Mighty Morphin Power Rangers Episode 20: Green With Evil Part 4: Eclipsing Megazord

Scorpion Woman Ceases Providing Erections
Bullies Drive Bus, Cause Apocalypse

For those of you who missed last week let me catch you up real quick. Goldar turned giant, some lady named Scorpina showed up, and Jason stopped being kidnapped. Please try your best to ignore last week though, because today's a new day, and maybe it can help us wash the bad taste out of our mouth from Part 3.

The Rangers watch Goldar blowing shit up on the Viewing Globe and decide that as long as Green Ranger isn't there to bitchslap them, they might stand a chance. As they try to morph, their Power Morphers spark with energy and backfire on them. Billy and Kim wince because the last time technology exploded around them they nearly got care packages sent to their families. Alpha informs the Rangers this is due to an interdimensional power surge that's stalling for time so they can pad the episode out.

However, even though this is certainly just padding, it's a lot more effective than the last few weeks filler have been. Zack immediately gets pissed that if they can't morph they're just sitting ducks against imminent danger, and we cut from them worrying about not being able to fight to Goldar fucking blowing up buildings. You know what makes padding feel less like a waste of time? Stakes! Unique situations! The Rangers have never been ready to morph and denied that opportunity before, so this is something you don't expect. It's a lot better than Goldar stabbing at the ground for 10 minutes.

Rita's Moon Crew cheers on their boy trashing everything in sight, and Finster summarizes Rita's plan in case you're just tuning in. Goldar's going to lure out the Megazord as Rita casts a spell to block out the sun, sapping Megazord's solar power and crippling it. Finster then says with pain in his heart, that he assumes Rita will use Green Ranger and not one of his monsters to finish them off. He's just an old man who knows his art won't gather him respect but he'll be goddamned if he lets some teenage immigrant take his job from him. You'll make it someday Finster, just keep sculpting.

Billy decides to use his profound intelligence to dick around with wires in the Command Center until everything is fixed. Alpha stands idly by unable to do anything but scream while Billy fixes a bunch of galactic technology. In no time at all Billy fixes the problem that successfully ate up three minutes, and the Ranger Teens morph to take on Goldar. Sorry did I say Goldar? What I meant to say was they fight some Putties that are just chilling out by a harbor somewhere. Scorpina shows up and takes on the Power Rangers all alone, while showing off some pretty bitchin' moves.

Thank goodness Squatt and Baboo were there to help!

Goldar stomps on the Rangers who dive out of the way as Billy says they need to try a new tactic, but they don't really elaborate why they aren't bringing in the Megazord. We know Rita wants them to bring out the Megazord so her cronies can blow it to shit, but the Rangers don't know that. They're fighting like total schmucks all of a sudden.

While the Rangers try and figure out how to fight a giant monster and how to sell more toys, Ernie is busy evacuating the Youth Center's denizens so he doesn't have to provide funerals for these extras. Bulk and Skull sit idly by as all hell breaks loose, because come hell or high water, dog monster or not, they are finishing their fucking ice cream.

Bulk saved some time and spilled his dessert on himself.

In the Command Center, Alpha has finally managed to get a lock on Zordon's coordinates and is working to bring him back online. Green Ranger appears inside the Command Center once again, having obtained a taste for harassing Alpha, and starts sneaking up on the unsuspecting robot. The flickering Zordon tries to call out to Alpha, but before he can say "Swiper No Swiping" a third time, Tommy deactivates Alpha 5 by tugging on some clip the robot has on his underwear.

Rita drops in on her flying bicycle to shit talk the Power Rangers and arbitrarily call Jason a fool. Jason gets a little bummed out by this as he realizes Rita's been snooping in on his grades, but he says they'll never surrender to some lonely space vixen. Rita has had enough meaningless bickering and demands Goldar to do something evil and pretend it's part of her plan.

During all this action, Bulk and Skull have escaped the wrath of Rita's forces and commandeered a bus to escape town, where they hope to get a job being stereotypical elsewhere. Bulk sits in the front as he complains how shitty Skull is at driving, and how he drives like an idiot. No shit he does Bulk, look at you two. What else do you have going for yourselves other than humorous incompetence? As the two morons try to cross the border, Goldar spots the bus and grabs it off of the road.

