Mighty Morphin Power Rangers S01E14-16 Review: Planes, Karate Scientists and Brain Swap Devices

Mighty Morphin' Power Rangers, Season 1, Episodes 14-16

The last batch of MMPR episodes before we get to the Tommy episodes and... yeah, not a huge fan of any of these. I tend to always find something entertaining about Mighty Morphin' Power Rangers. I acknowledge how the show's honestly not that great, and taken without the knowledge of its creation, it's pretty dire... but I do derive a fair amount of entertainment by giving it the benefit of the doubt and just genuinely trying to enjoy the sheer insanity of the show, but these are just kinda terrible. 

Episode 14: Foul Play in the Sky

A Kim-centric episode! And... and this one's kinda there? This episode would be pretty terrible if Amy Jo Johnson, Paul Schrier and Jason Narvy weren't giving their all, and they do enough to make their scenes entertaining, but I genuinely felt bored for a decent chunk of this episode. Basically, Kimberly goes off to ride a plane with her pilot Uncle Steve. In the runway, they come across Bulk and Skull... who aren't even being dickbags this time around, actually -- there's a huge enthusiasm in them just trying to want to ride a plane around, and they were genuinely trying their best (as Bulk and Skull can) to actually be not douchebags to Kimberly and Pilot Uncle Steve. Of course, because they're bullies and the writers for this show is kinda one-dimensional, Kimberly treats everything they do with disdain, and treats Pilot Uncle Steve's not-unreasonable assumption that the two bullies are her friends of him mis-reading the room. And the show-writers, of course, shove in a fat joke in as soon as they feasibly can. Oh-ha-ha-lookit-the-fat-guy-what-a-lark.

Rita then sets her next plan into motion. Drug Pilot Uncle Steve! And not with a potion that will make him go from a cool pilot-man into a punk, either, but a straight-up roofie that will knock him out in air and cause the plane to crash and burn and kill everyone on board. What the actual fuck, Rita? Last episode you were trying to cockblock Billy. Now you're arranging a plane crash to kill a teenage girl. Squatt gets teleported down to put the sleeping drugs inside Pilot Uncle Steve's drink,

We then are subjected to a bit of a long sequence of obvious padding of the plane flying around, long shots of the plane hovering above mountains, Bulk and Skull being excited about riding a plane. There were some kinda-neat jokes peppered here courtesy of the bully duo ("Are you afraid of flying?" "No, but I'm afraid of crashing."), but eventually the roofie kicks in, Pilot Uncle Steve goes to sleep, Kimberly panics, and we get a rather underwhelming montage of Bulk and Skull doing either synchronized fainting or synchronized yelling. I do appreciate the scene of Kimberly realizing that she could teleport out with the Power Ranger watch, but she can't leave Bulk and Skull and Uncle Pilot Steve behind, and it's something that I do appreciate the show pointing out. Everyone but Kim is passed out, and she basically has to coordinate with Zordon and Alpha Five to land the plane.

Rita, meanwhile, sends down the monster of the week, the Snizzard, a cobra-man with snakes for hands, to terrorize Angel Grove. Snizzard's pretty cool, his legs are a mass of snakes. Goldar describes the dude as 'half lizard, half snake', but honestly, he's more like a giant snake with limbs made out of smaller snakes. Zordon deploys the other four Power Rangers to fight the Snizzard, but between the ability to shoot rubber snakes from his snake hands and laser blasts from the 'Zapper Apple' on his head (what). Also, this fight took place on a field with random Easter Island heads, which I assumed was something that was explained in whichever Zyuranger footage this episode drew from. Anyway, Snizzard completely dominates the Power Rangers, making him join Terror Toad and Madame Woe as monsters that are actually scary-effective in combat.

And... and it takes forever for Alpha to instruct Kimberly to land the plane. And don't get me wrong -- it's not completely insipid. Amy Jo Johnson's acting is pretty top-notch with the bland material she's given, and at least the show has decency to break up the otherwise devoid-of-tension sequence with Bulk and Skull's stupidity. Eventually Kim lands the plane just as Pilot Uncle Steve wakes up, and there was actually a series of line from the airport's control tower demanding what the fuck their plane was doing. Without any idea what's going on, I'm going to presume that while Kimberly buggers off with some handwaved excuse, Uncle Pilot Steve probably got his confused, innocent ass arrested or at least have his pilot's license revoked.

And then we have an action scene as Kimberly arrives onto the Moai battlefield, saving her friends from Snizzard's snake bow-and-arrow (no, really), and, in a sequence that's pretty damn impressive, Kimberly one-shots an army of Putty Monsters, then turns her attention to the Snizzard, and with a single arrow shoots the Snizzard's head-apple, blowing him the fuck up. It's just genuinely comical just how fast this episode's climax was, and pretty badass for good ol' Kim! No need for any of these Megazords or combined weapon forms, apparently, that random pep-talk from Alpha is just enough to turn Kimberly into a one-woman army of doom.

