Mighty Morphin Power Rangers S01E22-25 Review: Hip-hop-kido

Mighty Morphin Power Rangers, Season 1, Episodes 22-25:

Episode 22: The Trouble with Shellshock

And we're back, after the Tommy five-parter, into kind of a rut of villain-of-the-week episodes, and... these four aren't honestly that impressive. I'm genuinely not sure if the Zyuranger footage they had access to just aren't easily adapted into Power Ranger format, or what, but these episodes just felt pretty m'eh.

"The Trouble With Shellshock" is pretty bland, but credit where credit's due, the actual episode's action scenes look ridiculously stupid and insane. Makes me almost want to boot up the Zyuranger episode this one adapts just to see what the hell's going on there. Basically, while Rita is sleeping, Baboo and Squatt decide to sneak into Finster's monster laboratory, take a bunch of random shit together to create Shellshock, which is a tortoise-man with a bat and a hook for a weapon and a traffic light shoved down its spine. All to menace the Power Rangers, who are busy playing basketball. We get an obligatory Putty Patrol fight, which could've been one of those cool "use your fighting ground to make an entertaining fight", but this one was particularly boring, just a rather haphazardly cut-together fight of them occasionally using the basketball as a projectile or passing it around, leading to Zack doing a run towards the hoop to dunk it in mid-battle. The putties retreat, and we get a generic Bulk/Skull sequence that, of course, end up with them landing onto a hot dog cart and subsequently forced to work to pay for the ruined hot dogs.

One thing that's particularly noticeable for these episodes is that they have Tommy showing up a lot, but apparently Tommy's Japanese counterpart doesn't show up in many of the first-act fights, so we have to think up of random excuses so he doesn't join in the fight, so he awkwardly goes off for karate practice alone, and we later get to see a gratuitous scene of him just doing a pretty impressive scene of kiai shouts and spinning around a bo-staff. I kinda non-brainwashed Tommy, he's kinda ridiculous.

Shellshock eventually makes his move, and he's dumb, but apparently the traffic light has weird powers -- the red one freezes people, while the green one makes Trini constantly run and unable to stop. The yellow one... uh... I guess that's the one that blows up the Rangers' basketball? And also there's a point Squatt and Baboo tosses baseballs at Shellshock so he can pelt the Power Rangers with baseballs? Yeah, sure.

We get an awkward cut as Zordon teleports the Rangers back to the Command Center. Trini, still running, is tasked by Zordon to go to the Mountain of Hope to pick some flowers that has the convenient antidote to Shellshock's magic dust, because sure, why not? This is like a poorly-written World of Warcraft side-quest just to fit in an obligatory amount of quests in an area. Everyone other than Jason is frozen, so Jason goes off on his own to fight Shellshock, who Rita makes into a giant. The T-rex Zord fights Shellshock for a bit, and Shellshock uses his silly hook and bat to fight Jason's Dinozord. This scene is cut with Trini running through a field to look for a flower, and we get bizarre scenes of Zordon telling Trini to get help from the Sabertooth Tiger Zord, and we get a ghostly specter of the tiger that appears and, uh, cause the flowers to fly into her hand. Okaaaaaaaay, that's sure a sabertooth tiger power.

Because it's time for act 3, Jason and Zordon finally remember that they have one more member in their group, and call Tommy on the communicator. Tommy's been doing SIKK-YAAAAAH's with a bo-staff all throughout the episode, and he finally picks up his phone and we get some stock footage of him playing his dagger-flute (hee hee) and summoning the Dragonzord. The two Dinozords beat up Shellshock a bit, but the stop sign immobilizes them. Trini shows up while jogging, shakes the flowers, which ruins Shellshock's traffic light and frees everyone from the immobilization beam, and then the Tyrannosaurus and Dragon Zords unload their payloads and vaporizes Shellshock. That's about it -- the episode ends with your typical "Rita berates her henchmen" scene, and the kids play some more basketball.

Anyway... this was kind of a bland episode. Shellshock is a ridiculous monster, and while it's kind of a silly gimmick, the concept of a villain that can make you go faster or slower is neat. But the episode never really fully commits to the silliness. Even the fact that the episode highlights the two village idiots, Squatt and Baboo, doesn't really give us much entertainment either, because the only times they're really funny in this episode is the beginning when they're fucking with creating a monster. This would also be a great episode to make into a Trini focus, isn't it, with the large amount of scenes devoted to her in the Sentai material? Instead it's just pretty bland and formulaic.

