Mighty Morphin Power Rangers S01E31-33 Review: Omelette

Mighty Morphin Power Rangers, Season 1, Episodes 31-35:

So we get a trio of rather underwhelming standalone, episodic episodes. Not much to say here. This is going to be a bit shorter than most, because I don't really have a whole ton to say about these episodes.

Episode 31: Calamity Kimberly

Man, they really like giving Kimberly focus, huh? Comparing the amount of Kim-centric episodes in these past 30 episodes to those that focuses on Jason or Trini, it really is kind of surprising. That said, though, Amy Jo Johnson is easily the best actual actor on the show's main cast, with the rest being serviceable at best. So it's neat that at least they pick someone who can actually act particularly well, and while it isn't much, Kimberly's really bad day is pretty decently acted. It's kinda comical, with Kim falling out of bed and her clothes in her wardrobe is ruined and it's raining and she broke her mirror and there's like a literal five-second earthquake (no, really) and other shit, and she doesn't know it, but the audience also gets to see that Squatt is apparently spying on her from outside the window in what's probably one of the creepier visual images in this show. Like, seriously, what the fuck, Squatt, someone needs to get you a restraining order. Squatt reports back to Rita, who decides to send a monster down for no reason than Kimberly has a bad day.

Kim's bad luck continues as she goes to school soaking wet because her umbrella broke, and we get to see Tommy comforting her for a bit, and we get a typical Bulk/Skull bit that honestly isn't all that funny. You know the drill, they show up, be dicks, Tommy karate sik-kyaaah's a bit and they fall into a convenient nearby bucket of water. Afterward Tommy walks home a bit and they get attacked by the -sigh- Samurai Fan Man. The Fan Man uses his magic gourd to trap Kimberly inside, and I feel like the back-and-forth cutting of the Japanese toku-monster scenes and Kim and Tommy in the park feels particularly off in this episode. Zordon teleports Tommy (who's knocked out by the wind) and the rest of the Rangers into the Zordoncave. Apparently Fan Man's gourd also leads to another dimension? Because being magically shrunken and stuck in a bottle is a lot more ridiculous than a bottle that's able to open wormholes to the Dimension of Cheap Shooting Sets?

We get our typical Power Rangers fight, which isn't super interesting even by this show's standards, and then the Fan Man finally pulls out his fan and blows our Rangers almost into another dimension (apparently separate from the bottle dimension, the writer of this episode loves the word 'dimension') but Alpha Five teleports them out. Apparently, they can't form the Megazord without Kimberly... but I think this show has never really quite noted the fact that each Zord is tied into its respective Ranger, and I'm 99% sure that in one of the previous episodes the Rangers are able to form the Megazord just fine with members not present? Maybe? Or am I mis-remembering things?

Anyway, in easily the best part of the episode is the fact that Samurai Fan Man, Goldar, Squatt and Baboo are just hanging out at the Putty Bowl Restaurant, a little restaurant with quaint stone chairs and tables and motherfucking Putties dressed up as waiters with colourful vests and whatnot. It lasts for like two shots before the episode cuts away to action scenes, but it's just so bizarrely surreal and random. Things quickly get into a fight scene, and both Goldar and Fan Man expand to kaiju size. The Zords sans the Pterodactyl one show up, but the two baddies quickly overwhelm the Zords. Tommy (whose excuse to miss out act two is being knocked out) wakes up and summons the Dragonzord, and it's honestly kind of very abruptly and awkwardly done -- Tommy just literally wakes up, gets teleported in and starts fluting it up. The Tyrannosaurus and Dragonzord-in-battle-mode fight the two giant monsters together because they are the only Zords that can fit a suit actor inside, the Dragonzord uses its big-ass giant drill tail to whack the Fan Man's gourd off his hip and free Kimberly. We get some toy switching around and while it's kind of basic, I do like how we switch formations from the Dragonzord-in-Battle-Mode and the T-rex Zord into Megazord and Dragonzord, and they keep changing partners while the Samurai Fan Man keeps pulling out wacky things like Sun Wukong's polestaff and hair darts and his massive fan. Eventually the heroes decide to have enough, summon Titanus, form the Ultrazord and blow the ever-loving hell out of the Samurai Fan Man.

The episode's post-battle scene is a banal one, where everyone comments about how Kimberly's day is looking up, only for her mere touch to blow up a television. Overall... I dunno, I feel like I'm a bit harsher on this one than I should? I kind of enjoy this one, with the Samurai Fan Man (what a fucking stupid name, though) actually being quite a fun villain with his endless arsenal of tricks. Kimberly gets a fair bit to do in the beginning and while it doesn't last for long, at least it's some attempt at acting, right? And the final fight is actually pretty fun with the Zords constantly de-forming and re-combining in different formations.

Episode 32: A Star is Born
I feel like this episode was... it had a pretty mean premise. It theoretically stars Tommy, who's easily the Power Ranger with the least development considering that for a vast majority of his introductory five-parter he was brainwashed, and in most other episodes he spends two-thirds of it off-screen doing something else. He's prominent, but his character boils down to "likes karate" and "likes Kim" and "makes loud yells when he does karate". And this episode focuses on Tommy fighting against Bulk for a chance to star in a karate commercial, because, well, Tommy's entire life sort of revolves around martial art or something. Bulk and Skull, after getting the short end of the stick last episode, shows up to ham things up by having them act like giant doofuses as they demand a limousine to get to a school audition for a commercial or whatever, and Bulk is joining the audition too.

