Mighty Morphin Power RangersSeason 1 - Part 1
Day of the Dumpster - An ancient canister is found by astronauts and they accidentally unleash the evil space witch Rita Repulsa and her minions Goldar, Finster, Squatt, and Baboo. Rita decides to reprise her conquest over planet Earth, which catches the attention of her sworn enemy Zordon and his robot assistant Alpha 5. In desperate need of a defense, Zordon and Alpha enlist a quintet of teenagers: Jason Lee Scott, Zack Taylor, Kimberly Hart, Billy Cranston, and Trini Kwan. Zordon entrusts them with the power of prehistoric beasts to turn them into a fighting force for good known as the Power Rangers, whose powerful spandex armor, super weapons, and giant robot Zords are the only things that can prevent the invasion. But will the Rangers reject this great power or embrace it?
High Five - Trini must overcome her fear of heights to help out her team as Rita sends down the monster Bones to trap the Rangers in a time warp and destroy them.
Teamwork - Kimberly and Trini petition to have a hazardous waste site cleaned up, but Rita interrupts their efforts by sensing down the Mighty Minotaur, Goldar, and an army of Putty Patrollers. The only way the Power Rangers can hope to beat them lie within the Power Weapons, which they must learn to wield to win the day.
A Pressing Engagement - Jason obsessively tries to break the Youth Center's record for most bench presses, but is interrupted when Rita sends down King Sphinx and Goldar to terrorize Angel Grove. When King Sphinx blows the other Rangers away with his powerful wings, Jason finds himself facing off with the monsters by himself.
Different Drum - Kimberly's dance class is put under a spell by Rita's latest monster, the Gnarly Gnome, who uses his magic accordion to control people with his hypnotic music. Melissa, a deaf girl from the class, is the only one immune to his tune, and seeks help, bringing the Gnarly Gnome to the attention of the Power Rangers.
Food Fight - The Rangers help out with a food festival to help fund the school's new playground equipment, which school bullies Bulk and Skull ruin by starting a food fight. Meanwhile Rita has Finster create a Pudgy Pig monster to travel to Earth and eat all of the world's food supply.
There are very few things in this world that can transport my brain back to the 90's like this...
Yes folks, it's Mighty Morphin Power Rangers, the ultimate franchise you were obsessed with as a kid but look back upon and say "Gah, did I really watch that?" You did. Quit lying to yourself. And you loved it.
Now commonly known to be a re-edit of Kyoryu Sentai Zyuranger, children of 1993 neither knew what that was nor cared, because Power Rangers was
their show. And even though it utilizes the Zyuranger footage, Power Rangers is a bit of a different beast. Zyuranger was a full blown fantasy adventure of out-of-this-world nonsense, while Power Rangers was more of a self-insert escapism piece. The characters of Zyuranger are ancient knights that have little relation to modern day Earth, and they don't really try as usually everything in their episodes is related to their fight against Bandora. In Power Rangers, the characters are modern teens that kids feel like they can be friends with, and they're swept up and given superpowers at a moments notice, to make kids feel like "That could be ME!" To use an extremist example, Zyuranger is Lord of the Rings, where it's mythical characters on a mystical adventure, and Power Rangers is Harry Potter, where a mundane character is suddenly extraordinary and goes on a journey beyond his imagination.
All of this contributes to just why Mighty Morphin Power Rangers was the pop culture touchstone it was in 1993. If Zyuranger were just dubbed and thrown on our screens, kids couldn't relate. They couldn't idolize Jason, laugh with Zack, feel nerdy can be cool with Billy, and Kimberly and Trini wouldn't be empowering idols of young girls while being the first crushes of all the boys (I was a Trini guy, myself). Maybe they would respond to the Zyurangers, but they wouldn't relate to them on a personal level. That's not to say they're
good characters, they're one-dimensional personalities at best, but they're what Power Rangers
needed them to be.
At the same time, the aesthetic choice of Zyuranger seemed to land at just the correct time. Getting a Sentai season to adapt was the luck of the draw, as Zyuranger was just the most recent one. If Power Rangers had debuted just a year earlier, these would have been the Power Rangers...
And if it had debuted a year later, these would have been the Power Rangers...
