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?

Episode 354 - The Cobra Strikes

Today on Power Rangers, we have even MORE Ryan angst. I approve of this, as it seems to be about the only interesting thing about this season thus far.

Ryan is still shirtless (more, please) in the medical ward. Ms. Fairweather is examining the cobra tattoo. I'm pretty sure she's not a medical doctor... but whatever.

Back in the city, there is a sudden darkness overtaking things. The rangers rush off and Ryan gets to pout because he gets told he can't go. Diabolico has brought down his freaky three-monster combo monster, Trika. It's boring. I didn't like these monsters when they were individuals. This weird three sided thing is just... blah.

Ryan can't seem to rest. He's anxious, so he watches the fight. The rangers aren't doing so hot, but he can't go morph. I think this fight would be way more interesting if it was all shot from Ryan's angsty point of view. The rangers were beat all to hell, unfortunately. Ryan feels useless because he couldn't help them, so he decides to figure out how to go stop the cobra himself.

Kelsey is upset because that monster is as strong as all three combined. Seeing as that monster IS all three combined, I'm not sure why this is so surprising. They decide to rush finishing the new project, the Battle Boosters, because it's going to be the only way to stop him. In other words, new toys. Trika goes back to Earth and starts attacking civilians because he wants the rangers to come play. They show up, the battle boosters are done right after they get thrown around a bit, and all of sudden everybody has a number keypad on their wrist. Apparently that's the battle booster? It's... whatever. It's another boring battle. Not even ten minutes in and we're two battles under our belt? This is not going to be the best episode.

Except then we get more Ryan angst! I love Ryan angst! He finds some ancient ruins and then he finds a cobra on a wall. He touches it and this apparently calls forth a cobra monster. He's going to fight it on his own.

Meanwhile, the rangers have destroyed Trika. Diabolico isn't happy about that, so he goes down to fight them himself. I still don't care about this fight. I think this is supposed to be some badass thing? But it's not. At least we get shots of Ryan's fight cut into the Diabolico/Zord fight. The Supertrain Megazord takes a big hit, gets a hole blasted through it, and this is the first time I DO NOT CARE ONE BIT that a megazord has been completely destroyed.

At the interesting fight, Ryan morphed to try to beat the cobra, but he couldn't maintain it. His cobra tattoo was too close to killing him. He demorphs, TAKES HIS SHIRT OFF (yay!!!), and then blasts a pillar of stone down on top of the cobra monster, destroying it. His tattoo fades (which how does he see it? It's on his back...) and he's free of the curse. And still shirtless. If he could just remain shirtless forever, that would be great.

He morphs, gets in his zord, and goes to join the other rangers while reassuring everybody that he broke the curse and the cobra is gone and yada yada yada. His zord and the rescue zords make some new megazord which completely negates any sadness we were supposed to feel over the destruction of the Supertrain megazord. Not that I felt anything anyway? But I think I was supposed to be upset by it. I just don't care. About any of this. This fight is the most boring ever. And I find most of the fights boring, so that says a lot.

Vypra continues to not be able to act and falls to the ground in despair that Diabolico is gone. The red glowy thing from Diabolico goes into the baby thing that really should be better supervised than it is. He ends up encased in a cocoon.

Everybody is celebrating back at the base. They think they're free, except then the alarms go off and they have to go fight something, because they don't have drills apparently. The rangers rush into the city and Queen Bansheera shows up in that glowy smoke thing she does. Ryan tells them about her and how badass she is. She won't be there to fight, but she says her son will be ready soon and he'll destroy them.

I really don't care. The only sad this episode gives me is the I-think-these-are-the-last-shirtless-Ryan-scenes sad.

Too boring for fish. No, really. It was. The only interesting parts of this episode were the Ryan-angst-shirtless parts and they were too few and far between. Even they weren't really INTERESTING... just... y'know... shirtless.

