Mighty Morphin Power Rangers S01E11-13 Review: Evil Clowns

Mighty Morphin' Power Rangers, Season 1, Episodes 11-13

Three episodes instead of five this time around, for obvious reasons to anyone who could see the list of episodes for the season. Next up is 14-16. And... and it's a good thing that that specific five-parter is coming up, because things hasn't been... the most interesting. We're sort of hitting a bit of a routine with these episodes, which I suppose is to be expected since it's freaking Power Rangers, but there's only so many times you can before bad editing and repetitive jokes end up grating on you, y'know?

Episode 11: No Clowning Around

Okay, this one's actually pretty great and solid of an episode, actually bereft about a lot of the rather janky editing and questionable storytelling that plagues a lot of the episodes before or after this. Sure, the clown's creepy as all fuck-all (and I'm not complaining, it's a good direction for the guest star actor) but the general execution of the plot is actually pretty neat. Plus, it's set in a fair! Which is pretty neat -- the American cast tended to basically just move around four or five sets, and seeing a new one, and one that's pretty atmospheric, is pretty great.

We start off with another one of those "the cast is goofing around" scenes, which I feel is something that comes naturally to the actors, who genuinely do look like they're having fun. This scene involves Zack essentially goofing around on a pair of a pretty terrible set of stilts, falling, being caught by Jason, and then Zack thanks Jason with a kiss on his cheek. Y'know what? After the many scenes of Jason and Zack being paired up with each other so much in these earlier episodes, their sweaty work-out scenes and the two of them bizarrely being so out-of-focus for a majority of this chunk of episodes, and now this scene? I can totally see why apparently many people ship the two of them.

Of course, this episode isn't about Zack and Jason exploring the strange feelings they have inside them, but of CREEPY CLOWNS. I really wished that the episode was a wee bit more subtle because the very first scene that the clowns appear, we get a terribly-CGI'd effect of a Putty Patroller's face superimposed on one of the clowns and the main clown, Pineapple, talks big about how he's going to 'get those Rangers'.

Shortly after that, Trini shows up with her little cousin Sylvia, our guest star of the week, and she's... she's a little girl. For whatever reason, she is totally stoked to see Pineapple the Clown (what kind of stupid-ass name is that clown stage name) doing juggling tricks instead of quite literally any other attraction in the fair. There's kind of a hilarious scene when Pineapple asks for a volunteer from the crowd and Sylvia is totally stoked to move forward and try, but Billy just walks in front of her and strides next to the clown, offering to juggle eggs. What a dick!

And then, of course, Bulk and Skull show up as they quite literally steal a bunch of cotton candy from some random ladies, and it's such a petty, assholish thing for them to do that this scene of them stealing cotton candy and being dicks with it was the shot for their credits segment in the opening. After they do the expected "you geeks" scene, Billy's juggled eggs ends up dropping all over the bullies' face in the expected bullies-get-food-to-the-face scene. I'm... I'm actually not sure if this was intentional on Billy's part, but he's got the perfect self-satisfied smarmy smile either way.

After humiliating the bullies, the Power Rangers decide to go see other attractions, but Sylvia wants to hang out with her new friend Pineapple the Clown, and we get Trini hammering home to her that, hey, stay together with your chaperone in large, crowded places. And also, clowns that make creepy leering glances at little kids are terrifying. Like, I respect real-life clowns out there, but man, Pineapple is really ramping up a pedophile vibe with how he keeps grinning and trying to get the little girl to hey, let's come and leave your babysitters and have some fun, just the two of them. Like, holy shit, I know the episode doesn't do anything actually gross with them, but still.

Anyway, the episode moves on a bit. We've got a Moon-Crew scene as Rita expounds about her "fake fair plan" (which is weird, since we later see that the fair is functioning properly even after the monsters were defeated) and Finster talks up the true identity of Pineapple, which is the monster called Pineoctopus, which sounds like a random mixture of words if I've ever seen one. Finster also claims to have specifically trained Pineoctopus instead of the usual oven-bake-clay-putty thing, which, uh... what the fuck have you been teaching Pineoctopus, Finster?

