Mighty Morphin Power Rangers, Season 1, Episodes 34-36
Episode 34: The Green Candle, Part 1
So we get kind of a serious two-parter. Tommy the Green Ranger has been with us for around fifteen episodes, give or take a few, and has sort of integrated himself into the cast -- as much as you can do with this show, anyway. Sure, he's still a flat character but who isn't on this show? And, well, while the show does have the insistence of writing Tommy out of every episode's second act since his introduction through increasingly ridiculous excuses, he's still sort of a presence in the show.And this two-parter will write him out, due to reasons that's not exactly built up that well and has something that's more to do with the fact that the show simply doesn't have enough Green Ranger footage from Zyuranger to pull from because Tommy's Japanese counterpart dies, and considering they censor the heck out of Squatt and Baboo eating a bunch of eggs last episode, they sure as hell aren't going to make Tommy Oliver die fighting a bunch of moon aliens. Instead, "Green Candle, Part 1" starts off with yet another relatively simple civilian storyline. Tommy and Zack are doing their typical screentime-munching karate display, while Tommy confesses how he wants to ask Kimberly to The Dance™ but is all pussyfooting about it despite Kim giving pretty obvious signs throughout basically any time Tommy and Kim had interacted with each other through the entire season. Still, it's a pretty neat sequence that allows the under-utilized Tommy and Zack to actually, y'know, act. We get them sort of goofing around picking up girls, then we get a terrible bit with Bulk and Skull. Did they lose their touch with the bullies? Because this scene -- particularly the roses are red poem bit -- was actually physically painful to sit through.
Rita then shows up with the titular Green Candle, which is one of the more ridiculous plotlines this show has ever had. Apparently, the Green Candle will allow Rita to steal the Green Ranger's powers. Which... Rita herself gave Tommy in the first place? Okay? Also, the show goes through rather painstaking means to remind us like four times in the same conversation that the Green Candle is made out of magic wax, all the while Rita forgets she has a crystal ball and pulls out a map and uses a toothpick-sized version of her magic wand to locate Tommy, ouija style. It's bizarre.
Goldar and a bunch of Putties show up to interrupt Tommy and Kim while they go for a walk in the park, and they do this to beat up the two Power Rangers while they are un-morphed and have their guard down. Why don't you do this more often, Goldar? The (surprisingly) competent Putties actually manage to kidnap Tommy and toss him into the Dark Dimension from the original Green Ranger five-parter, and Goldar sort of tries to give Tommy one last chance to swear allegiance to Rita. Tommy's attempt at fighting unmorphed leads to him being put on his ass, and Goldar mocks Tommy and tells him that he will lose his Ranger powers anyway when the candle runs out. Ooookay? Meanwhile, Rita gets Finster to create a brand-new monster, the rather uncreatively-named Cyclops, which is probably one of the more underwhelming designs in this show -- it's literally just a spare Putty suit with a minimal-effort Cyclops face glued on, and the MMPR crew didn't even bother to give it a fancy '90's monster name like Cyclotronic or Cyclone Cyclops or something.
We also cut back and forth a relatively large amount of times because to the Rangers panicking in the Zordoncave and Goldar taunting Tommy, and I know that it's the first part of a two-parter, but still. They get to worry a bit that Rita might have brainwashed Tommy again, and their fears seem to come true when they see the Dragonzord blow up a bunch of buildings (in a pretty cool sequence of tokusplosions) but then Zordon immediately blows any sort of misunderstanding or tension or whatever by telling us that, nope, that Dragonzord ain't Tommy, they don't have to worry about a dang thing and just blow up this faker without having to worry about anything. What a total lack of tension!.
Rita then tells Goldar to help out the Cyclops and it feels like the ordering of these scenes could've been done a lot better -- the Cyclops hasn't even begun fighting at this point! Goldar leaves Tommy to the mercy of shitty '90's CGI chains (no, really, these are real shitty CGI) and we get a typical Power Rangers fighting scene. The Power Rangers fight a bunch of Putties, Jason gets into a swordfight with Goldar, and then everyone involved remembers that there's a Fake Dragonzord involved, so Fake Dragonzord shows up, and the Rangers summon the Megazord to fight. Really, all of this would've been a lot more tense if the scenes were edited in a way that progresses the story a bit better.
