Bulimic Flower Chastises Braindead Bullies
Teenage Girl Promotes Indonesian Rebellion
Teenage Girl Promotes Indonesian Rebellion
Today, Kimberly is super excited about building a float with
lots of beautiful flowers, because it's the 90's and she's a girl. If we compiled a list of Kim's favorite things, it would consist of shopping, flowers, and dreaming about her hunky new friend Tommy. The girl's
like a less subtle Barbie doll. The aforementioned hunky friend is escorting her and her boxes full of
flowers to the Youth Center where Ernie's let the teens set up shop for float
building. Kim's ecstatic that her float design is going to be in a parade, and
Tommy is ecstatic that by feigning interest in parade design he'll be getting
some heavy petting tonight. Tommy blows smoke up Kim's ass about how nice her
design looks, because he likes the tasteful use of tigers.
Bulk and Skull show up bright and early to put a damper on Kim's day, only they don't really do much of anything. Bulk sarcastically says how nice the float is and then starts sneezing into Skull's neckerchief because of all the flowers on the model. They're still supposed to be bullies, but the writers are clearly in the process of making their threats less legitimate. This is literally the only thing they do; Bulk looks at the float, blows snot into Skull's clothes, and leaves while complaining about allergies. The Ranger Teens didn't even have to be there for them to look foolish, do these two wander around life looking like clumsy morons to everyone they encounter? Let's just save ourselves some time and say yes.
Not as ugly as that forest statue at least
Bulk and Skull show up bright and early to put a damper on Kim's day, only they don't really do much of anything. Bulk sarcastically says how nice the float is and then starts sneezing into Skull's neckerchief because of all the flowers on the model. They're still supposed to be bullies, but the writers are clearly in the process of making their threats less legitimate. This is literally the only thing they do; Bulk looks at the float, blows snot into Skull's clothes, and leaves while complaining about allergies. The Ranger Teens didn't even have to be there for them to look foolish, do these two wander around life looking like clumsy morons to everyone they encounter? Let's just save ourselves some time and say yes.
Rita takes a look at Kimberly's float and says she might
have an idea for a float of her own. Baboo comments that floats are made from
flowers on Earth, and then starts slapping Squatt while complaining Squatt ate
all of the flowers in the Moon Palace. What a beautifully dumb moment. Some shows
you find yourself wondering what the characters do when they're off screen, and
Power Rangers has the dignity to tell you in Squatt's case: he's eating all of
Rita's flowers. What a completely worthless detail to make an already sad and
miserable character even more pathetic.
Tommy and Kim put together the finishing touches on her
float when all of a sudden, the Putties appear inside of the Youth Center and
harass them. It doesn't sound like much on paper, but the idea that Rita's
blithering forces can attack the Rangers on their turf is pretty interesting.
The Youth Center seems like hallowed grounds where the Ranger Teens don't have
to worry about a fight, but the minute the Putties show up you realize Rita is
capable than a lot more than throwing Putties out in a dusty old field. Oh
oops, I forgot there was one other villain who showed up in the Youth Center
before. For those of you keeping score at home it was our old pal Pudgy Pig. However I was looking for villains more threatening than him, like Putties.
Tommy and Kim start trashing the Putties while one of the
clay freaks starts gingerly plucking pieces of Kim's model apart. This Putty
fight is shot in another weird ass slow-mo shot repeating fashion and it's the
fucking worst. These only crop up once in a while but every time they do it's
nothing but "Are we really doing this shit again?" Especially since
the only reason these idiots showed up is to mess with Kim's decoupage. If Rita
really wanted to mess up Kim's float she could have just sent Squatt down and
let him do his business.
Putty art critics don't mess around.
