Sleepy Demon Head Breathes On Monster
Self Confidence Shaken By Snake
Let's wash our palette of last week's episode guys. Wheel of
Misfortune was pretty shitty, but I can promise you today won't be that bad.
Not from any prior knowledge of this episode, just the fact that we open with a
scene of Zack dancing, which we've been getting tragically little of
lately. Granted if I had my druthers every plot would be about Zack dancing
while Billy gets turned down for a date.
But Zack isn't just dancing to get a bunch of 90's babes
swooning for him, there's a big dance contest this weekend! Zack's moves are
impressing Kim and Jason, because they're white and assume any non karate form
of movement is wizardry. Bulk however, isn't impressed with Zack's dancing
prowess, mostly because it isn't edible. The porcine bully tells Zack he's
going to fuck up, and Zack accidentally spin kicks near Kimberly. She spills
her milkshake all over Bulk having mistaken him for the nearest trash can.
As soon as this happens, Zack starts getting really bummed
out and saying he has no chance to win. Lest we forget this is all because Bulk
made a quick joke at his expense. Now Zack has dropped all pretense of his own
ability and no longer believes in himself. This turn so quickly doesn't work for Zack
because the guy is nothing but confident in himself. They probably should have burned this one a little slower instead of giving Bulk a milkshake facial and
having Zack give up hope in life.
Rita's decided now that Zack's got a case of the Monday's, it's
the perfect opportunity to bring in the heavy artillery. Rita's using the same
crystal ball and altar that she used to turn Tommy into the Green Ranger, so
you can tell whatever she has planned today isn't your everyday scheme. Or they ran out of props. She
namedrops two new soldiers in her army of evil, Mutitis and Lokar. Oh no! Not
Lokar!
The Diet Zorak
While Rita preps for the apocalypse, Tommy helps two kids learn how to do karate. Why two kids? Because they couldn't afford to hire more kid actors. Since this is a show for 3 year olds Tommy informs them that karate is used to put you in charge of the situation so that nobody gets hurt. It's sweet to tell kids that, but it rings hollow in a show where the second half of each episode uses violent karate to sell plastic dinosaurs.
Zack calls out Bulk on his shit and stages an impromptu
dance-off between the two of them. They dance in front of four enormous
Greek pillars that have never once been inside the Youth Center. Zack does well
and Bulk humiliates the entire human race by doing some of the best shitty
dancing I've seen in a long time. It ends exactly how you'd expect it to.
Let me make a promise here and now. If there's an episode with Bulk dancing, you will get a gif out of it.
Everyone laughs at the emasculated bully while Zack
continues to feel unsure of his dancing prowess. Why though? Sure it's not much
of an accomplishment to beat Bulk at anything outside of an "Ashamed Parents Contest", but it's
not like Zack did a shitty job. He just thinks that Bulk's still right and he
has no reason to feel confident in himself. If Zack was dancing against some out
of state dance champions or there were some kind of stakes built up then maybe
we could relate to his panic. Instead Zack just feels like he can't win a dance
competition in a town full of awkward whitebread nerds.
I'm at a crossroads with this episode though, because the
moral is very blatantly stated by Trini through Billy. Billy uses a bunch of
thesaurus-y words to say Zack is lacking in confidence and doesn't believe in
himself. Obviously this show hammers that point in clear as day, but it almost
makes a good point about believing in yourself by putting those doubts in
someone with talent.
Zack is clearly good at what he does, but is hit with doubt
for whatever reason. Maybe this is supposed to tell kids that what they're
doing will be good enough and not to give up. Or it's a clumsy shitty script
that got a mandated "important lesson" to teach kids about that got
shoehorned in. Draw your own conclusions.
No matter what you think about Zack's confidence issue, Rita
is happy as a kitten under a leaky cow about it. Apparently people who are
lacking in self-esteem are much more susceptible to Lokar's evil magic, which
sends people to the titular Island of Illusion. Baboo informs us of how lethal
Lokar is and that he nearly wiped out the entire Moon Crew the last time Rita
summoned him. Squatt begs for Rita to reconsider, and she responds as anyone
else would.
