Episode 164- Invasion of the Ranger Snatchers

So this episode is the trippiest episode EVER. Like, it's even trippier than A Clockwork Orange, okay? And I'm glad we did this tonight, a day late, instead of last night, when we usually do, because I'm not sure I could have handled this supremely awesome and yet uber-WEIRD episode on the last night of Chanukah (in which there were piles of latkes and roast chicken and beer and gelt and dreidel and presents and very pretty candles and my new favouritest holiday story EVER, The Latke Who Couldn't Stop Screaming).

I... don't know if I can explain this episode.

Rocky, Tanya, and Kat are going to be extras in some movie/tv show/filming production of some sort. Rocky wants to be the star, though, and swears up and down he can act, he really really can, and I can't help but combine character and actor here because, no, Steve, honey, you can't. You really really can't. But you're VERY pretty in your blue not-really-a-toga and you have VERY lovely arms, so I can forgive the horrendous overacting. I'd watch him walk around in a toga any day of the week. Ahem.

Moving on. Bulk and Skull get placed on guard duty for said film production. Skull wants to be in the show, but Bulk keeps him on the straight and narrow. Daw. Sprocket, in his ever annoying whine, wants to make a movie of HIS OWN. So, despite the nails-on-a-chalkboard-grating whine, he comes up with a really good plan. He's going to make a movie, and trap the rangers in it! Good thinking, kid. Drop the entitled whinging, and I might actually like you.

Cogs end up at the production site to kidnap Rocky, Tanya, and Kat. Except everybody mistakes them for extras in costume and, despite Rocky trying to warn them, Director Guy puts them on set. They try to take out the main actor hero guy, but Rocky steps in and saves the day. Because he's AWESOME like that. He calls for Kat and Tanya, who have remained completely oblivious during all this (I maintain they were back behind one of the trailers "getting to know each other"). They run off set and morph, really failing at that secret identity thing.

Meanwhile, at the Youth Center, Billy has been super sweet and created a workout program for Adam and Tommy, using their biorhythms or something like that. It gets increasingly difficult based on what their bodies tell his program. There is lots of gratuitous rolling and sparring and then they get called to help the others. Billy goes to the Power Chamber to investigate while Adam and Tommy go to fight cogs.

Except somehow they get sucked into Sprocket's movie. Where they sit on a weird Alice in Wonderland room for awhile. Nothing can get in, and nothing can get out. They agree to play along with Sprocket's plan because, well, nothing else is working I guess? But it's just... ODD. Like, I can't even begin to explain what happens.

Somehow there is a room where things happen. Then Tommy and Tanya have to go do something through a doorway in another section of Sprocket's "movie studio". Billy gets a message through, and Adam declares that he must find Tommy and Tanya in order to live happily ever after. And a new threesome ship is born. So they all find each other.

But then they find chickens! Which came through a portal of some sort. Because a bus in the "real world" pushed them through. So the rangers all go through the portal. Into the "real world". Where they end up on horses chasing the bus. There are children crying in the bus, except there are no passengers on the bus whatsoever, which we discover when they all jump through the bus windows. They jump OUT of the bus holding onto adult passengers that came out of nowhere, and the bus goes over a cliff and explodes. The people vanish. But they're in the real world now? Or they think they're in the real world? I don't... um... yeah.

So they all think they've rewritten Sprocket's script and they get a happy ending and they're free. Except they're attacked in really bad splicing by four monsters. And they call the zords, which they shouldn't be able to do if they were in the movie world, but then what happened with the bus couldn't have happened in the real world so... fish? Definitely fish. Oceans and oceans FULL of fish.

I just call really bad FISH trip for the whole rest of the episode.

At some point the four monsters end up being a train, which they defeat by destroying the tracks. And that destroys Sprocket's plan and they win for the episode. Somehow.

Look, I said I didn't know how to explain this episode! And I meant it. It's seriously like they were all on a really bad acid trip when they tried to write it. We're just writing it off as a lot of fish and the rangers changed the plot of the episode. So there.

So back on the actual movie set, Rocky is all excited to do his first stunt. But this is where Rocky learns about stuntmen. Because he doesn't get to do it. His stand-in does. Meaning Skull. AWWWWWWWW.

I... am not quite sure what I just watched. But it was fun!

Fish: 5. 5 5 5 5 5. I haven't seen such a confusing, bad trip in... um... ever.