Again, it's kind of a shame that the rest of the episode was kind of... uninspired. Kimberly being a badass in both the civilian and Sentai-action-footage parts of the plotline were both pretty awesome, of course, but neither had much to do with the other, so it's kind of bizarre plotting to have Kimberly seemingly go from a airplane disaster storyline to arriving and one-shotting a snake monster menacing her spandex superhero friends. It's not bad, but it could've been tied together thematically, y'know? And the scenes in the plane went on for way, way too long.

Episode 15: Dark Warrior

This is another one that I really didn't like all that much. Through some exposition, we get introduced to another uncle of a Ranger, Trini's uncle Howard. Who we first meet in a random laboratory and he's apparently able to create an invisibility potion.Rita spies on Howard in his scientist's lab, and decides that she must have it for her evil evil plans. So Finster cooks up the titular Dark Warrior... who's... a ninja in camo gear. What.

Meanwhile, in Angel Grove, Bulk and Skull bully Billy and literally turn him upside-down to shake quarters loose off of him, then dumps him in a trash can. This, by the way, is the same Billy we've seen fight against Putty Patrollers in a semi-regular fashion, and one who's hanging out with his friends who aren't doing anything to help him. It's kinda contrived, is all I'm saying, and it's placed a bit too late in the season to be believable. But, fine, maybe the bully-able geek part of him is still around. He decides to re-enroll in Jason's karate class... even though we see him pulling off awesome martial arts moves when he's running around in spandex literally every episode.

Uncle Howard arrives, carrying his invisibility potion (literally a bunch of green water in a jar) around in his coat, and sort of dodders around the juice bar before Trini introduces him to the rest of the power ranger. Also, Jason realizes that Howard is apparently famous... for being the a scientist who's also a super-powerful martial artist, and, in the episode's own words, he's the Karate Scientist. Of course he is. I thought long and hard about trying to make a witty remark about stereotypes and whatnot, but couldn't think of one. Instead, I'm just chuckling at the sheer absurdity of Karate Scientist Uncle. And I thought Japanese tokusatsu was weird! Anyway, Karate Scientist Uncle talks about how you'll be able to have zen and a sharper mind and whatnot by learning martial arts, just because, oh, I dunno, martial arts tropes, I guess. But it's not a sharper mind that Billy wants, it's the ability to stand up for himself against bullies. And apparently, the Karate Scientist's sharp mind also causes him to leave his all-important, unlabeled invisibility potion on Ernie's bar.

While all of this is going on, we get some choppy editing as Rita sends Goldar and the stooge duo goes off to steal the invisibility potion from the Karate Scientist's lab.. There is a bit where, uh... Squatt and Baboo take a drink from a vial with 'do not touch', because they're bumbling idiots... and you think there's going to be a payoff for this, but no. That's the whole joke. They're idiots and they take a drink from a vial with do-not-touch, and Goldar and Rita get mad at them. That's the whole joke, and the punchline is they get screamed at for it. After this complete padding, the Dark Warrior finally offers to go off to steal the invisibility potion, which was what he's made to

Now this is a very episodic show, so I don't expect the writers to know the excruciating detail of every single episode before it, but Finster has already made the Gnarly Gnome, a monster that could turn himself invisible (at will and not even as his main power). Just saying.

While all of this is going on, Uncle Howard the Karate Scientist is teaching Billy how to do some karate, while a bunch of Putty Patrollers show up to kidnap Uncle Howard, but while Billy manages to beat off a couple of Putties, the Karate Scientist gets himself kidnapped, and, uh... the Putties bring him to a cave where the Dark Warrior threatens him with harming his niece Trini, as well as like a bunch of TNT crates and a contraption meant to represent a countdown timer.

The Dark Warrior, as we find out later when Billy returns to the Youth Center, also sends a black balloon to the Youth Center, which pop when they get delivered to Trini, revealing a ransom note with immaculate calligraphy. (The fuck?) Because we haven't visited big blue in this episode, the Power Rangers teleport off to the Zordoncave, for Zordon to tell them that Rita wants to use the invisibility potion to... make the Rangers disappear. FOR REAL. Which... uh... y'know what? Considering how stupid the rest of this episode is, I really can only shrug and play along.

Anyway, we're in the third act, so the Power Rangers quickly track down where the TNT cave is, beat up a bunch of putties, and then Billy disarms the bomb. There is some bullshit about how the Karate Scientist tells Billy to "use your karate training to focus your mind", which sounds so hokey. Uncle Howard then sort of wanders off in search of his formula (and I was being literal, not trying to be a shit), allowing the Power Rangers to finally morph and we have the Power Rangers fight the Dark Warrior. The ground fight isn't super interesting, but the Megazord fight is a bit neater because the Dark Ninja pulls out a chain-sickle weapon and is clearly trying to out-maneuver the chunky blocky robot. Of course, it doesn't last too long and the Megazord just summons the sword and blows the fuck up of the Dark Warrior.