Episode 23: Itsy Bitsy Spider

This is another relatively ho-hum episode. We get another standard plot of the goody-two-shoes Rangers starting a petition to, uh... save a stone statue in the park from being demolished to make a chicken joint. And also, apparently the statue is important to the town of Angel Grove because it's originally created to protect Angel Grove from harmful insects. And also, the statue also serves to remind us of the good bugs do for humanity. Oookay? I'm genuinely baffled, kind of an oxymoronic thing for the statue to be.  For whatever reason, their little bizarre petition stand also has a bunch of cages with tarantulas, cockroaches and shit to... I guess to demonstrate the icky, totally-evil-and-not-natural bugs that will murder everyone in Angel Grove if the statue is destroyed? I'm pretty sure the people in that town are far, far more terrified of the giant griffin-man that swings his sword in downtown Angel Grove than like, a swarm of moths or whatever. Also, Zack's super scared of bugs. Which means that this is basically sort of a combination rehash of both "High Five" and "Teamwork" as far as plotlines go.

Of course, the collection of bugs in cages is just there so that we can have the physical gag of Bulk and Skull throwing prop insects at people, in perhaps one of the few times that their bullying actually looks effective. Those poor, poor bugs! Also, Zack gets absolutely pants-shittingly terrified by a tarantula on his shoulder. The next day, there's a complete filler scene with Billy's new pet rat lab assistant Jack, who ends up crawling Skull's pants, and it's completely irrelevant because it doesn't add anything to the episode and Jack isn't even a recurring character. The Power Rangers (sans Tommy, who has... mumblemumblepractice; and the entomophobic Zack) go off to hunt bugs in the forest, to replace the bugs that Bulk and Skull let loose. Okay, then. We get a couple of scenes of obvious prop bug toys being picked up from the plants and placed into containers.

Because Rita's got nothing better to do than to torment whatever the fuck it is the kids are discussing that week, she sends Squatt and Baboo to steal the statue to the Moon-base. Even Finster's confused about what to do with the statue, thinking that Rita's brought it to decorate the living room. Rita's plan, though, is... insanely convoluted. Rita has Finster create a duplicate statue, which she puts in the park. The statue contains one of Finster's creations, a pudgy tick-spider monster called Spidertron. Also, a swarm of Venomoths that only know Sleep Powder.

While his buddies go collect bugs and fight the Putties to pad out time, Zack is teaching hip-hop-kido. That is the actual term that Zack uses, and it basically means that Walter Jones alternates between doing spin-kicks and doing some hip hop dance moves. Okay! Okay, this was already funny in its own right thanks to the name, but when Zack starts talking about how it's all about zen and keeping your head cool and whatnot. It's around this point that the dust moths or whatever are unleashed upon the kids, all of whom fall asleep, and Zack (who was off getting a new tape) end up running the fuck away from a bunch of obviously-fake-moths because he's afraid of bugs. After reporting it to Zordon (who assures him that he'll watch the kids and, uh, make sure they stay asleep in the same place), Zack runs all the way to the anti-bug statue, only to find it covered with insects. Oh no! And then Zack realizes it has snakes in the hair, instead of flowers, oh no! And then Zack just transforms straight into Black Ranger mode, pulls out his axe-gun, and blows the FUCK out of the statue. Which, of course, the audience knows contains Rita's spider monster, but in-universe, Zack sees that the statue doesn't ward off bugs as advertised, sees a detail that might be wrong, and decides that it's worth breaking the Zordon no-fight-escalation rule by pulling out a goddamn axe-shotgun to blow up a statue.

The rest of the episode is pretty standard, really. While the non-Zack rangers fight the Putties for like forever, the Black Ranger fights both Spidertron (while complaining about bugs, of course) and Goldar, who literally pops in for this fight and disappears afterwards because the showmakers couldn't be bothered to get Goldar's voice actor in to drop a line about him joining the fight (and later leaving) or whatever. The four Rangers teleport to help Zack, The Spidertron uses a bunch of silly-putty web to fight the power Rangers, Zack uses his transforming blade-blaster to shoot the Spidertron, Rita makes Spidertron grow, the Rangers summon the Megazord, and we get the silly putty string fight again.

Actually, at this point, we get an interesting bit of the Megazord being blown apart into its component pieces, and we get to see most of the individual Dinozords actually contribute to the fight, which we haven't seen since the clown episode. Kim's Pterodactyl sort of disappears, but we get to see the individual attacks of the four Zords. Of course, Tommy's still around, and we get a hilarious cutaway to him literally going "wataaaah" with a katana in some random forest river until Jason remembers he exists and calls him, and then we get what's essentially the same conclusion to episode 22 -- Tommy summons the Dragonzord... and after its very underwhelming debut at the end of Green With Evil, the Dragonzord actually combines with the other Zords to form the Mega-Dragonzord, which then proceeds to quite literally murder the Spidertron by drilling a hole through its chest so hard it blows up. Which is pretty freakin' cool.

