway, the bullies end up with gross pizza in their face because of their bumblingness and the episode moves on, and this is pretty bland and uninteresting, honestly. You could count on Bulk and Skull to deliver some laughs with their scenery-chewing in the first act of MMPR episodes, but they're kinda off in this one. Anyway, we get another obligatory Jason shows off martial arts and gives a martial arts speech scene.... but this one is different! Jason's actually sharing about how martial arts got to give him confidence (and pecs) and allowed him to feel better about himself. Y'know what? I'll give MMPR that. The rest of the episode is kind of a hot mess, but that was like, all right.
Rita is absolutely angry because she's planning for some devious plan, and said plan involves waiting for the Power Rangers to go on a vacation out of town. She sends the putties down to bother Jason and Jeremy, and... it's a putty fight, and you'd think that we'd have more drama out of Jason having to protect his secret identity and his kid cousin, but instead we just get a generic karate scene, and then we cut to the J-cousins fishing.
And Jeremy fishes up a bottle, opens it, and causes an earthquake. Inside the bottle is apparently a map to the Mirror of Destruction, the plot device that Rita wants to utilize to destroy the Rangers. No explanation is given as to what the random bottle with a map comes from, but apparently everyone wants this map. Why are you complaining about your plan being ruined when you clearly have no idea where the Mirror of Destruction is located, Rita? Zordon fills Jason in on the mirror, but the Scorpina and the two stooges show up. Scorpina snaps her fingers to fuse a bunch of rocks together to form a rock golem called Rockstar. Rockstar has the power to shoot rocks that are able to pin people to the ground. You'd think the blunt impact and shattered ribs would be enough to disable Jason, but nope, it's the gravity powers that's going to do you in.We then have some awkward cuts as Zordon summons the other four rangers, teleporting them to the beach, where they rescue Jason from a rock, then they teleport into some random nearby jungle to rescue Jeremy, who's run off in all this. Because this episode seems to have a terrible case of ADHD, Zordon then telepors the Rangers to the 'beach club' where they fight Scorpina and Rockstar next to a pool. We get a pretty cool sequence of Scorpina doing some cool shit, and Rockstar nearly drowns Zack and Trini by sticking boulders to them and then kicking them into the swimming pool. And then the villains bugger off when they decide to hunt down Jeremy, who has the map that they need. And then Scorpina declares that she has found Kim and Jason, forgetting that she's supposed to be hunting the kid. Man the scripting and scene cuts in this episode is horrid.
Anyway, with the Rangers on the ropes, Jeremy outsmarts some Putties by throwing rocks, and then follows the incredibly stupid instructions of the map (it's literally "walk 6 steps forwards") to get to the Mirror of Doomy-Doom, shaped like a weird book or some shit, and basically anyone who looks at it gets blown up. As Jeremy displays against the Putty, vaporizing it into nothingness. Rockstar shows up to smash Jeremy, who goes "yikes" and then points the mirror at Rockstar, blowing him up. Despite none of the backgrouds syncing up (Jeremy's in a forest; Rockstar's still at the beach). And then... Jeremy just yeets the mirror into the beach. For no real reason, making all the scenes we wasted seeing him look for the mirror even more of a waste. Scorpina and the Power Rangers fight for it, but Scorpina gets the mirror and Rita makes her grow.
Jeremy shows up and fanboys all over the Power Rangers, and I do like that they threw in the little joke of the Red Ranger just remaining silent and stoic so that Jeremy doesn't recognize Jason's voice. We then finish the episode with Jeremy recounting the awesome stuff that happened that day to Jason and his friends, talking about how cool the Red Ranger is, and Jason lets out a lame excuse about how he 'has to go somewhere else" when Jeremy asks him where he went in the fight.
Overall... pretty crappy. The premise of the episode is pretty bland enough, with a generic weapon of doom and a scrappy kid sidekick, but throw in a very underwhelming monster in Rockstar, and pretty terrible editing that tosses the characters here and there, and there's not much to like here. Jason gets a bit of focus early on but it doesn't amount to much. At least we get a fair bit of Scorpina in this episode. I like Scorpina.
Anyway... these five episodes are pretty blah. I'm not sure if the rest of the season will be of this quality or if it's going to have some attempt at being decent. I don't mind silly or stupid plots as long as there's some effort behind it, but judging by the chunk of the series that I reviewed here, they clearly didn't have put in much for these specific episodes at all.
Random Notes
- So apparently despite the past five episodes or so calling the combination of the Dragonzord and three of the original dinozords "Mega-Dragnzord", that's actually the hideously-named "Dragonzord in Battle Mode". The Mega-Dragonzord is actually the combination of all five Dinozords and the Dragonzord. Toy forms, am I right?
- Mega Dragonzord is basically the Megazord wearing the Dragonzord's split-apart parts like a hoodie.
- Frankenstein dude shows up in the background of some of the moon base scenes in "Gung Ho" -- that's because Dora Franken is actually a recurring character that shows up for a couple of episodes in Zyuranger, and actually becomes Dora Zombie, a.k.a. Mutitus! It's bizarre why they don't just take footage from literally any other episode, though, since so much of the moon-base scenes are similar enough.
- This, of course, means that Mutitus was a far more threatening figure in Zyuranger, actually being a recurring enemy that got upgraded into a stronger form instead of just some random bloke-of-the-week.
- Apparently the huge accessory that hangs aroud Tommy's shoulder and chest is the "Dragon Shield", and you can transfer it to you by tenderly touching the diamond in the center.
- I know it's Kim ad-libbing to get Bulk to pull his shit together, but it's completely missing the point of the story if the princess knows Rumpelstiltskin's name, isn't it?
- Episode 27 has the return of Mr. Caplan and the toupee joke.
- Lokar, in the original Zyuranger series, was actually freaking Satan himself, and was actually the Big Bad of at least a huge chunk of the series where the plot was more or less building up to Witch Bandora (Rita's Japanese counterpart) unleashing a child-sacrifice ritual to summon Satan from hell to earth. Okay!
- It's interesting that Zordon wasn't a big floating head in Zyuranger and is just some old dude, so it's kind of a neat coincidence, I guess, that Lokar/Satan is a floating head?
- Dora Zombie (Mutitus) actually does have his face split open and grow a second demonic face when Satan upgrades him. The scene of the face splitting open is cut in MMPR, but the remnants of the split-open face is certainly still there.
- We get another usage of unmorphed Zyuranger footage of the Mirror of Doom being used against one of the Zyurangers.
- Speaking of some bad editing, Zack refers to Goldar as 'her' at one point in the Island of Illusion, and I guess someone didn't check if it was Rita or Goldar that was supposed to be speaking.
- Another odd cut is Scorpina siccing the Putties on Jason... which cuts immediately to another scene of Scorpina siccing Rockstar on Jason. The production crew also forgot to dub in a line of Scorpina giving orders to Baboo and Squatt, causing her to just mouth orders into thin air.
- The Blue Ranger is absent for a huge chunk of episode 30's action scenes. Which has something to do with whatever plotline Zyuranger had -- you can actually see the unmorphed blue ranger in the background of the swimming pool scene, but the writers just didn't bother to explain it.
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