The past two weeks I wanted to look at this totally bonkers T.V. show on an episode by episode basis. It let me look at what made the show
fun to watch and what made it a complete chore. This week I'm going to look at Mighty Morphin Power Rangers on a more macro level. I want to
pick out the bits and pieces of why this show functions when it does, and what
makes the show suffer when it doesn't.
I blab a lot about what I love in the Japanese Sentai footage, but during
this post I will only discuss Sentai stuff in how it relates to Power Rangers. In spite of how much they
share they're two different shows after all. So take a look with me and see if you agree.
What Worked
The Ranger Teens act as audience surrogates who get a big
exposition dump from Zordon about how an evil space witch is sending clay
monsters to their planet. The only way to stop her is to use toy shaped
dinosaur robots to kill anything she brings at them. All of this is told to our
heroes without skipping a beat. Get onboard everyone, because this show is
going to get bugnuts and we're not held responsible if you fall off the crazy train.
Everything was there in the pilot. A bunch of karate mumbo jumbo, Rita's Moon Crew and their varying abilities, each of the Rangers stock personality traits, the Putties being fought both in and out of Ranger suits, the Zords combining to fight Goldar, and even Bulk and Skull.
Now Bulk and Skull? Holy moly that's a topic in of itself.
You want something that worked? These two clowns. Week after week they managed
to somehow be the most endearing goddamned thing in this show.
How in the hell are two accident prone bullies so
entertaining to watch? After all these years I'm still not sure what the answer
is. Maybe it's just the fact that Power
Rangers is a universe where assholes are routinely punished via karmic cake
splatterings, but also the way they play each humiliating situation they get
caught up in like they never saw it coming. As though everything in their lives up
until now has been incredible, but this one embarrassment they just endured ruined
their whole existence.
Man maybe sometimes you just need to see a guy get a pie in
the face. No shame in that.
While I'd be hard pressed to say any of the Ranger Teens
characters deserve praise, I can't ignore the fact that Billy had an everloving
character arc. It fizzles out around the 2/3rds mark of the series because the
writers were ostensibly wrapping the series up. However, the idea that any of these
cardboard cutouts changed at all throughout this show seems inconceivable.
Billy's actually given room to improve. He's not a star
karate champ who does science on the side. He's a big dweeb who doesn't know
his ass from a kickflip and wants to learn how to be better at karate. It
coincides with him being a Power Ranger so we can watch his growth as a hero
outside of the suit. It's not Billy trying to live up to being a Ranger, but him genuinely wanting to better himself and be the type of person he looks
up to. I actually quite enjoy that Billy doesn't go out of his way to compare
himself to the Blue Ranger, he just wants to be cool as who he is. Even if he's
some tone deaf dweeb in overalls.
Apropos of tone deaf dweebs, I fucking love the music in
this show so much. Some people in this world swear by KISS, Guns and Roses, The
Beatles. Friends, my musical muse is Ron Wasserman. It's the 90'sist rock music
that ever came out of the H.W. Bush primordial ooze, but it fucking speaks to
me. It puts me in a cheery mood and shuts down the outside world. I dream of
the day the evil Rita Repulsa is finally defeated. Then my family tells me
they're worried about me and I shoot at them with my Blade Blaster and tell
them to go tell Goldar I'm not falling for his tricks.
Let's be realistic here. If you've heard the theme song to Power Rangers, you've gotten it stuck in your head. It's
fucking catchy, how can that even be denied? Wasserman managed to make a theme
that resonated with every human being in possession of eardrums, and he did it
with a song that only used 6 different words. That man produced some goofy ass
90's rock and to this day it's some of my favorite music to cure the blues. Suck a dick Beethoven, you can't play Moonlight Sonata over Pudgy Pig getting
Power Blasted.
Finally I want to commend the editors on how they utilized
the Sentai footage. For the most part.
