Mighty Morphin Power Rangers S01E03-05 Review: Go Go Power Rangers

Mighty Morphin' Power Rangers, Season 1, Episodes 3-5

Episode 3: Teamwork

As we go through the more episodic stuff, I do expect that my reviews will be a bit faster as we kind of go through kind of a predictable groove. In "Teamwork", we get yet another pretty basic Saturday-morning-cartoon plot. The set this time is their high school, where Trini and Kimberly are setting up this little movement to protest the pollution of the dump site. It's... it's enough of a "pollution bad, nature good" moral that doesn't quite get as hippie-tastic as some other shows could be. The Power Ranger boys, on the other hand, quickly think up of excuses to not accompany the girls to hand over the protest petitions. Bulk and Skull, meanwhile, show up and toss random geeks into trash bins and empty out the actual trash just to be assholes, and the subsequent confrontation with the Rangers end up with Bulk in a trash can. Silly bullies.


And then because Trini and Kimberly wants to go off to the toxic dump site to hand over their petition, Rita unleashes her monsters upon them, forcing the girls to fight a bunch of Putties (Goldar's also there, but his presence is sort of forgettable in this one), while the boys get attacked by a minotaur and Goldar. The dialogue is kinda messy in this one, where Rita initially implies that their plan is to separate the girls who are walking into a trap and take them out with the new monster, but instead the minotaur just sort of stomp around in the desert to attract the boys. The dialogue also sort of has Rita claim that it's her dump site specifically a couple of times, but I'm pretty sure that a moon-witch doesn't have the ability to purchase real estate. The girls handily beat up the Putties and make their way to help the boys, but the minotaur at once are apparently too much for them (especially when the obligatory giant-monster segment happens, and the Minotaur is able to overpower even the Megazord's tank mode), causing Zordon to teleport them back to the Zordon-cave.

And... we get new toys! I mean, new weapons! Instead of the tiny little gun-daggers that they've been using in the first two episodes, finally they get personalized weapons, which apparently Zordon and Alpha Five have sort of stashed off somewhere in the cave. After a long sequence of them showing off their new weapons and then combining them into the massive crossbow-cannon the Power Blaster, they teleport back into the quarry, blow up the Minotaur, and huzzah, victory for the good guys. It's the first time we actually see the Megazord use that mighty lightning blade that falls from the heavens to obliterate an enemy, though, since the last time they pulled out the mega sword, Goldar pussied out like a bitch. Which, to be fair, is also something he does here. Goldar doesn't really leave us with a particularly good impression.

This episode also has a bit of an epilogue where the Rangers return to the school and get confronted with an asshole teacher for leaving a mess, but they just speedy fast-forward montage through it and 'surprise' the teacher in a joke that really doesn't land. Also not landing is the overly long gag of Alpha Five learning to dance, which is just pretty poorly-dubbed padding.

Overall, a pretty sub-par episode, even by MMPR standards. The sequence of having Zordon interrupt the battle halfway to give them weapons and teleport them back again is pretty jarring, the power weapons are quite literally handed to them with no thematic significance to the plot, and even the whole 'pollution is bad!' dump site relocation storyline ended up going absolutely nowhere other than to set up Kimberly and Trini being separated from the others. It doesn't jump around as much as the first two episodes, perhaps, but it does feel particularly poorly-paced.

Episode 4: A Pressing Engagement

We've got a Trini-focused episode in "High Five", and now we've got a Jason-focused one. In this case, Jason is really struggling with trying to win an get a series of 1010 bench presses, beating out the previous record holder of Bulk (!!!), but he keeps failing because, well, Ernie isn't the best at keeping score since he's so easily distracted, and there's the whole thing that Zack on a skateboard runs into Kimberly with a bubble gum, interrupting his routine. Okay! Bulk and Skull, of course, show up to mock Jason for it, and since this is one of the few times where they actually have a leg to stand on, this drives Jason into a bit of a self-confidence crisis.

