I’d like to begin this
review by making a disclaimer that unlike many of the other members of the Ranger Crew forum, with the exception of a few clips from past seasons of
the Sentai franchise that the Power Rangers franchise is based on and get
footage from, I’ve never watched any full episodes of the Sentai franchise. I
say this because people on the Ranger Crew forum were making references to the
Sentai episode that the producers got footage for this episode from as one as well
as the Sentai series that Power Rangers Dino Thunder is based on, which I
haven’t seen anything from either of those Sentai seasons. My thoughts on this
episode are based purely on this episode and this episode alone. That being said,
here on my thoughts on the episode.
Personally, I really enjoyed
this episode, and I thought that this episode had a lot of great moments. What
I liked the most about it was that this was a fairly lighthearted and fun
episode that had a lot of scenes where the Power Rangers weren’t morphed, which
meant that it was original footage for the episode. That’s something that I
personally feel doesn’t happen all that often on Power Rangers. Plus, it was an
Emma centric episode, which I tend to enjoy, because sometimes I feel like
she’s one of more fleshed out characters when it comes to characterization for
each of the Power Rangers from this season. This episode had a lot of great
moments with Orion too though since he was the one who helped Emma carry out
her plan to stop the monster of the day, which I’ll talk about more in a little
bit.
The episode began with
Prince Vekar suffering from a cold. He and his henchmen decided that the best
way to cure his cold was to get happiness from humans to give to Prince Vekar.
To do this, they recruited Desolar, who has the ability to steal people’s
happiness with his staff. He started out by taking happiness from a bride
during her wedding. Once her happiness had been stolen, she started crying,
confusing the hell out of the groom and the rest of the wedding party. He also
stole happiness from a little girl who was flying a kite and another kid at the
park.
I like the fact that they
made a point of establishing that Orion didn’t know what a kite was, because I
think that it a great way to acknowledge the fact that Orion isn’t from earth.
Just ignoring the fact that Orion is from another planet for the most part
seems like something that the writers would do on Power Rangers, so I’m glad
that didn’t happen, at least when it comes to this episode.
The Power Rangers fought
Desolar, who quickly made himself grow using a dial on his chest that he could
use to make himself grow and shrink himself down to a very small size, allowing
him to enter both of the Megazords and attack the Power Rangers from the
inside. He used this ability to get in Orion’s Zord where he briefly knocked
Orion out and used his Zord to attack the other Power Rangers. Once Orion
regained consciousness, he fought Desolar some more before Desolar shrunk
himself again in order to get into the other Rangers’ Zord.
This brings me to one of the
other things that I liked about this episode. I really liked seeing the Rangers
fight Desolar inside the Megazord while he was his normal size. Having the
monster of the day get into the Megazord attack the Rangers inside the Zord is
something that doesn’t happen on Power Rangers all that often. Given that Power
Rangers is a pretty formulaic TV show, it’s always nice to see them shake
things up in some way from time to time.
Emma managed to destroy the
dial that Desolar used to change his size while they were fighting him from
inside the Zord. Unfortunately for the Rangers, he managed to escape by making
a huge hole in the Zord. This led to Emma concocting what proved to be a very
elaborate plan that she carried out with Orion’s help in order to get Desolar’s
staff.
Emma’s plan began with her
and Orion pretending to be a bride and groom getting married. I have to say
that I thought it was pretty funny seeing Orion freak out about the whole
situation, especially when Gia suggested that he make Emma look happy by kissing
her. Orion seemed pretty uncomfortable,
as he and Emma were about to kiss before Desolar showed up at the church. Emma
was able to shoot Desolar while Orion was holding her in his arms, which I
thought was pretty cool and badass. Unfortunately, Desolar was able to get
away.
The next part of Emma’s plan
involved her dressing up in a cheerleader outfit and doing cheers in the park
in order to get Desolar’s attention. Orion was watching Emma the whole time,
and it was established that Orion can take pictures using his morpher since
they showed him taking pictures with it several times throughout the episode as
he an Emma were carrying out her plan. Gee, it sure is comforting knowing that
the Power Rangers can use their morphers to take a selfie during a monster
attack.
Anyway, Emma almost managed
to get Desolar’s staff by pretending be a cheerleader and was trying to give
him her pomp pomps while she tried to take his staff from him. Unfortunately
for her, he figured out that she was trying to trick him before he injured
himself, which led to Emma and Orion pretending to be paramedics that were
there to take him to the hospital in an ambulance. However, he once again
figured out what they were trying to do and he took control of the ambulance,
which then led to Emma and Orion pretending to be police officers as they
chased after him in a police car.
Just when I was thinking
about how ridiculous and complicated Emma’s plan was, Orion said what was
definitely my favorite line of the episode, “Man, Emma, this plan is pretty
elaborate.” This episode really reminded me of why my approach to watching
Power Rangers as an adult is to just leave my brain at the door and just go
with it.