And finally the episode goes back to the Youth Center, leading with Jason and Billy practicing karate, and apparently Billy has improved enough to get a yellow belt. And, hey, the whole point of Billy's angst in this episode is that he can't defend himself from bullies, right? So the obvious and narratively satisfying way to end this is to have Billy toss Bulk into a cake or something. And Bulk and Skull, of course, show up, and Jason holds Zack back to allow Billy to show off what he's learned. Well, let's piss all over his character development by having the confrontation set up, but instead of Billy showing off what he's learned -- and either kick-ass karate or zen restraint would work -- we have Uncle Howard drinking his invisibility goop, and then karate-chop the bullies.

And, yeah. This episode had some stupid insanity going on between the balloon message, the term "karate scientist" and the doofy-as-shit TNT hostage situation, but ultimately it's so messily plotted on both the good guys and the bad guy's side. Uncle Howard is also less a character and more a pretty bland collection of tropes, and the episode clearly not having any idea about what to do with him beyond 'he's vaguely a mentor' doesn't help out either The episode's insanity doesn't quite reach the level of some other MMPR episodes that ends up looping back into making it entertaining, either. Throw in some relatively poor editing (even by the standards of this show) where the Dark Warrior is constantly off-screen in scenes that he's supposed to interact with either the tied-up Uncle Howard or the three stooges, and it honestly ends up being pretty damn bad.

Episode 16: Switching Places

So next up on our obligatory TV show plotlines is the Freaky Friday swap, and... it's another episode that pairs up Kimberly and Billy as they caught up in hijinks that involve personality changes... which makes me wonder if they just didn't think the other three actors are able to carry an episode like this. I dunno. Anyway, the episode wastes almost no time in establishing what's going on. Squatt teleports into Billy's garage laboratory, and sabotages his technobabble machine. It's a contraption that looks like a high school drama club would set up as a plot for a play of Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory, and I can't decide if it's just the props department being cheap, or if the stylistic suck was intentional. Considering the reports made by the actors that this particular set apparently set poor David Yost and Amy Jo Johnson on fire at one point (what the fuck, special effects department? What the literal fuck?), I'm going to say the former.

Anyway, Billy's invention is supposed to allow people to read each other's minds, but only if they're both strapped onto the wacky machine and hold hands. And he gets Kimberly to test it out with him, and I'm just going to assume that he's just trying to (gasp) hold hands with Kimberly after Marge mysteriously disappeared. While all of this is going on, Bulk and Skull are being voyeuristic little shits and are listening in while using a pair of binoculars to spy on the geek and the hot chick. Also, they get chased by a random dog.

Which is why the bullies don't notice Kim and Billy pretending to have a seizure inside the brain-domes, and then, of course, they swap personalities! Or, well, 'brains', according to Billy. The fact that Billy-in-Kim needs to take his glasses gives the implication that somehow, Billy's nearsightedness was also transferred over. As the two scream and panic and run out, Bulk and Skull enter the laboratory and chuckle about how it's so cool that they'll be able to share their thoughts (Skull is thinking about Kimberly, the creepy little shit), and, of course, get their minds swapped as well.

And... again, like the punk episode, Kimberly, Billy, Bulk and Skull's actors are good enough at chewing scenery that the brain-swap works relatively well, but the scenes that they show up in are pretty bland and banal. Ignoring the implications that Kim-Billy and Billy-Kim have changed clothes since then and are happily going to work masquerading as each other instead of calling in sick, we basically get the expected joke of Billy-in-Kim fucking up make-up and being so bad at teaching a cooking class that he causes a cheese fondue to explode and splatter everyone with goop. (It's not Bulk this time, what the plot twist!) Meanwhile, Kim-in-Billy's attempt to tutor an IT session ends up with her somehow causing a computer to quite literally shake around and explode. Bulk and Skull has a shorter but far more funnier scene, particularly the visual gag that they swapped jackets, meaning Bulk-in-Skull is wearing an oversized jacket and that bizarre knight hat, and Skull-in-Bulk is wearing a too-small jacket. The two actors catch onto each other's mannerisms perfectly, too.

On the side of the Moon Aliens, apparently the villains have uncovered the lamp of the Genie from the planet Canine 4. Squatt and Baboo rub the lamp, summoning the dog-headed genie called Genie, who says generic genie things about wishes and whatnot (which he doesn't do in the episode). The two stooges are sent to earth to unleash the Genie from his lamp (apparently the lamp stops Zordon from detecting the Genie, something they explicitly make note about), and then... Squatt drops the lamp. And somehow, despite it dropping like barely a meter from his feet, the two panic and then teleports back to the moon, leaving the lamp behind. Despite the dialogue telling us otherwise, Zordon immediately detects the lamp, and sics the Power Rangers on the magic lamp.