LET'S SEE YOUR PASSPORTS BOYS

The Rangers protest that Goldar shouldn't be harming civilians, but Goldar says he's just correcting a pair of mistakes God should have 16 years ago. Goldar even tells the Rangers that the two people inside the bus are friends of theirs named Bulk and Skull. Both those statements are incredibly surreal given everything we've seen but let's dissect them a little further.

Goldar, a space gladiator who's honed his craft in the dark arts to perfect his swordsmanship and strength, has spent some amount of time during his stay on Earth familiarizing himself with Bulk and Skull. A mighty warrior from the deepest reaches of space knows about two chucklefucks who fall into cakes on a weekly basis. Equally interesting is that Goldar refers to Bulk and Skull as the Rangers "friends." Are they like the Ranger Teens unofficial mascots? At what point could you really say they've been on friendly terms with each other? Maybe Goldar just has really fucked up priorities on friendship. Not too surprising when you cohabitate with Squatt and Baboo.

While Rita has Goldar take the bus to the beach for a change of scenery, Green Ranger trash talks Zordon inside of the Command Center. Again referring to the floating head as "old man", he says that it's time for evil to reign and now that he's in town the whole story is about to change. Zordon vomits out a bunch of generic hogwash about how good will win because good does their chores and buys Saban products at all fine toy retailers across the country, but Tommy starts pounding on the control panel of the Command Center to shut him up and banish him to "another dimension." Or kill him. They were the same thing in the 90's.

The Rangers teleport to the beach where they're soon met by Rita and Scorpina, happy to gloat that they don't stand a chance if they keep remaining ineffectual to her plans. The Rangers have a mind-numbingly stupid discussion about where the bus could possibly be, and Rita guides them by telling them to turn their heads slightly to the right, where they see a bunch of Putties rocking it back and forth over a cliff.

Bulk and Skull try to head out of the bus, but are the only people on Earth intimidated by Putties so they choose to wait inside. The actors inside the U.S. Ranger suits have a really pointless time wasting discussion about what they could possibly do, all while doing some of the worst physical acting I've ever seen.

Pictured: Teenagers With Attitude

Not surprisingly, we see much better acting from Bulk and Skull as they are faced with their impending bus death. Bulk says how he wants his mommy, and Skull responds in earnest with "Yeah, I want your mommy." Bulk gives him a quick little glance, and it's one of the best moments in the show. They're both about to die but Bulk just wants to clarify that Skull wants to bang his mom. These two are the fucking best. 

Green Ranger is still threatening Zordon, not out of malice, but because he hasn't been able to find the right combination of buttons to do anything yet. The kid might be good at karate, but Tommy is a grade-A dumbshit. Before Tommy can try slamming his fist on the Command Center's computer panels again, a lone hero stands against the mighty Green Ranger. Alpha Fucking Five.

Out of nowhere, Alpha comes back online and traps Tommy inside a forcefield. Alpha says Tommy may have shorted him out, but he has backup servers in case some punk tries to mess with his boss. The Green Ranger is now incapacitated and unable to fight back, leaving Zordon and Alpha safe. The Green Ranger, the guy who has single handedly defeated the entire Power Ranger team solo on two separate occasions has been subdued by the comic relief robot. That's just incredible.

 Zordon finally upgraded to visible forcefields.

The Power Rangers decide they're not going to be upstaged by a fucking robot, and summon the Megazord. Couldn't tell you what all that dicking around watching the bus being pushed was all about, but things are at least moving along. Like the bus! Rita tells her goons to toss it off the cliff now that Megazord is on its way, but just before the bus topples all the way down the mighty robot catches the bus to save Bulk and Skull. Though I would have also accepted if the two died in one anothers loving embrace.

Oh shit Goldar's still giant! Forgot about that didn't ya? Well he shows up to challenge the Megazord as the eclipse starts to weaken it. Goldar doesn't have much time to fight before the Rangers knock him to the mat. Just when you think the Rangers have this one in the bag, Rita tells Scorpina to join in. What do you think she's gonna do Rita? She's tough sure but what do you think a Japanese woman in armor is going to do against the Megazord?

WELP

FUCK ALMIGHTY! WHAT HAPPENED?! If this were a lesser show that would have been THE moment, but not yet.

The monster Scorpina and Goldar tag team Megazord to let the solar eclipse continue to drain its strength, and no matter how much the Rangers try and fight back they just continue getting wailed on. Megazord tries to fight back but after a pitiful showing against the monsters just ends up on the ground barely able to move. Jason summons the Power Sword to help even the odds  against Goldar and Scorpina, and is able to land a pretty solid blow to knock the two back. Things are starting to look up for the Rangers.