Episode 334 - Raise the Titanisaur

Today on Power Rangers, we get even more toys. Joy. We start off with engine troubles. Things are not going well on Terra Venture. Damon is down in the engine rooms running around ordering people to cool things down and turn that knob and press that button. There is lots of steam and explosions and it's all pretty great that everybody just listens to him. He calls for the evacuation of the area because he realizes this is one problem they just can't fix. The engine explodes. Damon meanders through the hall later, sweaty, dirty, exhausted, heartbroken. He actually plays this very well. He apologizes to the captain for failing him, but the captain reassures him. It's okay. He knows Damon tried. He also knows Damon can keep the other three going. He later tells Mike that if they lose another engine, they're lost. Which is a little odd. Because I thought they already were lost and there was no way they could get home OR to whatever their destination was in the first place? But whatever. Damon is amazing, so I forgive the show forgetting they were lost all this time. Meanwhile, the beach area is closed. One would think they could conserve fuel and engine performance if they, I don't know, SHUT OFF SOME OF THE UNNECESSARY DOMES? Like, turn the ocean off or something. Seriously, do you need beaches and waves on a space station? Not this one. Anyway, Barbaraxe shows up on the beach and the rangers have to fight him and then Deviot shows up and taunts them. As he does. The ground rumbles. (ground. on a spaceship. this show... I will never get over this) The Rangers are confused because I guess even they realize spaceships are not supposed to have EARTHQUAKES. Whatever. Out of the ocean rises Titanisaur. HOW DID HE GET THERE? HOW DID NOBODY NOTICE? HOW COME NOBODY IN THE CASTLE ON HIS BACK DROWNED WHILE BEING SUBMERGED UNDER SO MUCH WATER? ON A FREAKING SPACESHIP??? I mean, at least this coming-out-of-the-ocean shot was better than Dragonzord's shot? And that means somewhere Tommy is crying his manly tears of jealous sorrow over this fact, which makes that whole scene totally worthwhile. But it still makes NO SENSE. So then all the toys come out to fight Titanisaur and look, we're less than 10 minutes into this episode and it's all fighting. ZORD FIGHTING. Which is even more boring than morphed fighting. I'm sad that the only fighting I care about, unmorphed fighting, is so incredibly rare. Anyway, Titanisaur overheats and has to go into the ocean to cool down. THE OCEAN ON THE SPACESHIP GUYS. The rangers regroup to plan on how to beat him. Kai suggests focusing on the castle on his back. Karone points out that "if" is not the word to use, but rather "when". Meanwhile, Damon checks on the engines because he is a super awesome engineer and that's what you do when you've lost an engine and are responsible for keeping the other three working. So Titanisaur comes back as soon as he's cooled down. We get all the fugzords again. Mike even leaves his post to go help. In the City Dome. BECAUSE SPACESHIPS OFTEN HAVE LARGE CITIES WITH SKYSCRAPERS AND ABANDONED WAREHOUSE DISTRICTS FOR MONSTERS TO FIGHT THROUGH, OF COURSE! Oh this show. The castle is gone, because Captain Mutiny got wise to his weakness and left it behind. Maya is all about taking care of business anyway and Damon is very supportive of her kicking ass. As you do. There is a lot of fighting. Really boring fighting. Guys, this isn't even fishy, it's just boring. THIS EPISODE IS TOO BORING TO EVEN HAVE FISH! THE FISH HAVE ABANDONED IT BECAUSE IT'S SO BORING. What has this world come to??? So we end up with four zords and a rubber dinosaur suit fighting it out in the abandoned warehouse district OF YOUR FRIENDLY LOCAL SPACESHIP. They win. Of course. Fighting finally over, another engine is about to explode. Damon is fighting to keep it going. He even stops to reassure some guy he's doing a good job turning that valve. Oh Damon. I heart you so much. He manages to save the engine. Because he's clearly the most awesome person ever. And I love that he's totally in charge. He may not run the whole department, but he is definitely in the highest ranking position that still allows him to fix things and get dirty. Chief or Foreman or whatever. And his crew trust him! Look at them running straight into the danger zone because he asks them to... and goes himself as well. Damon is totally my favourite. 5 fish. There was no plot and yes, technically the fish abandoned this episode. They gave it up as a lost cause. It was too boring even for fish, which is an automatic five.