The other Rangers show up to witness the Putty assault, but
the Putties high tail it out of there before they can give the Rangers another
notch in their W column. The Rangers
are happy to be safe, aside from Kimberly who's sitting on the floor mourning
her model float. It's not typical to see an actor in this show really emoting, but
Amy Jo Johnson is straight up crying. She's easily got the most chops of the
cast who look at her like they don't understand why her eyes are leaking. Zack
helps her feel a lot better by mournfully saying "Man they really
demolished it." Thanks for the feather touch there idiot.
One of the saddest lines is when Trini tells Kim she can
build another float some day, and Kim responds instantly with "Yeah and
Rita will wreck them too." It's shocking how a dumb premise like wrecking
a model is playing such psychological warfare with Kim, but this is something
that works really well. Seeing Rita sincerely fuck with the Rangers when they
aren't morphed and then springing a monster on them sounds really ingenious.
Kim looks completely demolished and you'd think this float was in memory of her
recently deceased mother with how hard she's taking its destruction.
All the sadness is brought to the forefront when Jason gets
his obligatory line of reaction as he claims "This Rita's a real
witch." This is what sets you off Jason? She kidnapped a teenager and
brainwashed him to murder you, she tried to make Kimberly die in a fiery plane
crash, she let Squatt break his court mandated 100 yards from the Angel Grove
elementary school, but this broken model is where you draw the line? Rita
ruining Kim's posie pickin?
Rita is taking solace in her evil deeds and asks Squatt and
Baboo for suggestions. Baboo says he's not worthy to suggest anything to her,
or to be a character. Squatt sadly wipes away dandelion stains from his
lips while running into the bathroom. Thankfully Finster's here to suggest the
Spit Flower monster to Rita. A creature that can suck up flowers in its massive gullet which he
then spews out as Little Shop of Horrors-esque plants that chomp on humans to
drain them of their energy. He's a really weird looking monster, because the
way he looks is what we should take umbrage with. Not that he has magical
flower vomit powers.
Ugh, what's up with the blackhead above his mouth?
The Ranger Teens pick up the pieces of the float as Kimberly
sulks at the counter. Her friends try and think up something that
will make Kim feel better, and because they're nothing but 5 slices of white
bread the best they can come up with is taking her out to lunch. Tommy says he
has an idea but he'll have to catch up with them later, because he has to
fulfill his unnecessary disappearance quota for the episode.
Before Tommy leaves he pretty sweetly goes up to Kim and tries comforting her. It's an actually cute moment to sell these two as a fathomable couple, and gives you some understanding of their emotions. Instead of the other Rangers who are profoundly different people but get along perfectly together because it's the 90's and kids have enough conflict to deal with at home.
Before Tommy leaves he pretty sweetly goes up to Kim and tries comforting her. It's an actually cute moment to sell these two as a fathomable couple, and gives you some understanding of their emotions. Instead of the other Rangers who are profoundly different people but get along perfectly together because it's the 90's and kids have enough conflict to deal with at home.
Zordon brings the Rangers to the Command Center so he can
try and make a monster that pukes daisies look threatening. The Spit Flower is
said to have few weak spots, though I might suspect that big George Lucas
waddle he's got under his throat might not handle a karate chop too well. The
teens morph to fight Spit Flower who immediately lives up to his namesake, and
spits flowers all over them. The blossoms grow teeth and start chewing on the
Rangers who drop their weapons and writhe on the ground. Add that to the things
that can defeat the Power Rangers, flower puppets with vampire teeth.
R.L. Stine Presents: Stay Out of the Basement AGAIN
Spit Flower starts approaching the Rangers with a menacing
laugh and slaps them around with his big blue claws. Spit's flowers are
apparently draining their energy so bad they're sitting ducks. Rita knows
this is her chance and uses her magic wand to make Spit Flower grow. We're only
like 10 minutes in Rita, you sure this is the right time? It's really
surprising and shows you Rita means business today. Or she doesn't feel
too strong about this Spit Flower thing and wants him to die early so she can
hit the hay.