That is until Rita decides to unleash her trump card. She knows Tommy is locked up in the Command Center, so she uses a magic spell to release him, and with four words, she changes the game forever.

NOW GREEN RANGER, GROW!

Oh my fucking yes YES! YES!! THIS IS IT! THIS IS EVERYTHING. HOLY SHIT YES!!! Green Ranger is his own fucking Megazord now. Did you expect this to happen? Trick question. NOBODY did. This is the best thing oh my god. Green With Evil Part 3 was my 40 years in the desert and this is my land of milk and honey. Giant Green Ranger wailing on the Megazord is all I've ever needed. This moment is so perfect oh man. OH MAN!

Suffice to say the Megazord gets its shit DEMOLISHED. I'd show more of the fight but I'd be doing you a disservice in not just giffing the whole thing so please, just go watch this episode when you're done because Megazord getting Shrekt is fucking incredible.

After Scorpina, Goldar, and my Giant Green Waifu blast the shit out of Megazord, the Power Rangers are ejected from the cockpit and thrown to the ground, unmorphed. The Megazord might have been beaten, but it will always rise again when evil is afoot!

Fuck

The Ranger actors try and show some sort of sympathy to their melting dinosaurs, but whoever was directing them forgot to request any emotion so they just sound like someone took their favorite pen away. The Rangers soon retreat back to the Command Center and mope about how they've lost. Alpha asks Billy if there's any chance to bring Zordon back, and he says their chance is less than 10 percent. Everyone feels completely defeated.

Except for Jason, he stands tall and tells his team that no matter how small the chance for victory they can't give up. The world is still counting on them and they can't stop fighting. It's a surprisingly effective speech coming out of nowhere from Jason. This arc has been incredible for him as a leader, and really cements him as more of a character than he has been so far all season. Even Alpha tries to inspire the Rangers to keep going. It's kind of sad to see how far they've fallen after losing so badly, but it sets the mood perfectly. They've lost and are hopeless.

However there is one bit of good news Alpha has to report, the computer brings up a scan from when Green Ranger was captured inside the energy barrier earlier. It was able to scan his bio vibrations or whatever, the point is that they're able to discern his identity. The Rangers watch in shock as the Viewing Globe shows them who they've been fighting all this time.

Jean-Claude Van Damme?

To Be Concluded.

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Personal Thoughts:

What else should I even bother talking about other than the Giant Green Ranger? I'm sure there's other stuff that happened in this episode, but who cares? That moment is forever imprinted in my brain. If I was comatose for 30 years and deemed clinically dead, I guarantee you they could wake me up by saying that Green Ranger is about to grow again.

There's something so goddamned cool about the build-up too, Goldar is clearly losing when fighting Megazord one on one. Rita makes Scorpina grow in a total panic, so we see just how invested she is in this plan. When she finally makes Tommy grow, everything becomes clear and we finally reach nirvana.

I want to specifically single out this moment and compare it to the Sentai version as well. Since this show is made of hacked up footage from Zyuranger, it's often limited to just mimicking what Zyuranger did whole cloth. This isn't always the case and I'll give you a specific example with regards to this scene.

In Zyuranger, after Megazord knocked over Goldar and Scorpina, it tried to flee and was ambushed by Green Ranger who showed up out of nowhere. That's cool, works on its own merits just fine. However in Power Rangers, they added in the moment of Rita using her wand to make Tommy grow. Just that small tweak makes this moment infinitely cooler. We know Rita can make monsters grow, but out of nowhere she makes the Green Ranger grow. She's using her trump card in a way nobody expected, and it's goddamned incredible seeing him come out of the smoke cackling like a madman as the Rangers realize they're fucked.

I'm not going to say there isn't any filler in this episode, as there is a little bit. Not as much as Part 3, but maybe a bit more than Part 2. Mostly the scenes of the Rangers contemplating what to do on the beach that goes on way too long. The big difference is this all builds to Scorpina showing off her monster form, and the aforementioned Green growth. That's really the only big issue though, is that those stupid little moments where nothing seemed to be happening built into moments worth watching. Part 3 just had Green Ranger doing karate in an empty room covered in fog, leading into a scene of Rita's henchmen discussing utterly nothing.