Thursday, September 19, 2013

Episode 358 - The Omega Project

Previously... hell if I remember. Ryan was shirtless? I remember that much. And I got stuck with a Joel episode? REALLY? Ugh. (Whatever, I did miss this.)

So we start off with Joel and an inappropriately young friend using a telescope. The inappropriately young friend is named Simon, and he can join the list of future rangers. In fact, tiny child wants to work for Lightspeed. Joel tells the inappropriately young friend that working for Lightspeed is serious, but when he grows up, he'll be able to work wherever he wants.

Meanwhile, the villains are plotting to use an asteroid or something. I don't care. But the tiny child notices it right as his mother tells him to go to bed.

If Joel is not related to Simon, I am super assuming that he's sleeping with the kids mom.

Ms. Fairweather is explaining a new power up to the Rangers, and how she's created the Omega Megazord, which is the latest in Zord tech. I think she just wanted an excuse to make them say Omega Mega. Then Joel shows up with flowers, and she is all "late again." He tries to give her flowers, but is interrupted by a call. Simon the inappropriately young friend calls and apparently has hacked into the frequency because its super important, but Joel ignores him. Captain Awesome is all "What is going on?" and he ends up getting the flowers that Joel was going to present to Ms. Fairweather.

Simonagain is all "LOOK, I AM SMART. Have this binder of proof and math and I am WAY SMARTER THAN YOU." The kid is great. "I have the position, the velocity, EVERYTHING." Kid is totally a future Ranger and/or future tech. This time Joel believes him, and he goes to Lightspeed.

Ms. Fairweather ignores Joel, because frankly, Joel has cried wolf approximately 87 times at this point and she's running tests. So the kid simply hacks into the database because he is the most brilliant. By the time everyone else has figured out how to get into the office, Simon has proven his point. Ms. Fairweather is all "damn, this kid is great."

An alarm goes off, and the Rangers have to go form a zord to fight the asteroid. They... stand in the middle of the city and plan to blow it up? That is poor planning. All the debris will still destroy everything!

Olympius is all "well, I'll block the sun so they won't have any power." SCIENCE DOES NOT WORK THIS WAY. Did they learn nothing from earlier? Hell, MMPR stopped the solar power megazords after green with evil!

So the Rangers have to ignore the asteroid and go fight olympius and blah blah blah. Meanwhile, smart inappropriately young friend is doing science. He's all "whoops, thing is bigger than we thought." Ms. Fairweather recalls them to the base so they can initiate the omega project. God, I have been in fandom for so long I am so confused as to why a/b/o is involved, and that's not even my kink.

Inappropriately young friend is all worried as the Rangers dramatically enter their zords or whatever, and everyone in the base is super intensely watching. They take off, and the kid adorably salutes captain awesome.

So they go and fly in space and form a megazord and then try to land on the asteroid? They can't find a place to land, so Chad shoots stuff and then they land. The megazord like crab crawls or whatever, and then the whole episode turns into Armageddon as they start drilling into the asteroid. (I refuse to link to that piece of crap movie.) They insert some explosives. Apparently this giant asteroid will only need two of them. Bullshit. They insert the second explosive, and then the asteroid starts attacking them?

Ms. Fairweather starts yelling at them to pull out, and Carter is all "well, we'll have to detonate everything manually" so they fully form the omega megazord and then they get the omega missile, and then they hit the explosives with the sword, which makes everything explode? The kid yells very dramatically and seriously, who was watching Armageddon when they wrote this script? WHO DO I HAVE TO BLAME.  There is a giant explosion, but Carter's voice comes in and they are all alive and everything is destroyed.

The inappropriately young friend gives Joel the credit. Joel congratulates Ms. Fairweather, and she tells him that Simon did it. Joel tells the kid to ask Ms. Fairweather out, and the way he phrases it TOTALLY makes it sound like the kid should ask her out for himself. He lets the kid wear the hat and everything. She then agrees to take Simon to the planetarium. Kid is way better at this than you are, Joel. And he is not an ass.

Fish: 5. Anything that I have to compare to Armageddon is an AUTOMATIC FIVE FISH. On the other hand, the kid is super great, and I look forward to him being a Ranger/tech one day.