The Rangers pull the vampiric flowers off of their suits,
only to realize they let Rita's monster go giant in front of them. Whoopsie! Spit Flower
blasts the tiny Rangers with energy before we cut back to Tommy fiddling with a
bunch of stuff off screen in a set that is clearly Billy's garage. Zordon tells
Tommy to get the fuck off Billy's property and go save the rest of the Rangers.
He morphs just in time to see Spit Flower about to stomp on the Rangers. Tommy
of course takes the obvious solution to stopping a giant monster.
Want a reason everyone loves Tommy? Here's a good start.
I want to complain that everything that happened after Spit
Flower grew made the Rangers look useless for not calling on the Dinozords, but
it's actually an intelligent chain of events. He distracts the Rangers with his
energy sucking flowers, as he grows they have to remove the flowers from their
suits. As they do so, he blasts them to the ground and tries to stomp them before
they have a chance to recover. Any episode where a monster employs logical
strategy gets an extra star from me.
Tommy rushes over and holds Jason in his loving embrace, but
the boys don't have time to cuck Kimberly, because Spit Flower starts inhaling flowers
from all over the city. Jason tells Tommy to bring in the Dragonzord to fight
Spit Flower, while Blue, Black and Yellow call on their Dinozords as well. The
Rangers form the Dragonzord in Battle Mode, again referring to it as the Megadragonzord because the writers forgot what they called this thing three
weeks ago and were too lazy to go check.
Whatever the case, they power up the Mega Battlezord in Dragon Mode.
Using it's drill spear, the Dragonzord blows away Spit
Flower's blossoms. Possibly the most mundane use of a giant dragon tail drill
that could ever exist. Spit Flower charges in to fight the Zord and completely
manhandles it. For something as goofy and awkward looking as Spits, he busts
out all sorts of crazy dodge roll maneuvers and deflects Dragonzord Battle
Mode's spear like it ain't no thing. This is the strongest Zord combo the
Rangers have and it's getting wrecked right now.
It's been four episodes, Dragonzord. Step up your game.
Alpha 5 comments that flower power must be too much for the Dragonzord and they
need to regroup the Rangers. Of all the things the Dragonzord can't handle
you'd think upchucked petals might not hit the top of the list. Zordon
teleports the Rangers back into the Command Center to congratulate them on
fucking up so badly. Alpha begins tracking the Spit Flower on the Viewing Globe
only to find him no longer giant and trashing the city. Why? Doesn't matter, he
just isn't doing that anymore.
Remember when I gave this episode a star for strategy?
Gonna have to take that back because this move makes no sense at all. Rita's
monster has defeated the Zord fleet and is now giant in the city. Now all of a
sudden he's shrank back down because whatever we don't have footage for
it. The least we could do is give a reason for why he shrank. This just makes
Rita look even more incompetent if her plan after defeating the Zords would be
"Alright go back to life size and do the same thing you were
earlier."
Zordon says the Dinozords were ineffective against Spit
Flower, which implies there's something special about this monster if the most
powerful weapons the Rangers have do nothing to him. We don't elaborate on
it and that's a huge bummer. All we hear is how much stronger Spit Flower is getting and
how everything's about to go to shit.
You know how to tell when things are going to shit? You look
in on Bulk and Skull. The two morons are running around the park covered in
Spit Flower's vampire blossoms while freaking out and apparently being chased
by the monster. I say apparently because we just see him running in a field and
then cut to the bullies assholing their way through the park. It's fantastic to
imagine one of the toughest monsters the Power Rangers have faced is taking
time out of his hectic schedule to harass a couple of dweebs in the park. The best part of this whole
scene is when Bulk discovers one of the flowers on his hand, which is literally
nothing but a sock puppet with dime store vampire teeth on it. It's beautiful
how cheap this show is.