While I like to make fun of Rita's schemes, there's
something that really gives this one weight. It isn't just her crew looking
nervous and talking about how scary Lokar is, it's a single look of panic on
Rita's face as she's casting the spell. It shows how unsure she is this plan is
going to work and it sets the bar real high for these new monsters she's got
planned.
Lightning strikes and earthquakes shake the ground down at
the Youth Center, all caused by Rita's summoning spell. Kim loudly shouts that
it has to be Rita, and not any of that bullshit global warming garbage the vice
president's been on about. Jason takes the other Ranger Teens sans Zack over to
a corner of the Juice Bar to call Zordon. Their mentor tells them some bad
shit's going down and they better get the fuck out of dodge before they fall
into a sinkhole.
As the Rangers leave to find Zack, Tommy notices his two
karate students hiding underneath a table shouting for help. Tommy tells his
team he can't leave the students unattended, since they don't have parents or
anyone that loves them, so he tells them he'll catch up later.
The rest of the Rangers run into Zack at the park where all
that storming and quaking has apparently been completely ignored. Zack's just
been off practicing and mentions none of the hell that's been breaking loose
due to Rita's spells. Probably because it would have cost money to superimpose
lightning on the screen while a grip holds a hose above the actors.
The Rangers are soon swarmed by a group of Putties to distract
them from the fact Rita's making their planet go to shit. The Ranger Teens beat
the bejesus out of the Putties, as often is the case. Even Zack, who's going
through crippling self doubt, demolishes the Putties with no trouble
whatsoever. Why not write a scene of him missing a kick and looking guilty? Did
that not go through anybody's mind? Why are the Putty scenes always excluded from the mad-libs that these scripts are?
Goldar and Scorpina show up so the Ranger Teens morph to
avoid getting killed by a dog man and his Japanese wife. The Rangers fight
Rita's duo for a whole 4 seconds before we cut back to Rita doing more of her
spells. Thanks for that precursor to a fight guys, almost got engaged! Rita's
spells finally work and she brings forth her newest monster, Mutitis. Squatt is
the one who says it best though, "Wow he's ugly!"
Why does that weapon look familiar...
Since Rita's already summoned a giant monster, the Rangers
know they have to call in the Zords if they want to stand a chance against this
ugly fuck. They form the Megazord and do battle with Mutitis. Immediately the
monster starts chucking its mace ball at the Megazord and we get a pretty
choppy fight between Mutitis and the Megazord before we cut to Rita in her
palace. The evil empress then looks off camera and says "Finster, I made
my own monster. And it's winning."
You are an ice cold bitch Rita. Finster works tirelessly for
you and this is the thanks you give him? You can take that ugly ass Mutitis and
throw it in the trash can Kim spilled her milkshake in. How dare you.
Rita, not satisfied with hurting her most loyal servant's
feelings, teleports down to Earth to give the Rangers a little smack talking as
well. She says Mutitis is a total pussy compared to the real monster she's got
in store for them next. Rita then chants one final spell to summon forth Lokar.
The skies go dark, lightning strikes the Earth, and a massive fireball erupts
to bring forth the ultimate evil.
He just woke up
Yeah that's Lokar. A giant floating head with spiky hair.
That's the thing Rita's been building up so much. It's goofy as fuck but really, what else are you watching this show for? It's crazy dumb fun and
let's be honest, was that what you were expecting when you were told Rita was
releasing her ultimate evil? It's one of those things that's so goddamn crazy
and ridiculous that it wraps back around to being beautiful.
Tommy gets a call from Zordon who informs him, "No
really you're a superhero, get in the fucking fight you idiot." Tommy
hesitates because if he leaves the Youth Center now two kids might be scared!