Anyway, the episode wraps up very simply. The kids wake up and continue learning hip-hop-kido. The real statue shows back up because apparently Rita teleported it back or something, which is dumb, and we get an eye-rolling joke of Tommy playing a prank on Zack with a spider toy.

Overall... it's honestly a pretty run-of-the-mill episode, really. It's decent, has a neat focus on Zack (even if his phobis isn't resolved at all), and the solo Black Ranger scenes as well as the Mega-Dragonzord's proper debut are both pretty cool. Also a huge fan of the chunky, tick-like Spidertron monster design. Not the best episode in MMPR by a long shot, but a decent one.

Episode 24: The Spit Flower

It's a Kimberly episode, sort of? The civilian plot of the week is that Kimberly's making a float model with a tiger and pretty flowers, as a model that's going to make it for the huge town parade or something. Tommy's also there, because he has the hots for Kim he provides emotional support. The bullies show up and be a dick and basically sort of threaten to sneeze on the float model, completely ignoring Tommy's threats -- Tommy, who, by the way, shot fucking green laser beams at them a couple episodes back. They literally end up defeating themselves when Bulk gets allergies and wipes his snot on Skull's jacket. I know that the 'fall face-first into food' trope is absolutely over-used in the earlier episodes, but man, this is a lot dumber.

Rita Repulsa doesn't have anything better to do that day, so she sends down a bunch of Putties to the Youth Center just to literally fuck up Kimberly's float model. Pettiness, thy name is Rita Repulsa. The Putties are not a threat to the Rangers, of course, even un-morphed, but there was that one Putty that vehemently attacks the table while Kimberly and Tommy are distracted in a rather bland Putty fight (honestly, only Tommy's sick-iyaaaah's make this even remotely entertaining), and totally destroys Kimberly's model float with a vengeful table flip. You go Putty you go. It's a broken float, but Kimberly's absolutely devastated. It's a fucking broken model of a float, but Amy Jo Johnson sell the hell out of the scene, really making me believe that this poor girl worked so hard to make that model, but her day is absolutely ruined by some random putties that show up and fuck it up. It's kind of a silly premise, but it's this sort of 'fuck up your personal life' bits that actually kind of work in a show about teenage superheroes.

Anyway, Finster and Rita decide to send a flower-themed monster to fuck up Angel Grove, the titular Spit Flower. It's another pretty neat monster design, and... and I would believe that this was a Dragon Quest or Monster Hunter enemy of some sort, with a huge chunky chin, a venus flytrap mouth and more fanged plant-claws. I dunno. It's pretty neat as far as bipedal plant monsters go. It can suck up flowers, become stronger, and then unleash little jumping flowers with fangs that will drain people of their life energy. Okay, if you say so. The littler fanged flowers look so absolutely goofy.

The other four Rangers decide to cheer Kimberly up with lunch (a valid cheer-up), while Tommy makes some excuse to disappear for the second act of the episode... although it's pretty obvious that he's trying to help fix Kim's model and earn some brownie points, which makes this an actually good disappearing act excuse. Okay! We even get a (pretty tame) shipping moment between Kim and Tommy, which is still kinda wooden, but it's a 90's Saturday morning show meant for kids, so it's basically the equivalent to a marriage proposal or something.

Anyway, fight scene! The Spit Flower fight the Power Rangers, and the jumping little Tribble-flowers that it creates end up actually fucking the Power Rangers up and cause them to roll around in the ground. Rita then almost immediately turns the Spit Flower giant, tossing them around and they decide to call Tommy, who show up from where he's clearly making a float, transforming and then unleashing a goddamn laser beam from his sword that's so strong it knocks the gigantified Spit Flower halfway across the town. The Spit Flower starts sucking the flowers in the city, while the Power Rangers summon the Dragonzord and the other Zords, who then combine into the Mega-Dragonzord... because the Mega-Dragonzord has a drill spear thing, and they use that to blow away flowers. It's actually hilariously creative and such a bizarrely mundane usage of a fucking giant drill-whip-spear held by a giant combining robot.

The Spit Flower actually gives the Mega-Dragonzord a decent fight, which is surprising as it ducks and weaves around the Mega-Dragonzord's attacks, completely subverting the "New Toy Syndrome" trope, and while I don't think that the Spit Flower was winning, the Rangers and Zordon end up being so spooked that they decide to retreat and teleport back to base. Oh no, the Spit Flower's totally a terrifying threat, right?