Zordon brings in an analysis of the previous fight from a
Deus Ex something or other. Couldn't quite hear him. He tells the Rangers the
only way to stop Spit Flower is to hit him right in his spit sack so he can't
make any more flower monsters. Jason entrusts Kim with the important task of
hitting Spits in his gonads, and the five primary Rangers teleport back to
fight the monster. Tommy is told to stay behind in the Command Center as a last
line of defense in case the other Rangers fail. A significantly better reason
for keeping him out of a fight than "He was doing karate and wasn't
listening to his Communicator."
The Rangers morph and Kim leaps into action. Remember how
Spit Flower was nearly invincible the last 15 minutes? One arrow shot straight
into his mouth and he starts spewing petals everywhere. Yep, now he's just
about finished. Nice and climactic right? The Rangers pull together the Power
Blaster and blow Spit Flower away in as much time as it takes you to finish this
sentence.
It's a really weird and abrupt ending for a monster who
seemed so strong, and what makes it even weirder is when Spit Flower blows up
you see one of his arms is cut off and laying on the ground. There's a bunch of
otherwise unusable shots of him getting blasted shoved into the footage of him
getting Power Blasted and it looks like a gigantic mess.
Tommy and Alpha celebrate the Spit Flower's unceremonious
death, but Tommy says he needs Alpha's help to finish his mystery project back
at "the garage." Guess it isn't Billy's anymore, it belongs to whoever
needs to have a scene inside of it. At Nondescript Garage, Tommy has Alpha hand
him tools. Alpha keeps handing Tommy the wrong stuff likely because the robot
has no eyes to discern what anything actually is. Tommy asks for glue, and
because we needed just a teaspoon more shtick before the credits, Alpha gets
the glue stuck to his hand. I would get mad at Alpha, but he's probably still pissed at Tommy for shutting him down so many times while he was evil.
Karma's a bitch ain't it Tommy?
Back in the Youth Center, Jason and Zack are practicing
karate with each other while loudly commenting on how ugly that Spit Flower
they fought was. There are people clearly within earshot guys, maybe save
this for after practice? Luckily the extras aren't paid to hear them so their
secret is safe for another day.
Ernie calls the Ranger Teens over to watch the parade on
T.V. so they can see floats that didn't get ruined. Why's the parade on T.V.?
Because it's stock footage of a parade so the producers didn't have to pay
money to film one. Maybe if Kim knew that she wouldn't have felt so bad about
her model getting trashed. Kim and Tommy walk in to see the parade on, and Kim
is just about ready to go postal. Tommy says she HAS to watch the parade,
because he's at half mast knowing how miserable she is and wants to finish
strong tonight.
As the teens continue
to watch, Kim hears the announcer talk about their next float having been
designed by a high school girl to promote world peace or something. Kim gets
butterflies in her stomach as she sees her float in the parade! However there's
a slight problem.
If you're going to use stock footage of a parade, maybe
don't let the float that represents your teenage character have a banner that
says Indonesia on it. Unless this is a sign of Kimberly's rampant Indonesian
nationalism. The world may
never know.
It turns out Tommy's secret project that Alpha nearly ruined
was recreating Kimberly's float for her!
While his team was busy getting beaten to death by the Spit Flower,
Tommy was hard at work gluing tiger pieces back together. Pretty fair trade
off.
Before we end on a cute hug from Kim to Tommy, Bulk
and Skull mosey in and say they want to watch the parade and get hugs too. Zack comes up and
starts doing magic out of absolutely nowhere, and makes a bouquet of flowers appear from
his sleeve. Bulk hisses at him, and Skull starts making a cross out of his
fingers as the two back away, clearly having had enough of flowers for one day.
Congratulations "The Spit Flower" that was actually kind of funny. You get your star back.
Your Weekly 90's
Nostalgia: Sock
Puppet Flowers
Personal Thoughts
Personal Thoughts
For an episode centered around flowers, this one's acceptable. I remember as a kid thinking I'd hate it because flowers are for girls and
that's going to make my show about rainbow superheroes totally lame, but it's not bad. This was another episode I
had half recorded as a kid, and it cut off as soon as the Power Rangers were rolling around
in pain on the ground as Spit Flower descended on them. I'm noticing a pattern
that a lot of my half watched episodes could have ended in all the Rangers
dying and I never would have known.