There's a simplicity to the stylistic appeal of the Zyuranger costumes that I think worked out for the best. And the theme of dinosaurs was something other Sentai shows didn't have, and dinosaurs really set off a child's imagination because they're as close to a mythical beast that we know for a fact once existed in reality. Add in the fact that Power Rangers debuted mere months after Jurassic Park hit theaters, and you have the right theme at the right time hitting the right viewers.
Add that into the fact that a live action superhero show on television was practically non-existent in the 90's, and even if you had shows like The Flash and Lois & Clark: The New Adventures of Superman, they didn't have the zippy appeal of Power Rangers, and they weren't on the children's block. Power Rangers gave kids a taste of superhero entertainment made specifically for them with a touch of that Japanese flash that made shows like DragonBallZ and Pokemon hit it big as well, and when you toss in giant robots and monsters, if you were under the age of 10 in 1993, then you were watching
the hell out of this show.
All of this is accompanied by a fast paced, synthesized rock soundtrack that made everything seem much cooler, more exciting, and more epic than it really was. Perfect storm, thy name is Power Rangers.
Judging this series nearly thirty years later...it is what it is. Zyuranger holds up better, and kids are more likely to respond to more recent seasons of Power Rangers than the original. If anybody is still watching this show, it's tools like me who have a nostalgic fondness for it and can forgive it's blemishes because they love it unconditionally. Plots are thin, and Zyuranger footage is often poorly inserted into unrelated stories that don't really make sense. The first episode, Day of the Dumpster, is a good example of this, which rushes through the origin story and everything kids will see in this show if they stay tuned
hard. Jason, Zack, Kimberly, Billy, and Trini are seemingly selected at random, given powers, and they're immediately good at everything they do without experience (they even give some painful expository dialogue with the zord footage exclaiming how piloting them "feels like second nature"). Why are they this good at combating aliens? Because they're the Power Rangers. That's all the reason they need.
Another example would be the debut of the Power Weapons in Teamwork. In Zyuranger, the search for the weapons is a two-episode long quest, whereas in Power Rangers they're just handed them at the end of the episode. The use of the Sentai footage here is weird, because you can still see the weapons in normal appearance before the Rangers supercharge them. Also somewhat problematic are the Power Crystals in A Pressing Engagement, as the Zyuranger episode had Geki specifically looking for them while in the Power Rangers episode had Zordon teleport them to Jason, but he teleported them underneath a lot of rubble for some stupid reason. Not to mention that in Zyuranger, Geki needed the crystals to free his teammates from their prison and form Daizyuzin (AKA the Megazord) for the first time. Here, the crystals serve no purpose, as there's no real reason why the other Rangers can't teleport to Jason's location and we've already seen the Megazord before this episode.
Probably the episode that utilizes stock footage the best is Food Fight, in which there is no full discrepancy between the Japanese footage and the English footage that breaks the episode in half (that's the standard we're judging this on, folks). The plot is mostly a relevant wraparound to what we see in the Sentai battles with Pudgy Pig, and the story mostly sails smoothly from beginning to end (the titular food fight sequence is a little long, but I'll forgive the padding).
As for episodes that work in spite of themselves, it's not hard to have a soft spot for A Pressing Engagement, if only because King Sphinx is such a cool monster and the slapstick escapades at the Youth Center are amusing enough (though I refuse to believe Bulk did over a thousand bench presses). I'll also say High Five is a minor success. They have trouble explaining the use of the shrunken shuttle footage and the second monster mostly comes out of nowhere, but it's a fairly entertaining character episode that focuses on Trini, who didn't get that many episodes devoted to her and was often reduced to being the "Billy-translator."
Power Rangers was a trend-setting show, whether we wanted it to be or not. It's Morphinominal success led to Saban changing their game plan toward live action fantasy, often utilizing footage from other shows they purchased from Toei Company. Several seasons of Toei's Metal Heroes series were used as the basis for VR Troopers and Big Bad Beetleborgs, both of which were successes, and season of Kamen Rider was used to make Masked Rider, which wasn't. They also dipped their toe into home-brewed productions like Ninja Turtles: The Next Mutation and Mystic Knights of Tir Na Nog, to mixed results (Turtles was universally hated, though I think Mystic Knights built some nostalgic fondness around it). The success of Power Rangers led to the company DIC trying their hand at the same thing, importing the series Denkou Choujin Gridman from Toei competitor Tsubaraya Productions and creating Superhuman Samurai Syber-Squad, while 4Kids imported a dub of Ultraman Tiga here to the States, giving Ultraman his most prominent US TV presence since the dub of the original in the 60's (there are exceptions of Ultraman in the US, but "prominent" is the key word). It was probably the highest point in which tokusatsu hit the mainstream in the United States, and was even the induction for many children into the toku genre, whether they knew it or not. And even after the fad died down, Power Rangers kept chugging along, even surviving changing hands from Saban to Disney back to Saban and currently to Hasbro, and switching networks from Fox to ABC to Toon Disney and currently Nickelodeon. Because of that, Power Rangers is legendary and probably deserves some level of respect for its endurance and the impact crater it made when it landed.