...except it isn't. Apparently after the Power Rangers teleport back, the Spit Flower randomly shrinks back down for no apparent reason, and is... in the park, menacing Bulk and Skull. And by "menacing Bulk and Skull", I mean that the show poorly cut together scenes of the Spit Flower running intercut with the bullies running, despite none of them being in the same shot together. The bullies also interact with a pretty terrible prop flower (that's obviously a bunch of socks and one of those cheap novelty vampire teeth) and... and I tend to really enjoy Bulk and Skull's acting, but they really felt kinda bland and off in this episode.

Zordon talks stuff about how the Spit Flower's weak spot is in his Victreebel-esque chin, and it really would've been nice to learn why this is the case. Tommy is told to stay back in the Command Center because they don't have the footage of the Green Ranger, while Kimberly is assigned to hit the weak spot... which is actually pretty neat, since we know that Kim's the one with the highest bodycount in the cast. One shot from Kim's bow, and the Spit Flower is reduced to sort of gibbering and spewing flowers anyway, and then gets abruptly murdered with the Power Blaster. Like, shit, the monster was actually doing a pretty impressive job, but the way that it ends felt abrupt and pretty sudden. Boo!

Anyway, that's the monster plot over, so we cut to Tommy and Alpha trying to make the parade float model, and Alpha ay-yay-yay bumbles his way through it. And then they go to the Youth Center TV and everyone makes Kim watch the parade on TV. Because the showrunners are too cheap to shoot the cast at an actual parade, but didn't want to think up of an excuse for them not to show up at the Big Important Town Event With Parades. Turns out that, well, Tommy and the others made Kim's model and got the huge tiger float to be built. Which... is the obvious ending, but it sure is a hell more sensible storyline than the anticlimax that's the Spit Flower. Overall, I get what the episode's trying to do, but man, it's kind of a mess? I don't dislike this one, though.

Episode 25: Life's a Masquerade

Another episode, another teenage-life-storyline. It's the kids trying to work up for the Not-Halloween costume party. And after your obligatory Bulk/Skull antics scene while the cast is setting up the Youth Center for the party, the Moon Crew are obviously trying to fuck it up. We actually get a bit of an escalation, though, with Finster mentioning the fact that he's got some "Super Putty" clay, which allows him to make stronger monster, something that the Moon Crew are mining. And to help out, Finster creates a monster-of-the-week, Frankenstein's Monster. Okay! Frankie ends up being sent to Earth where he sort of stumbles around, entering the costume party and sort of... mingling and dance-grunting with a lady. We get the random return of Angela, too, who literally exists in this show to show up in random scenes to brush off Zack's inept attempts at flirting. Also, Tommy's made an excuse to not be around again because he's... finishing his costume. Okay. Oh, and Alpha Five also shows up in the party, because of the obvious trope of "non-human sidekick can walk around with impunity in Halloween". Despite looking pretty hodgepodge as far as robots go, all the ladies in the party are absolutely smitten with Alpha Five because good Halloween costumes is apparently the secret to picking up girls.

Oh, while all of these scenes are going on, we sort of get a bit of a back-and-forth with Bulk and Skull brainstorming ideas for what they want to be, which makes up for a couple of sub-par Bulk/Skull scenes over the past couple of episodes. The highlight, of course, is Skull being dressed up as Elvis, and Bulk being dressed up as old Elvis. My god that got a laugh out of me. And, of course, they sort of eventually show up at the party in their usual getup, noting that they show up as 'punks', because that's who they are. Okay.

Anyway, seeing Frankenstein's Monster trying poorly to strangle some random girl (and failing because the girl's trying to dance with him), Bulk and Skull decide to randomly attack Frankie with... a dart gun. Okay! Frankie doesn't stand for this and chases them away. Because we need the plot to be moving forwards, Billy decides to follow them. Bulk and Skull exit the episode, while Frankie enters the cave where the Putty Patrol is mining the super-clay-putty thing, because, uh... I'm not sure why, actually. Rita shows up to levitate the entire mound of clay into the air, riding it like the crazy moon-witch she is, causing an earthquake.

Nevermind Rita, though. we get a Blue Ranger vs. Frankenstein's Monster action scene... and unlike his sorry showcase in the party, Frankie suddenly gets a bit more competent and beat the shit out of the Blue Ranger. By ripping out the bolts in his neck and using them as sort of a combination of hammers and nun-chucks. After a bit of a regrouping, we get some filler scenes of Zordon reiterating all the information the audience already knows, while Tommy fights some Putties to fill up time and explain why he's not answering his communicator.