Anyway, while the Power Rangers are bizarrely making a human pyramid (what the  fuck), Sylvia gets bored at seeing this and gets easily lured away by her buddy Pineapple the Clown, and Trini justifiably freaks the fuck out, charging through a crowd and eventually confronting the clown and telling Sylvia to get the fuck away from the creepy motherfucker, because holy shit what a creepy motherfucker Pineapple is what the fuck, patting the little girl's head and saying that she's "staying with him". Stockholm's Syndrome also sets in pretty quickly, and Sylvia randomly decides to stop Trini from karate punching Pineapple to death because he's her friend. Thankfully, this is Mighty Morphin' Power Rangers, not something more fucked up, so Pineapple uses his special power -- which... uh... is just such a huge what-the-fuck moment. because it's the ability to turn people into cardboard cutouts. WHAT. No, seriously, what. Y'know, I didn't know what I was expecting, but this definitely isn't it.

Trini quickly drags the cardboard cutout back to her friends, and they very quickly realize that, hey, it's freaking Rita Repulsa. Jason grabs a megaphone and quickly gets the crowd in the fair to evacuate, clearing the fair so that a bunch of clowns could walk towards them menacingly... and transform into Putties. And while I've been sort of glossing over a lot of the action scenes in these episodes, this one is particularly awesome! Usually it's just the actors doing kung fu poses and spin-kicks, and maybe the odd, bizarre spinning human tornado that they used in "High Five", but this time around the choreography is actually pretty great as we see the Rangers make use of the fairgrounds ride to fight the Putties. The highlight has to be Kimberly using one of those chain-seat things to whack a Putty. Anyway... they corner Pineapple the clown... who, instead of fighting, he just laughs and bends backwards while some goofy CGI happens melts into the ground, causing his true form of the Pineoctopus to rise up from his empty clothes, a giant... tentacle plant monster. Right-o.

While all of this is going on, Trini and Alpha Five try to resurrect Sylvia from being a cardboard. Really? Not Billy, the smart one? Anyway, Alpha figures out that apparently Sylvia was turned into a cardboard cutout because Pineapple's clown dust... is... able to suck out the water from her and turn the rest of her into cardboard. Somehow. Which... which is just so insipidly DUMB that it loops back into being hilarious. They quite literally return her back into being a real human by having Alpha dump a bucket of water on her, and for another gag, Alpha dumps a second bucket on her because he doesn't realize Sylvia's returned into her human self again. And apparently Sylvia just doesn't see Alpha making a ruckus as he goes off to 'hide' himself as a pile of junk in the corner. Okay!

The rest of the episode sort of proceeds in a pretty standard fashion. Goldar, Squatt and Baboo teleport in to help out Pineoctopus, and the bad guys are winning! Pineoctopus starts spreading his cardboard dust around, which causes his monster buddies to... sneeze. Yep! The original Japanese Zyuranger counterpart to Pineoctopus had a sneeze-dust ability, which they did way with... but kept the scene of the monsters sneezing in response to Pineoctopus's dust. Okay. Goldar and the stooges peace out, while Pineoctopus uses his creepy pederast clown tentacles to whip the four Rangers, and then Rita tosses the staff to make the Pineoctopus grow, which she does without any real reason.

In another pretty great part of the episode, when Trini arrives, they decide to summon the Zords, but instead of immediately going into Megazord form and doing the patented Sword-of-the-Heavens finisher, they use the five Dinozords to attack him. Apparently, as we learn here, the Triceratops' two horns are able to become Kratos-style chain-daggers, and then Zack uses the Mastodon's frost-breathing ability to freeze the Pineoctopus, because Trini has no sympathy for pedophiles and wants Pineoctopus to suffer the same fate and 'freeze' him in place. And then they form the Megazord, unleash a forehead beam and vaporize the shit out of the giant frozen pineapple.

And... and that's the episode done, with the rest of the runtime devoted to the Rangers enjoying the fair, and Sylvia apologizing to Trini for running off with a stranger because stranger danger. Ultimately, though, despite the patented ridiculousness of the cardboard powers, this one's actually pretty solid! Other than some inconsistencies in whether the fair was fake or not, there's a lot of good stuff here like the individual Zords actually doing something, or the unmorphed fight in the fairgrounds. Bonus points for actually having a genuinely terrifying enemy in the child-napping clown.

Episode 12: Power Ranger Punks

Okay, I liked this one. Again, it's another one in one of the list of expected tropes to see in a TV show, where a character suddenly does a 180 and then acts like the complete opposite of how we usually know them to be. And it's Kimberly and Billy, in one of two episodes on this page where their minds get totally fucked.