Incidentally, I last went through Power Rangers a few years ago, and while doing so I jotted down little notes while watching it for fun. I had no real plan for any real use of these, and in the beginning they were just sparse little observations that eventually became much more embellished as I got further through the series. I've been going through those files and having a good laugh, so I might as well post them here. Enjoy this batch, which are my early boring ones:
Day of the DumpsterIf there’s a can on the moon, don’t question it just open the damn thing.
Comic relief will always win over your audience with the tried and true “Violence against women” routine.
Speaking of, Bulk and Skull’s skills at picking up women seem limited to beating them up. How’s that working out guys? But then again, there’s Ike Turner…
If someone offers you giant robots and superpowers, give them attitude and blow them off. But make sure you take those powerful belt buckles just in case.
Trini morphs twice as much as the rest of them, what with the penis and all.
Giant robots are surprisingly easy to drive.
Goldar runs with his tail between his legs the minute he sees a sword.
Sarcasm is a good way to set off your Alpha unit’s self destruct feature.
High FiveBilly is a ditzy klutz that can’t even pick up his morpher without dropping it.
“Morphatudness” is apparently a word I guess.
If a monster is indestructible, always take lessons from George Romero and aim for the head. It’s always the head.
When one monster fails, just throw a random one in with no setup.
The Tyrannosaurus zord is more than enough to wipe out a monster. To hell with the others.
When one conquers their fears, it’s always best to mock them about it and scare the living crap out of them if you can.
TeamworkIf two hot girls ask you to spend time with them, always reject them for remedial reasons.
High school girls have all the resources they need to clean up toxic waste by themselves.
Robots would like to learn hip hop.
Failed Alpha catchphrase: “Dudettes in trouble! Dudettes in trouble! Dudettes in trouble!”
Never drop everything to help the environment unless there’s a monster involved.
If your regular zords fail, don’t even bother with the Megazord. Abandon everything completely and use handheld weapons instead.
A Pressing EngagementIt’s easy to start over after doing one thousand bench presses.
Skateboarding indoors is allowed at the Youth Center.
Bubble gum and skateboards don’t mix.
When being bullied, tickling said bully works well.
It’s okay to dine and dash when the world is in danger.
Spontaneously appearing out of nowhere in the middle of a crowd attracts no attention.
Zordon thinks Billy and Trini are useless. Why else would he have ignored them when King Sphinx and Goldar appeared?
Teleporting to Jason’s aid apparently is inconvenient for no reason.
Different DrumTrini’s a mother-F-ing BEAST at arm wrestling.
Jason apparently sucks at it.
Three Stooges routines are a bad way to meet girls.
If someone feels bad about themselves, mock someone else who feels bad about themselves to make them feel better.
It’s more efficient for Rita to hypnotize hostages of random people than the Power Rangers themselves.
Always keep a deaf person around in case a pied piper shows up.
If you’re deaf, unquestionably hide while your non-disabled friends rescue others. And if the Power Rangers show up it’s just a coincidence.
Power Ranger weapons have multiple names apparently.
Jason’s dog smells.
Billy’s moves put Zach to shame.
Food FightBulk and Skull are helpful when hula girls are around.
Surprisingly out of the duo of Bulk and Skull, Skull is the hungrier one.
Pies are for throwing, not for eating.
Using sausage links as nunchucks is remarkably effective.
When a food fight breaks out, blame the people who had nothing to do with it.
Power weapons are a good source of iron.
When cornered by a giant pig monster, make fun of his nose.
Radishes are the SPICIEST FOOD KNOWN TO MAN!