Zordon finally drops the bomb that a giant head is fighting the Rangers, and
Tommy realizes shit's getting too real for him not to battle. Tommy tells
Ernie to watch the kids while he's off doing nothing in particular, and that's
the end of that. We'll never see these kids again. Hope they enjoy the rest of
their lives in Ernie's slave labor camp.
Rita commands Lokar to use his "breath of doom" on
Mutitis to make him even more horrible. What monster are you looking at Rita?
That thing can't get any fucking uglier. Lokar spews a bunch of white smoke and
Mutitis immediately turns into a new form. We don't get a name on him, but in
the script they called him Fang-Gor. So let's do the sensible thing and just
call him Mutitis. That name is fucking horrible.
Just noticed you can see the original face split in half behind his neck. That's fucking rad.
Lokar cackles at the Power Rangers while the new Mutitis
completely shithouses the Megazord. They already didn't stand a chance when he
was in his first form, so clearly they aren't doing so hot this go-round. It's
pretty fantastic to see them in such danger. It makes all of Rita's spellcasting mean a lot more knowing what she summoned was as dangerous as this.
Just when the Rangers think they're totally fucked, we hear
the comforting tune of the Dragon Dagger playing. Tommy's finally gotten off
his lazy ass and shown up to summon the Dragonzord for backup against Mutitis.
This leads to the most satisfying zoom in of all time. When Rita Repulsa has
had just about enough of these fucking kids.
SOMEONE TALKIN SHIT?
It's perfect. There's no cackling about how she's going to
win. No spell casting. Just her mean mugging the Dragonzord and Tommy. It's
everything I want for Christmas and more.
Dragonzord manages to knock Mutitis back with the
Dragonzord's drill tail and the two zords try to take him down, but he manages
to keep the upper hand against the Dinozords. He blasts them with energy from
his chest and spews foam from his mouth that starts short circuiting
the Zords. Meanwhile, Lokar...laughs. That's all he does. What the fuck has
Lokar done but upgrade your monster Rita? For the ultimate master of evil you
built this guy up as he just seems like a gigglepuss.
The Zords short out and topple over, while all of the
Rangers are sent to the Island of Illusion. Rita commanded Lokar to do it, so
it's good to see he had time to do something other than laugh and breathe on
monsters. Alpha tells Zordon everyone's in danger and they're off his radar
now, but Zordon says to chill the fuck out because if the Rangers can believe
in themselves they'll be fine. He then makes a mental note to begin looking for a new Blue
Ranger.
The Rangers have been demorphed and teleported onto Rita's
Island of Illusion. It doesn't look too mystical or dangerous, because that
would have cost money. The real danger of the island is that their
Communicators and Power Morphers have been taken away from them. With no idea
where their gear is, the Rangers begin to wander around the island to find it.
While Zack informs his friends the situation is "not cash." Speaking of not having cash, we cut to a beautiful stock footage shot of a Gila monster while the Rangers are walking around. It's supposed to make you think the island is dangerous, but it makes me wonder why Rita sent them into a nature documentary.
While Zack informs his friends the situation is "not cash." Speaking of not having cash, we cut to a beautiful stock footage shot of a Gila monster while the Rangers are walking around. It's supposed to make you think the island is dangerous, but it makes me wonder why Rita sent them into a nature documentary.
Now's when you're going to think I'm making shit up, but
hand to God this is what happens. While the Ranger Teens are wandering, we see
shots of a dwarf dressed in a Robin Hood getup watching them. They start to
hear a fucked up noise and follow it to find the dwarf playing a flute inside
of the bushes. He goes on the defensive when the Rangers start to talk to him
and mention Rita's name.
It's the REAL Rumpelstiltskin!
His name is Quagmire, and every single thing he says is in
rhyme. Since he only has two lines it's not that obnoxious, but it's also
baffling because what the fuck is a dwarf playing a flute doing on an Island of
Illusions? If this is Rita's island why does she have someone living there who
hates her? Did she kill all of his friends? Is he trapped there? Doesn't matter. He's just a guy
chilling on her island playing a flute. Don't worry about it.