A lot of the Spit Flower fighting doesn't flow or make much sense, but they're pretty bound by what the footage allows
and didn't really feel the need to explain things like why Spit Flower abruptly stopped being giant all of a sudden, or why his arm was hacked off.
Why was his arm hacked off? Well in Zyuranger, the monster was trying to nab the unmorphed Pink
Ranger, but her zord flew in and blasted him which sliced his arm off. Mainly
because girls can't be strong on their own and need help from flying toys to
beat villains. Thanks 90's Japan! As for why he grew and arbitrarily shrank off
screen, that was also in Zyuranger, so really it's an issue both versions have and can't necessarily be blamed on Power Rangers.
By the way, in Japan the Spit Flower's name was Dora
Guzzler. The monsters in Zyuranger were all named Dora Something or other, usually referring to a type of mythological creature. I'd
like to share my tale of googling the name Dora Guzzler to see some pictures of
the Japanese Spit Flower when I was about 13. Allow me to inform you that at
the time, Google heavily misunderstood my intentions and gave me all kinds of
guzzling Doras, but not so many Dora Guzzlers. That might be the nerdiest
accidental porn search in the history of the internet, but please try to prove me wrong.
Spit Flower's monster costume is an interesting case,
because the U.S. production team definitely did have it, but it didn't show up
in American footage a single time outside of one or two production photos.
This could mean the costume was either in wretched condition
and unable to be used for anything but still pictures, or they feasibly got the
costume too late into production to use in the episode and decided to take a
picture of it while they had it available. I'd lean more towards the former,
because several costumes of monsters would make repeat appearances later on in
the season, but if we never saw Spit Flower at all then his suit may have just
been falling apart beyond repair. He's Dora Guzzling with Jesus now.
"Yeah and Rita will wreck them too."
ReplyDeleteThis makes me really hope we get a "crisis of faith" episode with the Power Rangers, wherein they have to cope with the fact that being called to do this awesome thing means they have to face the fact that they won't be able to do all these OTHER awesome things that they wish they could.
Then Bulk falls into a vat of chili and everyone's gonna be juuuuust fine.
Every time I watch this episode, I wonder if I am the only one who notices that when all 6 morphed Rangers are in the command center, Tommy's shield is different than any other time whe see US footage of the shield. This one is actually way better than the cloth version they use in every other scene. Granted it's still not as good as the Japanese version, but it's still a lot better than the one they went with. It looks to me made of some foam, or at least thicker fabric, and just looks more like the Zyuranger footage. You never see this shield used in any other scenes. It always bummed me out that the costume makers could just make a proper foam shield in the first place, and it does even more so knowing that they had at least a better alternative than the one they ultimately went with.
ReplyDeleteI realize I'm nerding out about a shield. But check it out, you'll see what I'm talking about
I thought it might have been the regular US shield in one of its first filmed scenes, when it hadn't had time to accumulate all the dents or other flaws from wear we're used to seeing. But maybe I'm wrong and there's a funny story out there about how someone broke the first Dragon Shield replica after just one scene.
DeleteI like AJJ's acting in this episode. It's understandable that Kim would feel upset when something that she's worked hard on is ruined.
ReplyDeleteWhat's not understandable is going from a model to a full-sized float in...a few hours, I guess. Who built the full-sized float?
At a stretch, i would say that maybe a couple of days passed following the defeat of Spit Flower. We are not really told when the parade is, just that the parade was coming up soon. The point being that tommy took it upon himself to fix what rita tried to destroy because he knew how much it meant to Kimberly. Its an uplifting moment because it showcases that Tommy clearly cares about Kimberly's happiness.
Delete