While the Rangers and bullies go through the same song-and-dance they do every episode, Rita has been observing this with her space telescope and decides that somehow, Jason's inability to do 1010 presses makes him the weak link among the Power Rangers... okay? So she omissions Finster to create a monster specifically designed to be able to separate Jason from his teammates, making King Sphinx. Because that's, uh, what sphinxes are known for? I dunno.

Anyway, we get an action sequence, and King Sphinx basically ends up using the power of his wings to blow and teleport Kimberly and Zack all the way back to the Youth Center gym, dropping them (de-transformed) onto the balance bar. No one seems to notice, though. To make things extra-worse for Jason, Rita sends Goldar down and immediately goes through the whole "make my monster grow" thing. Y'know, if she does this more often and goes kaiju mode from the get-go, she might have a better track record! Jason sort of flounders around dodging the two giant monsters, while Kimberly and Zack rendezvous with Billy and Trini at Billy's garage (because the writers forgot all about their communicator-teleporters, I guess) and then they teleport back to Zordon, who, in turn, gives the Power Rangers yet another new superpower -- the revelation that the glowy power crystals they use like car keys in the Megazord is able to allow the Rangers to locate MIA members. Okay, then.

This leads to the four other Rangers bursting out of Jason's sword (no, really), and the arrival of the Megazord spooks Goldar so much he teleports away, while King Sphinx gets blown the fuck up by the Megazord's lightning sword. The Megazord fight is actually kinda neat, in that the Megazord goes through a fun little back-and-forth transformation between its humanoid form and its 'bunch of animals stuck together' tank mode to dodge around the Sphinx's attacks. And then the episode closes with Jason beating the bench-press record (in the same day as his earlier attempt, which is actually pretty dang impressive) and poor Bulk ends up face-first in a cake, because that's basically what they do with Bulk. Face in a cake, or get his pants off to show off his silly boxers. Honestly, Bulk wasn't enough of a dick in this episode that this felt just obligatory by the writers.

Overall... it's another one that feels kinda m'eh. Unlike the Trini fear of heights one, this one doesn't really have Jason really go through any proper character development. He's just sort of moping (but not really) one moment, running around trying not to be stomped on by two giant monsters the next, and then weightlifting and winning the next. I don't expect these episodes to have, oh, I dunno, super-epic character development and in-depth analysis about the psychology of a competitive person or anything, but I kinda expect it to at least have some sort if simple, internal logic, y'know? The rather iffy cutaways and Zordon basically handing the Power Rangers another new superpower to solve the problem is also pretty m'eh, although this one felt far better-paced than episode 3, if nothing else.

Episode 5: Different Drum

This one is a bit better, I guess, because the writers are noticeably getting into the groove of adapting these Sentai episodes, and also because this time around, they actually got to have the monster-of-the-week suit to film some scenes in the MMPR studios, making the transition from the MMPR scenes to Zyuranger scenes a lot smoother.

After a painfully long unfunny scene involving the hijinks of Billy being trapped in a random cart and leading to so much physical 'comedy', the plot of the week involves Kimberly's aerobics lesson having a deaf girl who serves as a guest star of the week, who ends up stumbling onto another student. After a bit of Kimberly and the deaf girl (her name is Melissa, but it's not spoken until like the last minute of the episode) bonding, we get a lot of wacky physical comedy hijinks as Billy gets thrown around the room in a random cart (which went on for way too long) while Bulk challenges Zack to a dance-off and loses. Clearly, Bulk missed the part in the pilot episode where Zack mixes dance moves and karate to beat up clay monsters.

Rita, who's observing Angel Grove through her space telescope, gets so pissed off with all the dancing and music going on that she tells Finster (who was totally psyched to make a car-eating, fire-breathing hedgehog) to make a music-themed monster, which is the Gnarly Gnome. A very 90's name. Gnarly. The Gnarly Gnome goes around basically being a creepy pied-piper-style monster that shows up outside the Youth Center, kidnapping the girls from Kimberly's aerobics-dance class, hypnotizing them with his accordion... which is pretty stranger-danger creepy and the Gnome's face sculpt doesn't help things either.  Of course, Melissa, being deaf, is immune. Melissa follows the Gnome to a random cave, but gets thwarted with a giant net. Things be like that sometimes.

