MMPR // 1.12 "Power Ranger Punks" [review]

                In this episode, Billy and Kimberly both drink a drinky drink that was spiked and it made them turn bad.   Not like take over the world bad, but like Skull and Bulk bad.   This attitude change comes with a makeover, which is quite humorous, and Kimberly even asks Skull out on a date.

                Now, right off the bat I have three problems with this.   Rita Repulsa didn’t spike the drinks herself, she had someone do it, for all intents and purposes let’s just say she did it herself.

1)      Why turn only two out of the five Power Rangers “bad”?   Wouldn’t it have been better to turn the whole gang?   Also, of the two, why Billy and Kimberly?   It seems like Jason would have been a given, seeing as how he’s the Red Ranger, but I digress.   You can’t really control who drinks the drank, so you’ll just have to take what you can get.

2)      Given the fact that the Power Rangers turned bad were random, why didn’t she at least send someone down there to recruit them?   This could have played out where Jason, Zack and Trini had to face off against an evil Billy and Kimberly, but apparently that’s thinking too far ahead for Rita Repulsa.   I mean, isn’t she tired of sending all these baddies out there only to have them fail?   Making the Power Rangers fight amongst themselves seems like a logical step in this plan, but alas, I am probably just over-thinking this.

3)      If all of that failed (and it did) then why didn’t they somehow get “poisoned” worse than what they did?   I’m not saying Rita Repulsa should kill them, but turning them into thugs who like to give wedgies and knock books out of other kids hands seems like a bit weak of a move, right?  She could have done to them what she did to Zordon at least.

                So, yes, Rita Repulsa has a plan, which is usually flawed, and thus she usually loses.   However, I’m not letting Zordon get off that easy in this episode either.    When it is realized that something is amiss, what does Zordon do?  Why, he teleports Billy and Kimberly to a little jail cell up in space there with him.

                What?  Can he just do that to anyone at any time?  Why hasn’t he done that to Rita Repulsa or at least the number of villains she has thus far sent to destroy the earth for some reason (or at least part of California).   This makes it seem like the Power Rangers team is somewhat unnecessary, but hey, I’m sure that’s not the case, right?   Right??

                The Power Rangers ultimately have to put all their weapons together to kill another bad guy and put things back to the way that they were before.   However, Skull still shows up for his date with Kimberly who completely blows him off and all.  That bitch!

                The best parts of this episode were clearly the fashion choices.   Zack is wearing red/yellow/green/black pants at one point with the Africa necklace and it just makes me really miss the ‘90s.    Also, at the end sequence, Kimberly is wearing a spandex thong (over tights, you pervs) and it’s kind of funny for me to think that she was wearing that while supposedly good instead of evil.

                The heightened sense of overacting by both Billy and Kimberly make this episode one of my favorites so far, despite the lack of logic in the plot.   It’s almost as if they threw the rules out the window because they wanted to see Billy play a badass, and on some level I am okay with that.

MMPR // 1.11 "No Clowning Around" [review]

            Here we have a cliché episode, sure, but the payoff is getting to see the Power Rangers fight clowns, so I suppose it’s worth it.  

            While at the fair, Trini’s cousin or whoever is explicitly told not to wander off, but does she listen?  You know, I’m starting to think that if people just became better prepared and were better listeners than maybe half of these problems wouldn’t arise to begin with, am I right?

            The evil clowns at the fair kidnap the girl and it’s up to the Power Rangers to get her back.   I’d like to say that this episode had some sort of homage to “Killer Klowns from Outer Space”, but it seemed to be your standard looking clowns fighting here—they didn’t get too overly creative. 

            Also, I have a very bad feeling that if in the next few years anyone ever ran out of ideas for Power Ranger episodes and needed to revisit this plot, the evil clowns would be played by the Insane Clown Posse.   MMPR vs. ICP?   I’d take a pass on that.

MMPR // 1.10 "Happy Birthday, Zack" [review]

            I’ll admit it right now.  In my thirty plus years of having celebrated my birthday on this planet, I have never once been given a surprise party.   Oh, I’ve been sick on a number of my birthdays.  When I turned sixteen, I was throwing up so badly that I couldn’t even eat my own birthday cake.   My “sweet sixteen” was spent passed out on the couch trying not to choke on my own vomit.

            But I digress.

            In order for everyone to keep the secret of Zack’s birthday party, they all must lie to him and act as if they have forgotten about it.   I know some people enjoy surprises and even surprise birthday parties, but I refuse to be a party to one and would like to state for the record right here and now that I would open fire on anyone who attempted to surprise me with anything.

            (Okay, maybe that’s taking it a bit far, but if I wasn’t able to figure out what was going on there is no way I would be pleased with a surprise party of any form right now.  I’d probably mistake it for an intervention and start hurling out obscenities.)

            So we can have surprise birthday parties and it can be okay, but the problem is that in a sense a surprise is like lying, which is what this episode proves.   While Zack is feeling down about nobody remembering his birthday, he goes off, finds some bad guys and ends up having to fight them on his own.

            Again, without the lying and deceit of the surprise party, this entire episode could have been avoided.   So can we just use this as a prime example as to why surprise parties shouldn’t exist?

MMPR // 1.9 "For Whom the Bell Trolls" [review]

            Though it takes us nine whole episodes into this series, we finally begin to gain a little bit more back story perspective on the motivations of the main villain, Rita Repulsa.

            In what can only be described as my worst nightmare (I kid you not), Trini has a special troll doll that she loves more than any of her other toys, blah blah blah, and Rita brings it to life and the Power Rangers must face it in battle.   I’ll get more into that in a moment, but first… the big reveal.

            Rita Repulsa admits that when she was young, she wasn’t allowed to play with dolls but instead had to learn spell and how to be evil while growing up.   This basically amounts to her feeling if she couldn’t have a childhood then neither should anyone else, so let their toys destroy them.

            I can’t help but wonder though why Rita had to learn how to be evil growing up.  Couldn’t she have used her spells for good?   To quote one of my favorite stories of all time: “Are you a good witch or a bad witch?”

            Other than that little piece of info, this show can basically be slept through, as it plays out much like you’d expect.  It just really makes you think about the possibility of your toys coming to life and fighting against you.   Granted, they wouldn’t be toy sized anymore but rather a more realistic size so as to seem like a viable threat to you, so just imagine who in your toy collection would be the worst to face.

            For me, I have a lot of kaiju I wouldn’t stand a chance against, but that’s not too threatening to me because I believe to some extent that we’ll all end in a kaiju apocalypse anyway (Japan seems to be almost there, just a few more technological advances and Godzilla can be born)   So I guess the worst bad guy I’d want to face the least would have to be Mum-Ra because old people are creepy enough as it is.