The episode begins with pretty obvious filler of the Power Rangers playing volleyball, while we cut to Baboo on the moon actually trying to make something of himself. With Squatt as the dumb one, Goldar as the fighting one and Finster as the smart monster-making one, Baboo really doesn't have much to him beyond just being part of a duo of dumb henchmen with Squatt, so it's nice to see him do something. In this case, he's apparently a chemist, and he makes... a "Punk Potion!" Okay, if you say so. Using the Putties to distract the volleyball session, Baboo rides Rita's flying pennyfarther bicycle and spikes the Power Rangers' conveniently-left-out-in-the-open beaker-glasses filled with water with the Punk Potion. After the Putty fight, Kimberly and Billy decide to have a drink, and then we get the glorious scene as Amy-Jo Johnson and David Yost decide to finally ham it up and eat the scenery for what it's worth.

Like, holy shit, it's glorious. Sure, they're not actual punks, and behaves more like an effective version of Bulk and Skull (i.e. what older writers think teenage punks and bullies behave like, then put through an appropriate-for-children filter), but at least it's not quite as comical as Spider-Man 3's attempt at making Peter Parker a douche-punk, y'know? They also get a costume change, which is glorious as shit -- particularly on Billy's part, and my god, the scene is just glorious.

And y'know why it's glorious? The hammy bit where they were just being dicks to the confused Jason, Zack and Trini is very forgettable, but when they actually approach Bulk and Skull being their usual selves and essentially show off what real bullying can be, it's pretty great. It's a combination of having Bulk and Skull as a yardstick, and also because these four are probably the best actors among the regulars. Seeing Bulk and Skull genuinely unnerved at what they know as the geek and the girly-girl suddenly act all tough and uncaring is hilarious, particularly when Punk!Kim gets all up in Skull's face and asks him out for a date and "tear up the town", which is probably a PG-13 codeword for "fuck your brains out" considering the look that Punk!Kimberly is making in that scene. It's hilarious. Bulk tries to make sense of the sheer improbability of Kimberly hitting on Skull, but then Billy hits Bulk in a completely different way, shoving him up against a locker and telling him that they're not the 'baddest boys in town' anymore. It's so hammy, it's so silly, it's glorious.

Unfortunately, that's the extent of hijinks they could think up of for punk Power Rangers, because Zordon (who forgot about Zordon Rule #3, it seems) immediately teleports the Power Rangers into the base, and then uses a glow-stick forcefield or something to trap the totally-dangerous punk rangers. While Billy and Kimberly make the occasional nyeh-heh-heh line in the background, Zordon gives this whole random exposition dump about how in the past, he, as a humanoid warrior (sudden lore dump what!) discovered a magical squash (no, really) that can sing (no, really) that only grows in a dimensional rift (NO, REALLY).

And then Rita sends down the monster of the week, the Terror Toad, a hideous fat frog man, and the three non-punk Power Rangers has to fight the Toad, while Zordon sends Alpha Five into the dimensional rift to do the fetch quest. Alpha Five's leg of the episode is kind of banal. He gets teleported to a set that's obviously just black plastic on the floor with some mist-machines and lights trying to make it weird, gets the squash, electrocutes a couple of Putty Patrollers that show up, and then teleport back. While all of this is going on, the Terror Toad is surprisingly being pretty effective, turning the Yellow and Black Rangers into balls of light with his tongue, and swallowing them and turning them into cheap-looking stickers on his stomach. It's goofy as all hell, but actually a decent way to actually make this fat frog creature feel like a threat.

Alpha 'tricks' the punkified duo (who apparently tuned out the exposition Zordon is making about the squash curing their punkiness) into drinking the squash soda, returns back into being regular Billy and Kimberly, and then teleport to join the fight against the Toad... just in time to quite literally see the Toad eat the fuck out of Red Ranger, swallowing him whole while his legs are kicking in the air. That's awesome and hilarious at the same time. Billy and Kim try to fight a bit, but Billy gets eaten pretty quickly, leaving Kimberly, the Pink Ranger, as the one that can defeat the monster.