And in some obvious padding, Zordon gives another introdump about the lamp, and then the Power Rangers get teleported away to fight Goldar and the Putties for a bit. And then the Rangers get teleported to another canyon, fighting the Genie... who's apparently been released? I dunno. The dialogue for previous scenes imply that Baboo and Squatt are only about to unleash the genie when they did their little teleporting thing, but here's the dog-headed genie I guess. Who also has the power to shoot weird goopy web thing at the Power Rangers. And then within 15 seconds the Power Rangers are teleported back to the command center, quite literally to give them a generic "use teamwork" speech.


And then they get teleported to another random park, where the Genie shows back up, and even Rita shows up in person and gives a generic bad guy speech before turning the Genie giant. It's Megazord time, and we cut back and forth from Alpha and Zordon arguing in the command center about how "the lamp is the genie's source of power! But what do we do with it????" and the far more entertaining fight between the Megazord and the Genie. The entertainment derives from the utterly goofy giant drill-spear contraption that the Genie wields, which has to be manually cranked to turn the drill.

And the editing here is so long-winded that it kills all of the tension. A far better sequence of scenes and a far trimmed-down version of Zordon and Alpha's argument would've actually been tense, because the actual shots of the spinning drill inching closer and closer to the Megazord's visor would've actually been tense. But instead we get Zordon and Alpha blathering around to take up time, eventually briefly discussing the very ambiguous "Morphing Grid", and there's some angst about how too much power will kill the Rangers alongside the Grid, and finally Zordon gives Alpha permission to use the Morphing Grid to zap the lamp (I'm genuinely not sure if they're meant to funnel power into the lamp, or teleport the lamp into the Grid) which also kills the Genie.

Hey, remember how the episode is about body-switching? Because the writers sure don't! I mean, sure, the voice mannerisms are still swapped, but it plays into absolutely nothing in the episode after the computer/cooking classes. No real problem in handling the fight, either as Power Rangers or as part of the Megazord. And, sure, maybe the Sentai footage doesn't quite have the right scenes for that, but maybe then don't do a body-swap episode if you don't have the footage for a body-swap episode. What amounts next is a genuinely bland resolution that runs on for a bit too long as they tease Bulk and Skull a bit before reverting them into normal again.

So, yeah. This is a pretty bad episode. The Genie is pretty uninspired, the monster plotline is pretty bland, and the body switch episode ended up crashing and flopping very hard. At least the first... oh, ten minutes or so with the hijinks was neat and good for a chuckle, but everything else was pretty m'eh. Thankfully the next batch of episodes promises something far, far more eventful.

Random Notes:

• I am restraining myself from commenting at the 90's fashion, but god damn what is that bizarre hat that Bulk wears in episode 16? 
• I completely forgot while writing the review, but "Foul Play in the Sky" has a genuinely random scene of Zack hitting on a random girl in the Youth Center called Angela, and then getting turned down by her. It has absolutely nothing to do with the plot, and I've watched around five or six episodes ahead and she doesn't show up again, so... uh... what? Was this scene shot just to establish that Zack is heterosexual after the Zack/Jason kiss in episode 11?
• Episode 14 had some really stilted editing for the non-Kimberly cast in the command center because apparently the original script for episode 14 had Kimberly fainting and being knocked out for the entire episode, until someone decided that it's far less exciting to have the heroine faint and wake up in time to join the final battle, and actually give Kimberly something to do. Granted, 'trying to land a plane' isn't super exciting, but still, it could've been actually bad instead of just boring. 
• You can actually see the prop bed with the comatose Kimberly on it in the background of some scenes, actually, although the editing was relatively good that I didn't notice until someone pointed it out to me. It's not like the random disappearing kids in the Sentai scenes!
• Incidentally, I guess they hastily reshot this episode, and they could only get Kimberly, Bulk and Skull's actors for the shooting, which was why so much of the scenes revolved around them. 
• Throughout episode 15, I kept waiting for the inevitable scene when Ernie uses the green invisibility goop as either food or drinks, which didn't happen. 
• I didn't think I needed to point it out, but man, the word "Morphenomenal" is the sort of terrible '90's gimmick catchphrase that I sort of came into this show expecting that they have. But when Amy Jo Johnson says the word early in episode 16, her expression is like a combination of holding in laughter, disdain at the ridiculous word, and trying her best to properly pronounce it. 
• Y'know, I know what the intention of the scene was, and they would never put the actors in danger with an actually violent dog, but oh my god that dog that was menacing Bulk and Skull was obviously very happy to be there, wagging his tail and everything. 
• So when did Goldar have the time to go off buggering to Canine 4 to get a genie lamp?