Speaking of poor pacing, Goldar inexplicably teleports back to the Moon Base to taunt Tommy and take off his CGI chains, which allows Tommy to do some karate stuff and then steal Goldar's sword and teleport back into the park. Okay? So Goldar hasn't been using space-lionman-magic, but all the power's in his sword? Okay. Tommy's theft of this teleporting sword is never followed up again, and it's just left in the backburner as we go through the regular bit of Tommy showing up late to the party. There's another sequence of "oh maybe this is going to be hard for our heroes but not really" when Tommy fails to summon the Dragonzord... and then succeeds five seconds later on his second try. The real Dragonzord arrives, whacks the fake Dragonzord, who reverts back into the Cyclops and teleports away immediately. Okay. We also have the completely unnecessary explanation that apparently Rita made Tommy touch the magic wax way back in the original Green Ranger five-parter, which isn't the thing that I have questions about regarding this situation.
And because it's a to be continued style of episode, the Rangers sort of gather together and pat themselves in the back, while Rita ominously declares that the Green Ranger's superheroing career is about to come to an end because the candle's still burning out. Okay, yeah, right, that silly candle. Honestly, this episode's pretty m'eh. The scenes are poorly ordered, there's absolutely no real proper tension about the danger of either the green candle (which is 100% exposition) or the Fake Dragonzord or even Tommy losing his powers. I dunno. I just feel utterly underwhelmed by this episode.
Episode 35: The Green Candle, Part 2
Part two of the two-parter at least is structured a bit better. After a recap segment, Zordon tells the Rangers that they must send a person into Rita's Dark Dimension to put out the candle and save Tommy's power from being drained by the evil black magic of a space witch's candle wax. Okay, sure? Tommy volunteers, but apparently the magic of the candle accelerates if Tommy gets close to it, so Jason volunteers under the reason that he has actually been in the Dark Dimension way back when. That's... that's actually a pretty good point there. We get some generic dialogue about how they will fight for their good buddy Tommy and how he's a valued member of the team and everything, Alpha-Five just quickly gives us an exposition about finding the frequencies of Rita's Dark Dimension or whatever, and then the episode finally gets rolling.While Rita, Goldar and the rest of the Moon Crew gloat about the super awesome magic candle that will steal Tommy's powers when it fully melts (which they can explain 50 times over the span of two episodes, it still doesn't make it any less stupid) our heroes drag out a bunch of wacky-looking 'molecular decoders' that looks like (and probably is) some high school kid's prop for a school play that he made in a garage. Like, seriously, these look ridiculously silly even by this show's standards. There's another out-of-place bit where Bulk and Skull literally show up out of nowhere, ask why the Ranger dorks are muscling in on their turn, and then Bulk falls into a trash can and rolls down the cliff.
Oh and the Cyclops is rampaging downtown in the form of Dragonzord in Battle Mode, and Tommy, after a couple of repetitive lines that are there just so that Zordon can remind the audience of the Cyclops's shape-shifting powers, show up onto the battlefield with his own Dragonzord to do a fighty-fight, with the Cyclops going into the Megazord and swap forms into the T-rex Zord as well throughout the battle. And while the pretty bad dialogue leading up to this fight is genuinely trite, the five-year-old inside of me do appreciate that this episode is basically the crew of MMPR (and Zyuranger) looking at the different combinations they could get out of their toys and just bashing them together. It's just such a shame that the actual shape-shifting Cyclops doesn't even get much dialogue or really much of a sense of threat beyond jumping in and out of different Zord forms.
Oh, meanwhile, the five other Rangers are still dicking around with the dimensional forks in the park to make a portal into the Dark Dimension, and Jason's the only one who zips in. You'd think that the five of them would immediately just go full-on Power Ranger mode and charge straight into Goldar's misty room'o'doom, but nope, it's just Jason, unmorphed, facing off against Goldar, and it'd be actually tense if you feel that our heroes are actually trying their best and failing. Even if you assume that the Dark Dimension disables Power Ranger morphing or whatever (which they don't say, and I'm pretty sure Jason did back in "Green with Evil") the fact that it's just Jason alone in the Dark Dimension feels like our heroes aren't really taking this thing seriously.