And... y'know, for all my complaints about the first and second halves of the episode not really having anything to gel them together, the scene of Kimberly actually being pretty fucking badass is awesome. She deduces that the second face hidden under the Toad's chin is his weak point, and then Hawkeye's that weak point to free her buddies. And then Kim Green Arrow's the Terror Toad with a pretty cool tracking shot of the arrow, blowing the Terror Toad the FUCK up. Is this the first time that a monster's been defeated without a combined attack? I think it is. Good on you, Kimberly. That's awesome. Now if only you had some character focus in this episode...


The episode ends with Skull showing up at the Juice Bar, and it's... it's kind of a dick move on Kimberly, really. It was under Space-Moon-Roofie influence when she asked Skull out for a date, sure, but she didn't even really bother to explain prior to the date, and Skull shows up in a tuxedo and everything. Instead, Kim just sort of brushes Skull off like a stray dog asking for food, and then they sort of faceplant into the volleyball net. Poor Skull.

Overall, though? Man, as much as I don't really like stereotypical plots, I really would've loved to see Amy Jo Johnson and David Yost ham it up a bit more. Instead, all we got was a scene of them being a dick, a (pretty good) scene of them talking with Bulk and Skull... and then they get shoved into a forcefield and reduced to making Beavis-and-Butthead chuckles. You'd expect they would at least try and make it so that their teamwork as Rangers are compromised or something, or... y'know, do anything with it at all. I love the hamminess of the episode, and the Terror Toad's action scenes and the Pink Ranger's one-woman-rampage was awesome, but the rest of the episode is so disjointed that it feels like two different halves of two episode scripts were shoved together to make this one.

Episode 13: Peace, Love and Woe

This one's... a bit less impressive. The main storyline involves there being a prom-dance thing going on, and the other Rangers try and convince Billy the introvert to try and get a date instead of staying at home. Which is actually kinda relatable. Of course, because we only have 18 minutes of screentime, the perfect geeky girl for Billy, a technobabble-speaking lady called Marge, shows up and they quickly hit it off and arrange a date near the lake. And... the acting for most of the cast isn't the most stellar, but they actually do a pretty great job of pulling off this scene as giggling teenagers trying to help their more socially-awkward buddy get some tail. It's just kind of a shame that the actual content of dialogue being pretty bland and repetitive.

It's the Mighty Morphin Power Rangers show, though, not the Awkward Adolescent Geek Dating show, so Rita Repulsa's big master plan this episode is to essentially cockblock the fuck out of Billy. Interestingly, instead of a Finster-made clay monster, we interestingly get a scene of Rita actually communicating with this porcelain-masked lady sorcerer with long claws and braids called Madame Woe, negotiating a deal with her to take out Billy because she knows where Billy will be. What's her deal? Is she Rita's old acquaintance who's hanging out at Earth? Is she a 'local' monster not from space? What? She also has the power to control the sun and the weather, which is pretty awesome for a lady that Rita commissions just to kidnap a geek trying to get a date.

Long story short, Madame Woe arrives at the date location, but because Rita didn't tell her which kid to kidnap, she ends up teleporting Marge into a weird dark dimension. Billy arrives to find Marge's necklace, and gets attacked by the Putties, leading to Billy summoning the rest of the Rangers, and a fight scene.

Zordon teleports the Rangers into base, and basically we get a bit of an introdump that Woe's power is the jewel on her head. Zordon then reveals another new power that the Power Rangers apparently has access to, which is to give all their powers, Dragon Ball Z style, to super-charge a member of them. Similar to the weird power-crystal-GPS-teleport ability from "Teamwork", which people have told me is only relevant for exactly this episode.

The action scenes with Woe is actually pretty neat, and like the Terror Toad fight, there's a sense of Madame Woe completely overwhelming our heroes with her braids and her teleportation abilities. Combine that to a voice that isn't just someone applying a dumb brutish drawl, and Madame Woe, in the brief bit that we see her trouncing the Rangers, actually felt like a legitimate threat. She's just flying and teleporting and cackling and mocking. Eventually, though, the Power Rangers are trapped in a weird dimension and do the thing Zordon told them to do, give all their power to Billy, but even super-charged Billy gets his ass handed to him by Woe, who busts out some electrocution and water-manipulation powers. Eventually, though, Billy gets close enough to tear the blue crystal from Madame Woe's forehead and crush it (through some rather... awkward editing involving close-ups and wild cuts).