He disappears in a puff of smoke because who gives a shit,
and Kim asks what the fuck his problem was. Suddenly a giant vision of Goldar's
head appears in the sky and tells the Rangers they're going to lose more than
their Power Coins now that they're on Rita's turf. All of a sudden we see some old friends pop in
to play.
Literally all 5 of them look ready to fall over.
Eye Guy, Shellshock, Pineoctopus, Snizard, and Pudgy Pig all show up
and the Rangers are terrified. Maybe they saw something behind Pudgy Pig that
was scary, not quite sure. Jason screams out that the Monsters are charging, or
more accurately stumbling forward. The Ranger Teens strike a pose to fight the
Monsters but just before they attack, all five vanish. Thanks for the childhood
blue balls Power Rangers. A fight with five old monsters and the unmorphed
Rangers? It's all I ever wanted and you took it away from me.
Goldar's giant head shows up again to tell them here on this
island nothing is real except the danger. Yeah, those fake monsters were real
dangerous alright you asshole. Thanks for nothing Goldy. Zack starts freaking
out and running off to get away, when all of a sudden he spies a massive
anaconda. His friends come up and we see from their perspective it's not really
there. They try to tell Zack his anaconda don't want none unless you got buns hun. Instead of listening
though he just keeps screaming.
As Zack freaks out, his body starts to disappear through the
use of shitty 90's effects. The rest of the Ranger Teens look on in terror as
their friend is vanishing before their very eyes. Goldar tells them that their
loss in self confidence will make them disappear forever. Consider those stakes
raised boys and girls. Hope they have Dance Contests in Hell Zack!
To Be Continued
Your Weekly 90's Nostalgia: Self
Esteem
Personal Thoughts
Coming off of last week I was worried I wouldn't enjoy this
episode at all, but I was completely wrong. This is a really fun episode by my
standards and it does a pretty good job of making a relatively nothing monster
like Mutitis threatening. It's mitigated by all of Rita's spellcasting hyping
up Lokar as a massive threat worth being afraid of.
Unfortunately they cut out a lot of scenes from the Japanese
Mutitis fight for no discernible reason, so the monster ends up looking unimpressive. They also cut a pretty great
shot of the Megazord throwing the Power Sword at Lokar, but it gets blasted out of
the sky by his eyebeams. Strangely, both the things I mentioned here were in
the script and were cut from the episode likely for time reasons. Guess that Gila
Monster stock footage was more important.
Another cool thing about this episode is that it focuses on Zack. None of the fight footage dictated it being focused on Zack, so it's
pretty cool that the writers are trying to explore what they can do more of when
the footage isn't holding them to a specific Ranger. It's one of the fun things
to watch for in Power Rangers. How the civilian U.S. plots compare to the
Sentai plot that's getting laid down as a framework. It gets even more fun when
they try to deviate from the Sentai, but that's going to take some more time.
I have to give them credit on Tommy's excuse for not going
into the fight. It's not a great one, but so far they've managed to have almost
entirely unique reasons for Tommy not showing up to fights. The first two times
he didn't show up because he was training, but then it was him fixing Kim's
float, getting attacked by Putties, getting tied up by Putties, and now having
to keep an eye on his students. They're changing things up just enough that it
doesn't really bother me that Tommy has to sit so many fights out.
Now's where we get to have some fun. The monsters. Remember
all the blathering I did about Frankenstein not being done yet? Well that's because our
good buddy Frankie and Mutitis are in fact one and the same. At least in the
Japanese version. In the Sentai, after Frankenstein takes the finishing blow from the Dragonzord in Battle Mode,
he doesn't explode. Instead, this happens.
Zombies don't wear clothes. Sorry Frankie.