Without any real preamble, because Tommy was actually winning before we cut away, Zordon decides that Tommy's in real deep shit against the Cyclops and recalls the other Power Rangers, and we get Zack charging into the Dark Dimension to call Jason out, and yeah, sure, the acting between Zack and Jason are surprisingly good (the dialogue actually having "he'll lose his life" is also surprisingly non-cheesy for a show that tries its best to pretend death doesn't exist) as Zack tells Jason with a heavy heart that they need to give this unwinnable fight up to save the city and Tommy's life instead of just his powers... but, again, it's underscored by the poor editing of the fight and me going "well, why not send the other Rangers in with Jason in the first place?"
The Rangers show up and immediately form the Megazord, and for all the grief I gave this episode, I do love the fact that this scene is pretty well-done, just cutting straight into the Megazord being formed without the stock footage which is so jarring and really illustrates just how much in a hurry everyone is. Now if this sort of tension was felt in like, the remainder of the two-parter. Tommy gives one last defiant speech as the Ultrazord is formed and the copy-catting Cyclops gets blown the hell up.
And then we return to the Command Center, and apparently the Green Candle has ran out and has drained Tommy's powers, which... is extremely anti-climactic, isn't it? Like, the effects for the Green Candle isn't even that good, but the very blase way they say their lines and the pretty awkward cutting back and forth really ends up making this whole Green Candle business feel particularly badly paced. Zordon gives us the random, out-of-nowhere solution that Tommy can deny Rita from claiming his powers by giving up his Power Coin, and Tommy gives his power (and his shitty US golden chest-piece prop) to Jason. Okay. Everyone sort of talks about how Tommy will always be a Power Ranger even without his morphing ability, and we close off the episode with Kim and Tommy meeting up in the park (where Tommy of course is doing karate) and we sort of have a neat little appropriately-awkward moment where Kim ends up asking Tommy to The Dance™ and they have a kiss.
And... and that's Tommy's exit from the show as the Green Ranger, which in all retrospect could've been done better. The stakes are neat and shaking up the status quo is a-okay in my books, but man these two episodes are pretty poorly edited, huh? It's kind of a shame that the Green Ranger's exit is done in such an underwhelming fashion. But Tommy Oliver is still a valued member of the team, right? He can, like, hang out with Alpha Five and Zordon in the Command Center and prove himself a valued, non-fighting member of the team? That's what the show implies, anyway, and hopefully we'll get to see Tommy do stuff in the subsequent episodes...
Episode 36: Birds of a Feather
...and oh look the very first episode post-green-candle and Tommy isn't even mentioned. Kind of undercuts that whole "you'll always be one of us" sappy speech, huh.
Y'know, I get that Mighty Morphin Power Rangers is, at its heart, an episodic show, with the odd "Green with Evil" and "Green Candle" multi-part episodes that sort of shake up the show's dynamic. And it's pretty cool, but when you don't really do anything in the rest of the show to actually utilize the storytelling dynamics granted by these huge status-quo-shaking episodes, it kinda sucks, yeah? "Birds of a Feather" is probably one of the most generic MMPR episodes out there -- there's some weak civilian plot about a karate tournament, with the only real difference this time being that it's Zack's protege Cameron and Bulk's protege (???!?!) Biff that goes up to bat, and there's a pretty weak attempt at drama when Zack is forced to seemingly abandon watching his student's match because he needs to go do some superhero stuff. But it's just there, there's very muted attempt at 'cheating is bad' at the end (which doesn't even make sense from a narrative standpoint; Biff doesn't even cheat or realize that his bully shifu's are hacks, it just sort of vaguely happens) and the good guys win and the bullies lose. What's great, though, is Walter Jones' acting. He hasn't really gotten much to do, but his interactions with Cameron in this episode, as well as the brief moments he got in the "Green Candle" two-parter with Tommy and Jason respectively, are all pretty charming and well-done. It's just such a shame that episode 36 doesn't even try to pretend that it's a Zack-centric episode, it just has a slight focus on Zack at the beginning and the end.Anyway, the Moon Squad has sent its monster, Hatchasaurus, to wreak havoc and destroy the Dragonzord once and for all, which leads to the aforementioned "Zack has to leave a karate tournament" moment. The Hatchasaurus's gimmick is that it is controlled by a second monster, a
That said, the action scenes in this one is pretty neat, and I do like the escalating power-ups that the Power Rangers use. First they use the individual Zords to blow up Hatchasaurus. Then they use the Megazord, then they use the Megazord's Power Sword, and finally they have to summon the Dragonzord to help out. Oh, and Rita inexplicably spits out a massive red energy whip from her mouth because she apparently has a spell that could disable the Dragonzord all along... what? Why hasn't she used this before? That's part of why the climactic battle takes a bit long, really -- Rita disables the Dragonzord with weird pink beams, making it take some time for the Dragonzord to arrive. Jason jumps into Hatchasaurus's mouth, fights Cardiatron within him, and it takes Jason remembering that he's got Tommy's dragon dagger and he summons Tommy's chest-shield and plays the dagger-flute really really really loud for the Dragonzord to finally show up.