And then we get a pretty awesome fight scene between Frankenstein and the Power Rangers as a team where he uses those chained-up neck-screws while also doing some neat kung fu kicks and whatnot. I guess the suit actors really get to be a lot more elaborate when they aren't in a huge chunky rubber suit, huh? And when Rita makes her monster grow and the Power Rangers summon the Megazord, the Frankenstein is still being pretty badass, whacking the fuck out of the Megazord and jumping around him and swinging that gigantic screw-flail weapon around. Hell, it even manages to deflect the Megazord's giant sword by flexing its pectorals. It's awesome. Frankie genuinely goes ham on the Megazord, throwing it through a building and stomping on it and picking it up and tossing it around.

Tommy arrives with the Dragonzord, and the two Zords fight Frankenstein but apparently Frank is just unstoppable, picking up the Dragonzord by the tail and using it as a weapon to whack the Megazord. After the Frankenstein effortlessly dominates the fight, the Rangers decide to pull out the Mega-Dragonzord, and after a bit of silliness tossing the Mega-Dragonzord's head-crest thing, the Mega-Dragonzord blows up Frankenstein by doing the same stab-through-the-gut finisher it kills the spider monster with. Honestly... he lost, but damn if Frankie didn't give us a pretty awesome action sequence.


The episode ends with Tommy showing up with his costume, which, uh, is a spot-on cosplay for the Frankenstein's Monster, which he was 'inspired by' to modify his costume in like the two minutes that it took for them to return from the battlefield to the Youth Center. Also, Alpha Five won the costume contest, before waddling off and refusing to reveal who the man-beneath-the-robot-mask is. Overall... the premise of the episode is forgettable, but between the pretty impressive Frankenstein Monster action scenes, and the antics with Bulk and Skull, it's a pretty neat one.


Random Notes:

• Zack has a glorious and ridiculously long name for his basketball shots. At the end of the episode, we get an actually genuinely funny follow-up when Billy shoots out a long basketball shot name of his own, made out of his usual geek speak. 
• Episode 22 has the unfortunate side-effect of showing just how little trouble the Rangers have against the Putties, and then actually having some mild trouble with Bulk and Skull. Maybe that's why Rita swapped these guys out for the Super Putties. 
• There is a very poorly-shoehorned in TMNT joke in the Shellshock episode, where he calls the Power Rangers "teenage mutants". 
• Are the Zords sentient in Zyuranger? That'd explain the weird ghostly sabertooth tiger scene in episode 22 for sure. 
• There's a poor flub in 22 where Trini's actress calls for Jason and Billy, instead of Jason and Tommy. Feels like a particularly easy line to fix, honestly. 
• It's part of the Japanese footage, but man, alternating between the silly-string spraying web effect to randomly a giant literal web made out of rope is pretty obvious. 
• Apparently, Squatt ate all the flowers in the moon palace, which is such an absurd and random piece of detail. I love it. 
• The Spit Flower episode has a lot of padding with both Finster and Zordon continually showing off footage of what the Spit Flower monster can do. It's a trick to fill up time that many previous episodes did before, but it's particularly noticeable in this one. 
• There's a pretty obviously odd moment where the Spit Flower gets hit in the chin by the Pink Ranger, and when it gets hit again after the stock footage by the Power Blaster, it's missing an arm that's laying on the ground in the background. Presumably, it got sliced off in some unusable-for-MMPR footage. 
• It does make it funny that while the Power Rangers were beaten half to death by the Spit Flower, Tommy is whistling in the garage gluing a paper-mache tiger together. I'm not sure if this is a shittier excuse, or if going KI-YAHHHH next to a forest brook while waving a katana around is worse. 
• The costume party costumes are... interesting. Billy and Kim are dressed up in pretty obvious Sherlock Holmes and a princess, which works for their characters. Jason dresses up as, I think, Robin Hood? Which is something, I guess. And Zack's King Tutankhamen, which is kind of out of nowhere, but at least it's a bit more appropriate compared to Trini's absolutely culturally-insensitive Native American outfit.
• "Life's a Masquerade" has Bulk get hit in the head with a can of paint even though he wasn't actually being a shitbag and is actually helping out the other kids set up for the party. Like, sure, in the other three episodes here he and Skull were being dickbags, but if fate hates them so, no wonder that they are such assholes!
• Depending on which footage is being shown, Frankenstein has a mullet that disappears and reappears between scenes.
• The U.S. footage suit actor for the Frankenstein actually is Jason Frank.