Except... y'know, it's kind of mean-spirited. Even from the get-go Tommy's already like doing spin-kicks and sickeeyaaah's and is built like a stuntman, whereas the whole thing about Bulk is that "ha ha look at the fat kid he's being an idiot ha ha he's punching the air and throws a bunch of papers around". Paul Schrier actually plays Bulk extremely sympathetically, with a massive air of excitement as he tries his dang best to gesticulate wildly or whatever, and it's really mean -- Bulk isn't even being particularly dickish this time around! But the whole audition storyline ends up with Skull accidentally lathering mayonnaise instead of sun-screen on Bulk, he still tries out for the audition and tries his dang best, but then it's not bad enough that he loses the audition, but the commercial makers are total cunts who use the footage of Bulk flailing around as the "don't be like this fool, join our karate class" part of the audition, and then everyone laughs at him. What dicks! They evidently didn't tell Bulk anything about it either because he looked genuinely hurt and crestfallen, and I genuinely feel bad for the dude.

Anyway, that's the civilian plot. The superhero plot is that Scorpina shows up to interrupt the Rangers' game of volleyball, and after a bit of a fighty-fight against the Putties, Scorpina pulls out a little worm friend with a pretty cool skull-caterpillar-head design, and this dude, Weaveworm, is apparently Scorpina's little buddy pet, who wraps up the Power Rangers in silk, wrapping them in a giant cocoon that looks like a cheap prop from a gym class. Also, the Pink Ranger is also conspicuously absent throughout this fight, but Kim's voice is also dubbed over while the MMPR team hopes that the kids at home don't have enough of an attention span to count the characters on stage. The Power Rangers are absolutely defeated by the cocoon, unable to break free, teleport or contact Zordon, and the Putties chuck the cocoon into the ocean. Zordon decides to call Tommy for help because he's the only one there, but Tommy's busy in a gym and that's the whole point of the conflict. Tommy leaves his gym bag outside and his Zordon-communicator is in the bag. Because Zordon couldn't have just teleported Tommy to base for the emergency (the emergency of the Rangers being trapped in a plastic tube) like the many other times that Zordon's been shown to be able to freely teleport the Rangers around. Speaking of which, the Power Rangers just break free by quite literally remembering they had weapons, and use the Blade Blasters to break free.

And then Zordon immediately teleports the Rangers into their Zords, tossing them straight into a giant monster fight against Babe Ruthless, and ugly-ass baseball monster, who looks like he's probably a registered sexual offender or something. Babe, Goldar and Scorpina wreak havoc on Angel Grove, and we get our giant monster battle. The Dinozords fight separately presumably to make sure the monsters don't wreak havoc while they're preoccupied with one? Goldar and Scorpina gang up on the Tyrannosaurus Zord while the other four sort of fight against Babe -- sort of, because, well, Kim's missing again. Finally Tommy looks at his phone, shows up, and the Dragonzord combines with the smaller Zords to fight Goldar and Scorpina, while the Tyrannosaurus fights the Babe Ruthless. Babe Ruthless says a bunch of puns about baseball and throws like a weird pink energy ball or whatever, but then the Dragonzord just straight-up uses his giant drill to blow up Babe Ruthless's stomach. Hardcore.

We get an awkward cut of the Rangers jumping out of their Zords to fight Scorpina, who then throws out her pet worm which grows gigantic, and then the Rangers jump back into their Zords to fight Weaveworm. The Weaveworm is far less successful in this giant form against a bunch of giant robots, although it did manage to trap the Megazord in a cocoon. Tommy jumps into the fight again, as if he was off-screen for some reason, drills open the cocoon, and they form the Mega-Dragonzord that unleashes that wacky old-school 90's CGI of exploding spinning Z-ball that erupts and absolutely vaporizes the worm.

That's about it, and the episode ends with the aforementioned commercial storyline. And... and by god this was a messy one. I did note just how mean-spirited the Bulk and Tommy storyline is, although at least Bulk gets a fair amount of chance to ham things up. But it's kind of obvious that the episode is sort of intercut between two separate episodes, and while the show adaptors do a serviceable job at cutting back and forth between the different stories, it's still kind of a mess. Babe Ruthless is basically sort of an add-on, although it's at least adds some spice to the battle? I dunno. It's fun because there's a fair amount of action scenes, but it's otherwise just kind of there.

Episode 33: The Yolk's On You

The last episode we're covering in this segment is a far less entertaining one than the previous one, which at least had the excuse of jumping around from one thing to the next before things got too boring. This one is... it's just kinda there. We have a civilian plot that's a generic vague talent show, and for some inexplicable reason Tommy goes into a massive panic over the fact that he left his and Jason's karate belts at home. Never mind the fact that the fact that Jason's belt is at Tommy's home is kind of suspect, but they're also hanging out in the Youth Center, which is like where they hold their karate classes, so you'd think that they would have spare belts there. Anyway, Finster's creating a new monster, some kind of fish-man creature called Fang, who zips onto Earth and... just sort of rampaging around in the some random wilderness while Rita demands who the hell sent out a monster without her permission. Apparently Finster wanted it to be a birthday surprise or something. Okay? That's cute I guess.