After all, I’ve seen a lot
of things on Power Rangers that have made very little, if any sense, and
watching Emma and Orion carry out Emma’s plan was definitely one of those
times. I’m guessing the flowers in the church were from the wedding that had
just happened, but I have no idea where and how Emma got both a wedding dress
and a tuxedo so quickly. I have no idea how they managed to get from one place
to the next in a completely different outfit so quickly. I’m also pretty sure
that they stole both the ambulance and police car that they used. Also, unlike
my brother, I’m not a lawyer or an expert on the law, but I’m pretty sure that
it’s against the law to impersonate police officers. Yeah…that’s a great
message to teach kids. “It’s okay to steal and break the law as long as you’re
doing it so you can carry out some crazy plan that you have.”
That being said, this is
Power Rangers, so you just kind of have to go with it and not overthink things
like I said earlier.
Desolar went to the park
next and took happiness from a girl flying a kite and a boy who was playing.
Emma and Orion fought him some more, and he even managed to cause Orion to
de-morph. This was when Emma finally managed to get Desolar’s staff and break
it, returning the happiness inside it to everyone that he had stolen it from.
The other Rangers showed up and told Emma that they had finished repairing the
Megazord just as Desolar got away, again.
Emma told the others to go after him while she stayed behind and used a card
that she inserted into her morpher to create a wind draft in order to get the
little girl’s kite to fly again.
Personally, I thought it was
nice to see the show use the cards again like they frequently did in Power
Rangers Megaforce. Although, I always thought that Gosei was giving the Rangers
those cards as if they were candy. To me, I always thought that they should
have had to do more to earn those cards, but hey, this is Power Rangers, so you
just have to go with it.
Some of the other people on
the Ranger Crew forum were complaining about Emma doing this, but I personally
liked that she did that because it demonstrated Emma’s caring nature and her
being good at knowing how to make other people happy. I’m guessing that one of
the reasons that the writers did that was to explain Emma not being with the
others while they were fighting Desolar in Dino Thunder legendary mode. After
all, Power Rangers Dino Thunder didn’t have a pink Ranger counterpart that she
could have morphed into while they were all in legendary mode. Although, some
of the people were saying things about how the Sentai that Power Rangers Dino
Thunder is based off had some kind of Pink Ranger counterpart that she could
have morphed into, but since whatever they were talking about wasn’t in Power
Rangers Dino Thunder, I’m glad that they didn’t try to do that and simply had
Emma stay behind at the park for a few minutes to get the kid’s kite flying
again.
Orion managed to destroy Desolar
in his normal size using the legendary sixth Ranger mode just as his and the
other Rangers’ legendary Dino Thunder Powers were about to give out. Levira made
Desolar grow again, and Gosei informed the Rangers that because they’ve
mastered the Dino Thunder powers, they have unlocked the legendary Dino Thunder
Q-Rex Megazord, allowing both Orion’s and the other Rangers’ Megazord to
combine together. The Rangers were finally able to defeat Desolar for good
using the legendary Zord.
If you ask me, it’s rather
ridiculous how easily the Rangers are supposedly able to master their legendary
powers and unlock a new legendary Zords. It reminds me a lot of how Gosei was
constantly giving the Rangers new cards in Power Rangers Megaforce, but like I
said, this is Power Rangers, so you have to leave your brain at the door and
just go with it.
With Desolar defeated,
Levira sent Prince Vekar to bed, but it looks like she had caught his cold. The
episode ended with Emma meeting the other Rangers in the park for a picnic.
When Emma arrived at the park, she discovered that Orion was showing the others
all of the pictures of Emma that he had secretly taken throughout the day. Emma
seemed to be embarrassed when she found out that Orion had been taking pictures
of her, but Gia and Troy told her that she shouldn’t be embarrassed and they all
thanked her for everything that she did to help them defeat Desolar. Emma also
gave Orion a kite to fly because she had noticed that he had been curious about
what a kite was earlier in the episode and thought that he’d like to try flying
one.
The episode ended with Gia
telling Emma that she always knows how to make people happy, which I do think
is one of Emma’s defining character traits, and Emma once again used her
morpher to create a wind draft as the guys managed to get Orion’s kite flying
in the air.
All things considered, I
thought that this episode was a really fun and enjoyable episode to watch. While
I do think that Emma’s whole plan to get Desolar’s staff was rather ridiculous
and didn’t make very much sense at all in terms of how she and Orion managed to
get from one place to the next in a completely new disguise, that was the best
part of the episode, if you ask me. I think it portrayed Emma as someone who’s
very clever and can think quickly in a crisis, which definitely comes in handy
when you’re a Power Ranger and it’s up to you to save the world from constant
monster attacks. Plus, Orion’s comment about the plan being very elaborate was
pretty amusing and well timed.
That being said, my final
score for the episode is 9 out of 10 by Power Rangers standards. This is only
the second time that I’ve written a review for an episode of Power Rangers, so
I would like to be clear that this episode deserves a 9 for Power Rangers’
standards. If episodes of other TV shows that I review left as many questions
unanswered as this episode did, I would give it a pretty low score. However,
since I’ve learned to keep my expectations low when it comes to Power Rangers,
I think this episode deserves a 9.
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