Zyuranger
had kids involved in almost every week's plot. A lot of those kids ended up in
scenes with the Rangers themselves, rendering select scenes unusable for MMPR. Somehow the show was able to still
create interesting and engaging battle scenes after cutting out moments with
Japanese actors which could otherwise have looked second-rate and half-assed.
By no means was this approach always done flawlessly
but they still did their damndest to make it work. I
actually enjoy the moments with Japanese extras obviously in the scenes. You
can feel the editors gritting their teeth hoping the audience won't notice as
they take a deep breath and submit the footage. You don't even want to mock the show for it, you just want to pat the editors on the back and tell them they did their best.
But honestly, the editors at Power Rangers made some smart decisions. Mostly what I mean is the
sorts of things they were smart enough to exclude. One of the goofiest things
in Zyuranger (a goofy ass show
as it is), was that the Putties would sometimes emerge as terrible looking hand
puppets. In a show that's riddled with cheap effects and costumes, these things
take the cake and I can't say how glad I am they were excised.
Another set of silly scenes erased from Zyuranger were moments that Rita would lead her cronies in singing
a jaunty song with her before they would plan out a scheme. I'd love to say how
dumb and awful these moments are, but if you can watch this video without at least being
interested in what the fuck is going on, Tokusatsu might not be for you. Also,
please enjoy the end of the song where everyone is very clearly just mouthing
their lines and it becomes a glorious mess.
Oh who am I kidding? This scene is incredible! How could
they have cut it?! Okay I apologize guys, maybe there are a few things Power Ranger goofed up after all.
What Didn't Work
Since we were just talking about Rita, let's play a quick little game. Tell me
one thing Rita Repulsa did after Doomsday
Part 2. Something that didn't involve
barking orders at her minions or appearing in stock footage to make the monster
grow giant. Give up? Might be because Rita became completely superfluous near
the end of the season.
You've built Rita Repulsa up to be the main antagonist of
your series, you've had her summoning giant demon beasts and mutant heads that
yawn at people. Then once all the footage from Zyuranger runs out all she does is ask Goldar to tell the kids at
home about her monster this week. I understand all they could really do with
Rita at that point was nothing but recycled footage of her on the Moon Palace
laughing or getting pissy, but that still doesn't change the fact the show's
main antagonist becomes a complete non-entity near the end of the season.
As soon as we got into Zyu2 material, there was little left
for Rita to do. Everything interesting she used to do was given to one of her
minions, likely because it cut down on the difficulties of dubbing over her
Japanese actress's dialogue. Matching up mouth-flaps for a human being is
significantly more difficult than matching the mouth-flaps of a blue hobgoblin
whose mouth barely moves as it is.
On the subject of Squatt and his buddy Baboo, sweet Jesus
what a pair of worthless characters. All they do is sputter out some shitty
one-liners before completely vanishing from the episode. They don't give
exposition like Goldar, they don't make the monsters like Finster, so we're
just stuck with two bumbling half-wits the writers had no use for. In the first
episode review I posted, I wondered if I would enjoy these two more now than I
had before. Well gee golly willikers I sure don't. I enjoy them even less than
I did as a kid. Kick rocks you fucking goobers.
At least Scorpina had the decency to just vanish when there
was no use for her in an episode. Squatt and Baboo were in so many background
shots of Rita's palace the writers were nearly obligated to use them in some
way. Unfortunately all they were good for was shoehorning in cornball jokes. I
appreciated the fact that two episodes actually tried to do something with
these clowns, Reign of the Jellyfish and
Enter the Lizzinator. It was by no means entertaining, but at least they were given
some reason to actually exist in two episodes out of the back 20 of the season.
Come to think of it, that's a better track record than Trini got.
To be fair, it's easy to say how one dimensional each of the
Ranger Teens are but holy shit it needs to be addressed. I dish on Trini a lot
not because of the character, or the acting, but the writers steadfast refusal to do a goddamn
thing with her. She's just symptomatic of the show's issues with character
development. Billy gets something to do while everyone else is just generically
good and friendly. Those are awesome things you can show kids to give them positive
role models to look up to, but you're doing so at the expense of depriving them
of humanity.