Tommy is also going around spin-kicking the trees in the woods. Aren't you supposed to be grabbing your belt, Tommy? Rita sics a bunch of Putties on Tommy, and while Tommy manages to beat up some of the Putties, one of them manages to steal Tommy's communicator. This is the second episode in a row that Tommy's lost his dang mobile phone and I can't decide if forgetting it in his gym bag or getting it stolen by a goddamn Putty Patroller is more embarrassing. What's embarrassing for sure, though, is the fact that Tommy got his dumb ass outwitted by a bunch of Putties, who trap him in one of those net traps that Team Rocket likes to use.

Goldar and the moron duo goes around looking for Fang, which apparently is just going around being kind of a moron. The trio stumble upon a bunch of random eggs in a nest, and Squatt and Baboo crack the eggs open and eat the juicy yolk inside and it's pretty gross, looking. Fang shows up and he's absolutely mad that these random dudes are eating -googles- the "Gooney Bird Eggs". Right, yep, between this and "Samurai Fan Man", whoever is assigning these names really wasn't giving too much of a shit, huh. Fang threatens to fight Team Moon Squad for eating these random eggs he loves that he put in the middle of nowhere.

Zordon calls the other Rangers to tell them to fight Fang, and hey, sure, the setup is kind of dumb, but maybe we'll get a cool three-way fight between Team Rangers, Team Goldar and Fang, right? Not really, because Goldar just tells Fang to beat up the Power Rangers, who totally have a lot of those gooney bird eggs he wants so much, and we get a fight scene. And... it's a pretty underwhelming fight, really, although Goldar does manage to do a decent showing with a sword beam. Meanwhile, Tommy breaks free out of his net while the Putties are dicking around with his transformation device.

With the Rangers thrown off the cliff, Fang goes off to sulk with the shattered shells of his precious gooney bird eggs and he's all sad and stuff, but Rita herself shows up and offers to restore the eggs with her magic if Fang would defeat the Power Rangers for him. And then Rita makes Fang grow big and grow some sick-ass Predator claws. And then we get the obligatory Megazord fight while Fang keeps yelling about his stupid gooney bird eggs, and Fang beats the Megazord and goes off to destroy some random dam. It's at this point that Tommy shows up with the Dragonzord who knocks down the egg-rambling fool, and then we get a relatively decent giant-toku battle before they decide to summon the goddamn Ultrazord and overkill Fang. And then the Rangers go back to the talent show, Bulk and Skull make a fool out of themselves while Tommy and Jason show off some karate. All righty then.

This one was particularly bland. None of the things that happen here are particularly interesting, Fang's saddled with flimsy motivations and a pretty terrible voice, and it's pretty clear if you sort of pay attention to the bad guy side of things that the mannerisms of these dudes really tell a different story -- the Japanese episode of Zyuranger that this episode borrows footage from has "Fang" be a completely unrelated monster that is independent from Bandora/Rita's moon crew, and it's Rita's moon crew that accidentally ate Fang's eggs and blames it on the Rangers, making it a somewhat more interesting situation where Fang is a parent monster that's absolutely angry that its unborn children got eaten, and eventually ends up literally selling its soul to Bandora in exchange for Rita promising to give back its children through black magic. And I do mean literally selling its soul, after the upgrade "Fang" literally ends up losing his personality, and our heroes are forced to put down this tormented soul. It's a lot darker and grimmer, and considering the tone of MMPR I understand why they had to tone it down for their intended crowd... but really? The obsession with getting a yummy breakfast and the most godawful voice I've heard in this show really doesn't make for an entertaining 20 minutes to sit through.

Anyway, three episodes this time around, because I haven't really been watching MMPR.

Random Notes:

• Episode 31 has a rare case of the Zyurangers' bikes, crop up in the background of the final battle. The bikes aren't used much in MMPR because most of the footage in Zyuranger had the un-morphed Rangers riding them, but they had toys!
• "Samurai Fan Man" (what a terrible name) is very, very loosely based on a character from China's Journey to the West legend, the Golden and Silver Horned Kings (Ginkaku and Kinkaku to Japanese anime watchers), best remembered for their eccentric selection of magical items, most significantly the powerful typhoon-generating fan and a gourd that sucks and traps enemies... although his appearance is more of a hodgepodge of assorted different Chinese aesthetics, and that rake he uses is the weapon of Zhu Bajie, another character from the legend. He's a samurai because localization teams doesn't think kids are smart enough to tell different cultures apart.
• Seriously, though, whose idea was it to have a fat, creepy goblin-man be just hanging out and peering into Kim's room when she's asleep?
• There is inexplicably a random commercial jingle for "Timmy P's Real Mayonnaise" when Skull pulls it out to give Bulk his little gross lathering-up, which is like, so out of nowhere.