At no point in this dramatic scene where Jason's finally using Tommy's toys is Tommy even mentioned, by the way.
The actual fight is still pretty entertaining, because any time the Dragonzord uses his big-ass drill-tail is always a treat, but the big awesome moment in this episode is when the Red Ranger holdes both his and Tommy's weapons and they turn into lightsabers and he just spins around and murder kills Cardiotron. That's awesome. Jason then jumps back into the Megazord, summons all the toys into Ultrazord and blows up Hatchasaurus.
Anyway... it's honestly not that terrible of an episode. It's just kind of forgettable, and the civilian and superhero storyline really doesn't have anything to do with each other. On the upside, though, at least the action scenes in this episode is exceptionally neat? Eh.
Random Notes:
- The real reason why Tommy had to be written out, and why his appearance in previous episodes is so sporadic, is because Tommy's Zyuranger counterpart, Burai, was actually cursed with some magic that means that he's already dead, and because of some magic shenanigans he's allowed some extra time to live -- in a special space/time room where a candle marks the remainder of his life. Which is why the Green Ranger only shows up at the tail end of most episodes, which represents Burai showing up to help his comrades take down the deadly monster of the week at the cost of some of the time remaining in his life. In the Japanese equivalents of "The Green Candle", of course, Burai's time runs out and he dies in a blaze of glory.
- While I do understand the MMPR team having to adapt the death into Tommy losing his powers and not being able to transform into the Green Ranger, I do really doubt the fact that they had to shoehorn in terrible excuses for Tommy to skip out on the action in the previous episodes.
- Also, I'm genuinely not sure why the MMPR crew felt the need to keep the green candle around, it's not like they had to edit around too many green candle scenes -- the bit with Goldar fighting Jason was shot by in the American set, after all. Where in Zyuranger it sort of is a poetic, melancholic way to mark the time that Burai has left, here it's just sort of a silly thing that shows up out of nowhere.
- In the Japanese version of episode 36, it's the "you have to accept your friend's death and move on" episode, with the climax of the episode being less about Geki the Red Ranger playing the flute really loudly, but him and Dragon Caesar (oh yeah, Zyuranger's mechas are sentient) finally accepting that his brother Burai has passed away, and it's up to them to continue the fight in his stead.
- Episode 34 has the return of Angela, who Zack tries to ask out again in a display of his sweet moves to Tommy. Zack's 'sweet moves' basically involves doing dance moves while trying to talk to a girl, which doesn't impress Angela.
- The dastardly plans that Rita has in store to take down the Green Ranger is undercut by the fact that Rita never uses her weird mouth-energy-lassoo the last twelve times the Dragonzord was used to destroy her monster of the week, and also the fact that I can count at least twice that Tommy was at the mercy of the Putties, unable to transform.
- It's kinda neat to see Zack actually teaching his students actual karate kata and stuff. I guess someone on the production staff realized how freaking racist it is to have every scene with Zack's tutors involve hip-hop-kido.
- One thing that makes Zack and Cameron's scenes work so well is that unlike the three or four previous times that they got a child actor for this show, Cameron's noticeably not dubbed-over, making the scenes and dialogue flow a lot more naturally.
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