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Friday, October 3, 2014

Power Rangers Super Megaforce: Watch out, Everybody! The monster of the day is out to steal your happiness, and wedding bells are ringing for Emma and Orion! (My thoughts on episode 21x12 “United as One")



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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