Go, go Power Rangers

Thanks to Netflix I recently watched the very first Mighty Morphin Power Rangers episode that aired in 1993. Back then you either loved MMPR or you made fun of those people, while you secretly loved it in the dark. Everyone knew their power ranger color and fought kids off with their morphing dinosaur power on the playground. I always thought of myself as the yellow ranger because girls only had two choices and Kimberly, the pink power ranger sucked.

Even now, watching the show makes me a little embarrassed. The good thing is it was not as bad as I remembered, but I did have some serious issues with the plot and acting direction.

#1
The kids hung out at one of the coolest teen hang outs ever. There were coordinated classes of karate and gymnastics, and a juice bar with apparently no adult supervision. That would never happen in the real world. I can only think of a handful of things a bunch of hormonal teens would do while left unattended.

#2
For some reason these five teens are selected by a giant head and robot to fight off intergalactic terrorists. My reasoning is their wardrobes already color coordinate with their ranger color. Once selected, they blast into a blur to their new headquarters, given their ranger belts, and explained their powers and duties in a brief paragraph. With little comment they figure it's "too weird" and decide to leave. Uh, yea guys, it is weird. So why don't you ask any questions?! Like, where the crap are we? Who are you? Why do we morph into dinosaurs? How in the world is it possible to even morph? Why can't I be a different color? Nope. Nothing. They don't ask for any explanation. They just peace out.

#3
Rita Repulsa's voice (the evil chick) doesn't match with the movement of her mouth. It's bad enough that the other bad guys and power rangers can't move their mouths when talking and need to use extremely aggressive hand motions to express their unexpressive face. When Rita speaks, it is like watching a dubbed over Chinese movie. The actress just kinda holds her mouth open while she should be saying a line and it's still open, long after. I'm also pretty sure when her back is turned but you can still hear her voice, the actress is just standing there, not even pretending to mouth anything.

#4
I just love to hate the fight scenes. Anytime any of the rangers fight, they play the same metal clanging noise for every hit. It doesn't matter if it is skin to skin, rock to face, foot to sword. All metal. And again, back to the fact that these kids were just chosen and given morphing powers, they magically know how to fight dramatically better. They just hop in their giant dinosaur machine and can control it with a joy stick. And please, like five people could sit together in a even more giant morphing machine and agree on what to do first.

#5
Last but not least, no one ever dies! A couple punches are thrown and then the bad guys just disappear. I feel that the show really missed an opportunity to teach kids about loss and to kill off Kimberly. God, she was so annoying!

Thankfully the show had one kick ass theme song to redeem its other poor choices. I'm not sure how many more episodes I can manage to watch but MMPR did shamefully to steal another 20 minutes of my life and another 30 minutes while writing this post. Go, go Power Rangers.