And then... uh... the scene in the cave is just bizarre. Squatt and Baboo are there... cooking a meal with chef outfits and just do hilariously random things. And the hypnotized girls sort of do a weird line-dance with the Putty soldiers in a corner, while the Gnome... sleeps? There was also a scene where it sort of goes invisible back and forth and does a little bit of a shoe-shuffle, which I assume probably made a bit more sense in the original Japanese footage.

Melissa runs off to get help, gathers the Power Rangers... but of course, she has no idea that these are the Power Rangers, so why she thinks that the local karate and aerobics coaches are able to do anything about an accordion-wielding gnome is a bit suspect, but we do only have 20 minutes in the episode. So in order to not break Zordon's Third Rule, they, uh... tell Melissa to hide behind a bush and close her eyes while they transform. Somehow, Melissa does this, because she doesn't have any reaction after the battle about witnessing the local gym rats (and one ersatz geek) turning into spandex-wearing space ninjas. The Power Rangers combine their weapon to form the Power Blaster and blow the shit out of the Gnarly Gnome.

Then we go through the expected Rita-staff-enlarge sequence, where the Gnarly Gnome goes gigantic, summons a lightning-shooting rake, and also makes use of random illusions to briefly turn itself into a building (in the wilderness, which is dumb), but the gimmick doesn't quite go on long enough for it to be effective, and the Power Rangers' Megazord blow up the gnome pretty quickly. The episode then ends with Melissa being vindicated and being popular because she rescued the other girls, and she ends up asking Billy for a dance, and the awkward "I got trapped by a cart for a whole minute" Billy ends up apparently being a pretty good dancer. Okay, then.

This one's kind of solid, and incorporates the civilian plot-of-the-week with the monster a lot better. I'm not sure how much is because they've got a lot more freedom to insert scenes that allow them to intertwine both the original plotline and the eventual sentai action-footage, but after the pretty clunky first four episodes, we've landed on perhaps the first unironically solid one!

Random Notes:

• Hey, we get to see the American cast interact with the Sentai stuff, making it feel less like two shows mushed together and conjoined with dubbed dialogue! The American cast appear in their Power Ranger costumes in episode 3, and the Gnome monster shows up in the MMPR set to abduct the children.
• Bulk and Skull are accompanied by a third bully, a silent punk lady, who's never named and sort of disappears after the third episode.
• Throughout all of the season 1 episodes I've watched, Goldar's wings disappear and reappear for no in-universe reason. 
• Episode 3's original action scenes in Zyuranger featured the yellow and pink rangers hang around and rescue a child guest star of the week, and while the MMPR team does their best to pick shots that don't show the child, he does crop up a couple of times in this episode. 
• Also, while MMPR does a decent job at handwaving the setting changes, episode 4 has a lot of Japanese graffiti in the background when the rangers fight the sphinx monster. 
• Perhaps a sign of how there's a bit of inconsistency in the production team, episode 5 has the power weapons be roll-called with completely different alliterative names (cosmic cannon, battle bow, dino daggers, mighty mace) instead of having them all be called the 'power [insert weapon name here]'
• Apparently, the weird teleport-a-missing-ranger-friend ability of the power crystals in episode 4 is another one episode thing only. 
• King Sphinx shoots question-mark-shaped laser beams, and that's kinda ridiculous... but on the other hand, I've watched most of the late-Heisei Kamen Rider shows and it's pretty tame by those standards. 
• Seriously, though, the Zack/Bulk dance-off was hilarious. 
• The completely frustrated expression that Melissa has when none of the kids other than Kimberly can read sign language, and her realizing that she could just write it down, is pretty funny, actually. 
• There's a whole bit during the Baboo, Squatt and Gnarly Gnome scenes where there's a huge deal made out of the Gnome disappearing, reappearing and swapping out shoes, which felt like a massive non-sequitur and presumably had either a punchline or some sort of context in Zyuranger. 
• A firebreathing hedgehog, you say? Did you mean Cyndaquil?