This is why he's holding the bolt/mace weapon Frankenstein
had previously. That's also why Rita summoning Mutitis alongside Lokar is such
a second thought kind of thing. Originally her summoning was only for Lokar. Mutitis was a diversion to keep the Rangers busy while she did it.
Did Power Rangers make the right call splitting up the
Frankenstein stuff and Mutitis stuff? Would it have made a big difference to
kids if Rita teleported Frankenstein away after becoming Mutitis? Who knows.
I'm mostly just bummed we didn't get to see him transform because it's pretty
cool.
Oh man though, that's not even the best transformation. That honor goes to what Lokar mutating Mutitis in the
Sentai version. Power Rangers cut around it so that Lokar's breath just made
him immediately exist as a new monster. However things got a little more
extreme in the Japanese version. I'll let you compare the two.
U.S.
Japan
Interesting to note that, again, Mutitis having a new
monster inside of him was in the script initially. It's possible that they just
figured Standards and Practices weren't going to go for it, and parents were
going to complain about a monster's face ripping itself in half. Thank goodness parents never got around to complaining about
Power Rangers!
Finally, the old monsters. I mentioned that we hadn't seen the last of them, and here we are.
Of the five of them, Eye Guy is the only one who hadn't already shown up in US exclusive
footage, but seeing them all together was so cool as a kid.
This would be a well that Power Rangers would return to
rather frequently. Using old monster costumes they had on hand to make up a
group of monsters for the Rangers to face. It's fun to see old monsters come
back, and even more fun to see which ones the US team had that they could use.
We'll never see Pineoctopus or Shellshock again, so for fans of them I apologize
sincerely. I hope your day will still be as bright without them in your life.
I had forgotten about Mutitis when I watched Zyuranger, and I immediately had the thought they might not be able to use the second and third forms on US tv. I think it'd scare my 4 year old.
ReplyDeleteYou kidding me? I don't think I'm old enough to see it.
DeleteI'll be honest: Lokar genuinely gave me nightmares when I was a kid. And he's still residually creepy now, despite his complete impotence.
ReplyDeleteErnie's reaction regarding looking after the kids comes across as "I don't give a shit." It's no wonder that we never see the kids again. Ernie let them die.
ReplyDeleteI think the reason they cut the Power Sword being thrown is because it would imply that they wanted to impale Lokar and the censors would have none of it.
ReplyDeleteWatching the Zyuranger episode this comes from, Zyu 30, it's actually because Lokar's head looks really fucking fake. Just go to Zyu 30 and go to the 16;58 mark and you'll see what I mean.
DeleteIf anyone's curious, the Zord fight was just as choppy in Zyuranger because they had a subplot/main plot that kept interrupting the footage. In the original episode, most of the first part of this two parter involved rescuing children (which is why that famous error where you can see Kimberly and Trini guarding the shiloute of a small girl when the camera pans between Mutitus' legs exists). There was constant cutting back and forth between the two scenarios and almost none of the cockpit fooage comes from Zyu 27 (which is what this part borrows it's footage from). Only one shot was used and that was used about ten minutes ahead of it's original placement.
ReplyDeleteI say "subplot/main plot" because the episode had this as the main drive for the plot but it was also irelevant in the grand scheme of the two-part-episode-in-all-but-name. It seems only Power Rangers has actual multi-parters which share the same title, helping new viewers relalise that they shouldn't watch this was they will be lost. Npt the same thing for Sentai or even modern PR although admittedly the franchise has been mainly episodic barring the first two and last three episodes. If you count multi-parters that are so in all but name, then the Dino Charge endgame is the longest, being a full episode longer than Green With Evil which is depressing when you remember that shitshow.
DeleteAnyone wondering how long the Scorpina/Goldar fight lasts?
ReplyDeleteSIX FUCKING SECONDS! I wish I was kidding.
Is it filler? No.
Because it would have to be at least 20 seconds to qualify as filler since 6 seconds makes no great effect on the runtime.