Bits and pieces of soul would shine through these chunks of
unvarnished wood, but so often it's things that you would want to see followed
up on but get no payoff. Things like telling me Zack loves to go surfing. When
you tell me that, I need a scene of that motherfucking hanging ten, and you
fail to give it to me.
Introducing developments like Kim's parents being divorced and
having her discuss how that makes her feel is organic, it's welcome, and it works. It's expanding the show's
universe with knowledge that the audience doesn't necessarily need, but makes the
characters feel more real. It'd be like if Trini were adopted or Jason's
granddad was a fighter pilot in WW2. Things we don't particularly need fleshed out or referred to, but something to make them seem like actual characters.
It makes sense in some way that the characters aren't given
a lot of room to grow, because the show has to portray them as Japanese
superheroes as well as your standard high school teenagers. Half of each
episode is going to be unable to develop them as anything but run of the mill
paragons of justice who act practically indistinguishable from one another. If they weren't wearing different colors you wouldn't have a goddamned clue who was who.
The morphed footage takes up roughly half of the episode and
gives you next to no opportunity to develop characters. So when the first half
of your episode has to also tangentially relate to whatever monster attack is
happening in the second half, you're left with very little time to actually give
your character something unique to do. So I can at least meet the show halfway
in why it let the characters remain so stock. Otherwise it may not be able to
blend in with the morphed footage.
What I will take objection with is when you give the Ranger Teens hobbies
we'll never see them doing. It's just ignoring the fact you have purported human beings in front of the camera and dive out of the way of letting them
change or be different at all. How will Tommy change by playing football? Why would
he want to play football? What effect will it have on him? I unno, but he wants to play football so that's what
the episodes about.
Earlier I brought up Billy changing as good
characterization, and I can stand by that. Those who have been reading these
summaries up until now might recall that Kimberly and Zack were both involved
in semi romantic relationships over the course of the first season. So how can I say they didn't develop in some way? Well Kimberly and Tommy were a fine couple, they both...had emotions for each other
I guess? Unfortunately the relationship with Zack and Angela runs straight back into the
character problem again.
Zack's crush on Angela makes her look less like a character
and more like a satellite that orbits around Zack. Angela cannot possibly exist
unless Zack is also there. She will only ever interact with him or possibly Bulk and Skull. You aren't
going to see Trini or Angela talk to each other because they aren't characters
and would have nothing to talk about. It just showcases how flat this amazing
magical world can be when the writers want to keep things so binary. 0=Talk to Zack.
1=Bulk and Skull aren't worth fucking.
All I want to say is that there's nothing wrong with simple storytelling. Easy to follow, keeps you engaged, and can still be a lot of fun. The only problem is when your show runs for 60 episodes and stays that simple. You start to yearn for more than that and it's frustrating to watch how little change really occurs.
Now Tommy, for better or worse, changes the scope of this
show. I'm not going to say he's a negative in of himself, but it's hard not to
notice Power Rangers shifting gears
with his presence. Just about every episode after Green With Evil required a scene of Tommy being interrupted or given reason to be away from the
action so he could show up later in the footage. The problem with this is that
no other character got that level of focus. Everything become heavily weighted
towards Tommy which only further shoved the other Ranger Teens off to the side.
Of course the Green Ranger is cool. We all understand that.
But the show slowly started becoming Tommy Oliver and his Five Friends and this
was an issue that would remain for an unfortunate amount of time.
So that's way too many words about what I thought about this
kid's show from 20 years ago. If any of you find a time machine please inform
Saban Brands so they can fix all these problems. Otherwise their multi jillion
dollar franchise might not be able to live up to its full potential! Leave a comment below and lemme know what you think the show's strengths and weaknesses were. I feel like I'm missing quite a bit so I want to hear what you good people think too! Also feel free to disagree. Sometimes when I get this analytical I tend to ramble and babble. Hopefully this post is at least 80% content and 20% rambling. If not? Oh well. See you fuckers next week!
Nipples
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