Fic we want: SERIOUSLY, THAT KID IS GREAT

Random thought that didn't fit into the recap: Man, all of their plans seem to involve DESTROYING EARTH. Or is the magic asteroid not going to totally destroy the planet? Where exactly are they planning on building their palace anyway, if an ASTEROID WIPES OUT EVERYTHING.

Episode 357 - The Queen's Return

WE'RE BACK! I know it's been, like, half a year. But we're back. For reals this time!

Okay, so part of the problem is that this season is so. Freaking. BORING. I just can't bring myself to care about... any of it. I actually had to go look up the episodes we'd already recapped because I'd forgotten pretty much everything except Ryan being shirtless.

We start off with villains! Who's names I can't remember! And don't even care enough about to go look up! So we'll just call them Symbol Guy, Horned Guy, Whingy Demon Bratling (who I almost called Fabulously Shiny Red Guy, because he is super fabulous), and Weasly Less Awesome The Count. Plus Lady Who Can't Act. They are planning plans. Or something.

So then we get to our intrepid heroes. Carter is driving. Joel is being a jackass in the back of the jeep and singing horribly to some old cd player (that probably wasn't that old when this aired). He is not wearing a seat belt. Carter slams on the brakes and Joel REALLY should have gone flying out of that Jeep and being horribly maimed by the road. If, y'know, physics existed in this universe. Chad and Kelsey are rollerblading and they stop at the same time as Carter. Because there is an Ominous Black Cloud in the sky.

Ryan knows about it and finally deems it the right time to tell them it's an evil ceremony. Something he could have mentioned, oh, I don't know, any other time prior to this point! So off go the Rangers to Stop Things. First they have to save people from a burning building, though, and once again I wonder what happened to the firefighters in Mariner Bay.

This leaves Ryan to go off and stop the summoning. He gets caught by Lady Who Can't Act, though, and thrown down to take part in the summoning. As a sacrifice, I suppose. Which is a bit dark for a kids show! Or maybe just to be tied up and look attractive. Symbol Guy pulls some Space Doesn't Work Like That and Lady Who Can't Act sounds less than excited that now her Queen can have a corporeal body again.

Luckily the Rangers finish with the building-on-fire and show up just in time to interrupt the ceremony! They free Ryan and fight the bad guys and I guess Ryan can morph now? Because he finally did and knocks out some underlings. I forgot how cute they are in this series! Why don't we get to see the little bat guys more often?

Oh well. Carter takes out Symbol Guy, or so they think. Instead he just get bigger. It looks like he has little Christmas lights dangling from his hat and it's also the first time I found him even remotely interesting. But he's big so that means all the zords must come out to play.

There is fire and brimstone and things shooting from the damaged building into space. Physics, show. This is not how it works. The ceremony is sort of complete and the Queen sort of shows up, but she's mostly just a big head floating in the sky, and everybody is really happy. She is clearly What's His Face's (Lokar) girlfriend. I wonder if he knows he has a whiny demon bratling? In celebration of her triumphant return, she plans to destroy the city herself. She sends a tsunami, but Ryan thrusts a sword into things and jams up the Evil Flow. She vanishes. The planets come out of alignment (SPACE DOES NOT WORK LIKE THAT MKAY). Ryan appears to be No Longer With Us.

The rangers and all the zords beat the Symbol Guy. Whingy Demon Bratling is sad he won't see his mother again, except then she's totally there. Or something.

Ryan crawls out of the rubble apparently unharmed. LIKE MAGIC. Back at the base, Ryan decides to leave to figure out how to capture the bad guys again. It has Super Dramatic Music. Really it just reeks of "Making new footage is out of our budget now". TSB says, at least they didn't send him to a Peace Conference. AGREED. Although maybe he really went on some secret project for Torchwood...

The only thing that could make that ending more bearable would be if Ryan had been shirtless. Or Carter had been shirtless. Or Ryan and Carter had been making out. OR THEY HAD BEEN MAKING OUT SHIRTLESS! That's how the episode ended in my head.

Why so boring, season? WHY?