It's actually kind of a badass scene for Billy, giving Madame Woe a James Bond one-liner before summoning the other Rangers from the dimension that Madame Woe's trapped them in, then they do a Power Blaster finisher to blow Madame Woe up. And this sequence is kind of what I wished they did for Kimberly to build up to her own one-woman-murder of the Terror Toad. Sure, "Billy mans up to rescue a damsel in distress" isn't the most original plot or the most character-building one, but it's sufficient, y'know? Billy ends up showing up and return the necklace to Marge, and they go off to party together and Billy gets a kiss on the cheek! And between the kiss from a pretty girl and murdering a weather witch while dropping a badass one-liner, Billy's just fulfilled the daydreams of all geeky nerds out there. Shame that Marge basically disappears from the show after this episode, like most random love interests in 90's cartoons and whatnot.

Oh, there's also a B-plot running across the background of Ernie kicking Bulk and Skull out for continually eating (more like destroying) his cakes without eating them, leading to the punchline of them showing up in the party at the end with fake mustaches, and then later trying to, uh, pay Ernie off by pulling out a dollar bill from Bulk's smelly feet. The buildup for this is neat and actually another one of those "hey, I believe this is a neat teenage-sitcom plot" but it just isn't funny enough. Points for trying to do something with Bulk and Skull, though.

Overall, not the most impressive episode, but that's mostly because I wasn't invested in the whole "will Billy get a date" plotline. The action scenes in this one is pretty cool, though, and Madame Woe's a pretty well-executed villain.

Ultimately, though, while there certainly are things to love about all three of these episodes, they're honestly kind of just... there. We mix a bunch of stock sitcom plots into the whole thing. I'm pretty sure the creepy clown one is my favourite due to how unsettling it is, and I love the interaction of the punk rangers with Bulk and Skull, but overall, these three aren't the best season one has to offer. Far from the worst, though!

Random Notes:

• I didn't mention it in the review, but "No Clowning Around" has a random non-hostile clown that for some reason appears and disappears in the group shots with the Power Rangers, most notably when they were making the human pyramid and that random clown extra just shows up. 
• Whoever's writing Sylvia's dialogue keeps shoehorning in "Cousin Trini" into every single line she says. Does anyone actually do that with their cousins? Meanwhile, Uncle Howard calls Billy "Billy-san", which is, uh, all kinds of wrong if you know your Japanese honorifics. Also, does this mean Trini's big family's meant to be Japanese instead of Vietnamese like the actress? Are they a mixture of multiple Asian ethnicities? Or is it the far more likely reason that the writers just didn't give a shit and used The Karate Kid and Big Trouble in Little China as their research material? 
• The freezing effect for the Pineoctopus is good ol' old Tokusatsu trick of wrapping a monster suit in clear plastic and handwaving it off as ice. As the behind-the-scenes on Kamen Rider Zero-One tells us, nowadays they use far more convincing sugar frosting. 
• In episode 11, it's clear that the original footage from the Japanese had the Tyrannosaurus Zord's glitter-evaporation breath attack (similar to episode 2 in MMPR) take out the Pineoctopus, and the MMPR crew just shoehorned the Zord combination sequence to promote toys. You can briefly see the Tyrannosaurus Zord show up during the attack before Pineoctopus dissolves. 
• There's a random scene in episode 12 of Bulk opening his locker and a wave of junk food pour out of it. It's never explained. 
• Speaking of random scenes in episode 12, Baboo shows up for all of five seconds during the Terror Toad fight just to push the Pink Ranger to the ground and running away, something that doesn't even inconvenience Kim. 
• The flashback of "Zordon" getting the magic squash is, of course, Zyuranger footage, where Zordon's counterpart, the mentor character Barza, is fighting a bunch of monsters. 
• I know Bulk falling into a cake or getting creamed in the face is a running joke, but we get that joke apropos of nothing in episode 13 within a minute of the episode starting, seemingly just to get it out of the way. 
• Billy and Marge are both part of the "Accelerated Baby Genius Program", which... is kind of a stupid thing to call a gifted-child program, but it's ridiculously neat. 
• For someone that comes from an Accelerated Baby Genius Program, Marge is apparently not able to figure out that one of the superheroes is running towards her calling her name and being very concerned about her while having the same voice as the dude she's smitten with.