Episode 76- Beauty and the Beast

Otherwise known as Kim Is Uber During Blatant Contract Disputes.

We can sum this episode up in the short bit of conversation:
TSB: I'm watching the Power Rangers episode where Zedd tries to make Kimberly his queen
Friend of TSB: Your show is so cheerfully fucked up :P
And so it is, Friend of TSB. So it is.

We start the episode with Billy looking very buff sitting at the Juice Bar with Kim. She's showing off her brand new blue mirror that Tommy got for her. Billy comments on how quiet it is without Tommy and I'm still wondering where he went. I mean, he still lives in Angel Grove. He still attends Angel Grove High School. He's still in all their classes. He didn't drop off the face of the planet there, guys. He's just not a ranger. If they're missing him, it's their own fault for not hanging out with him.

Anyway. So they lament the lack of Tommy and then Kim, scanning the newspaper, gets the idea to go see Madam Swampy the fortune teller. Yes, they spell it that way, which I know is legitimate, but without the 'e' on the end, all I can think of is the type of Madam that runs a House of Ill Repute. Ahem. Anyway, Billy tries to dissuade Kim by explaining the lack of scientific evidence for such fortune telling, but she is bound and determined. He agrees to go with her, but he wants to stop by his house to pick up his rollerblades first. As soon as they leave, Bulk and Skull see the ad and decide to swing by Madam Swampy and see if she'll tell them who the Power Rangers are. Skull is wearing an awesome civil war style hat. I just had to point that out.

So Billy apparently takes forever to get his rollerblades (TSB is sure it's because they stopped to make out, but I can't really get behind that theory since I don't ship Billy/Kim... I see it, but I don't ship it) because Bulk and Skull beat him and Kim to the fortune teller. She demands $5 but they can't pay. All they have is a fake bug, a marble, and a bit of plastic. She tells them they'll get what they pay for, thrust a "map" at them, and sends them on their way. They believe the map (which is on an orangish-pinkish coloured piece of paper, so not exactly inspiring on the whole legitimacy thing) will lead them to happiness and set off following it, not bothering to look at the other side.

Shortly after they leave, Kim shows up. Billy isn't with her, so she heads in on her own. Before she can even go in the door, Goldar and a bunch of putties show up. Goldar tells her he's going to make her his queen, she resists, and then he pulls out some magic powder (again with this stuff?). It makes her pass out and Goldar totally cops a feel while holding her. They teleport away and her bag and mirror are left on the ground. Zedd takes that opportunity to turn the mirror into a monster, contradicting previous episodes yet again.

Meanwhile, Billy and Zack are rollerblading in the park. Billy gives a convenient excuse for the lack of Jason in this episode. He's apparently on a fishing trip in the mountains. Billy also has really nice arms and ought to be shirtless, but instead they put him in a skimpy tank top. I suppose it will do as far as eye candy is concerned. If we can't get him shirtless, we'll deal with scantily clad. While I was distracted by Billy Being Pretty, Zordon contacts them and says there is trouble. They teleport to the Command Center where they meet up with Trini and discover Kim has been captured and is in a cave... somewhere. But Zordon doesn't know where. But he was watching them on the Viewing Globe. Yet he still doesn't know where they are.

So they're supposed to find Kim, but there is a putty attack in the park and Ritchie and Curtis are in trouble (only they're not, because they were totally handling themselves in that fight, being set up as replacements like woah). So Zack is going to go help them while Billy and Trini go find Kim. And Jason isn't there because he's on his fishing trip. And I just wonder why he can't escape the fishing trip for a bit? I mean, they get out of school all the time. Can't he just claim a spastic colon and go lock himself in a bathroom or something? Oh but wait, Zordon gives a flimsy and nonsensical excuse. Somehow the mountains are shielding him from Zordon's communication waves (since when?). Oh Angel Grove geography. Make less sense. I dare you.

So Billy and Trini teleport to the cave we all know and love, but we're apparently not supposed to recognize it as they claim it's never been seen before. Yet it's the same cave everybody gets thrown in when kidnapped, ranger and civilian alike. So we have the WORST VOICE ACTING EVER with somebody who doesn't sound anything like Thuy Trang and is doing an accent we can't even figure out where it's supposed to be from. I spend the rest of the episode trying my best to ignore it.

Meanwhile, Kim wakes up. Goldar does some more magic on her and she's supposed to be under a spell, to be their queen. They've even put her in Rita's old clothes. She's not affected, however, but is smart enough to realize she can't let them know that. So she does the best Rita impression EVER. It's impressive. She squawks and orders and makes demands. She talks back to Goldar and it is AWESOME.

Billy and Not-Trini rush in and she lets them know she's not really under a spell. She even, at one point, comments that she should have been an actress. I find this especially amusing since Amy Jo Johnson is arguably the most successful actress of the entire group, having gone on to have a good number of notable and popular roles in mainstream television. Anyway, Trini manages to get Kim's morpher while Billy distracts Goldar by... pushing him. Or something. Kim morphs, Goldar and the others leave, and then the threesome go to the park to fight the putties and the mirror monster. Y'know, that monster that Zedd made earlier that's just been standing around twiddling it's thumbs. I seriously forgot about it until they went to fight it. They meet up with Zack and Jason, who apparently managed to convince his fellow fisherpeople that he had a spastic colon and needed to vacate for a bit. So they fight off putties and the monster, apparently being non-confrontational, tries to leave. But Zedd won't let him. Zedd makes him grow instead.

I think we all know what happens after that. Zords. Small fight. Mirror destroyed. While I glossed over the fight, I did spend a bit of time marveling at the city planners of Angel Grove. They somehow managed to design downtown, the city center, with conveniently large spaces just the right size for a MegaZord to waltz through without needed to step over or around buildings. And seeing as how the MegaZord towers over even the tallest buildings, that's some MASSIVE walking space.

Back at the Youth Center, Kim laments that she can't find her mirror. Curtis shows up with it in hand and totally macks on her. Oh Curtis, stop being Zack 2.0 please. It's not impressive. Then Bulk and Skull show up, having followed the map all the way to the Juice Bar. They're disappointed, however, to find only Zack, Kim, and Billy and not the Power Rangers as they were expecting. Billy gets hold of the map and points out the other side. There is a coupon for a free muffin. Ritchie even points out the free muffins. He pauses after saying "free muffins" and then waits patiently for Bulk and Skull to each take one. They bite into them and only then does Ritchie add the important part of that deal. The muffins are free with the purchase of lunch. They spit out the muffins (ew) and then can't pay for them or lunch, so Ritchie and Ernie (who just sat idly by while all this was going on) hand over aprons so Bulk and Skull can wash dishes to pay for the food they were told was free when it really wasn't. Good job, upstanding moral characters.

List time:
2.5 fish. The plot was pretty solid, overall, and there were really only a few issues... mainly Zedd turning a non-living thing into a monster (which has been stated he can't do), and Jason's mountain interference before his spastic colon (cookies to anybody that catches where I got the spastic colon reference).

Billy speak: "There's no scientific data to support such practitioners" is as close as we got.

Covered in food: nobody really, unless you count bits of chewed muffin when Bulk and Skull spit out their free-but-not-really muffins.