Command Center Commentaries: Mighty Morphin Power Rangers Season 2- Part 3

Oh boy. We have now reached the point in the season that I have been dreading the most. With Tommy's return as the White Ranger, you'd think everything would be fine. But there was a HUGE problem behind the scenes. Around this crop of episodes (19-26), Austin St. John, Walter Emanuel Jones, and Thuy Trang all left the show. For a majority of the episodes here, you will see them in the Command Center and the Juice Bar with no problems. However, if you ever see them fighting the Putties or morphed, their voices will sound very strange. That's because their actors didn't stay around for the dubbing process, so a lot of these episodes sound REALLY off. So what do you do to fill that void with Jason, Zack, and Trini essentially being separated from the group? You start laying the foundation for new characters to come in and replace them. So let's see how the showrunners made the most of a horrible backstage situation.


Episode 21- Zedd's Monster Mash: This might seem like your standard Halloween episode on the surface, but there's a few other things to take note of. For starters, the episode opens with Billy and Kimberly talking about a peace conference coming up soon that will select a handful of teens from Angel Grove High. They ask what would happen if one of them would be chosen. What would happen to the Power Rangers if one or two of them would have to leave? Hmmmm...interesting. Anyways, the episode is a rehashing of previously defeated monsters fighting the Rangers in a graveyard-like forest. It's a standard episode, in hindsight, but it's Halloween and I love the atmosphere that Halloween brings to any television show.

Episode 22- The Ninja Encounter Part 1: Three new students from Stone Canyon come to Angel Grove to compete in a ninja competition. Tommy, Kimberly, and Billy meet the students: Rocky, Adam, and Aisha. Huh, they're wearing red, black, and yellow. Interesting. Anyways, we meet them after a really strange scene involving 9 characters chasing after a runaway baby stroller. Among those characters, most interestingly, is Bulk and Skull. There's some good progression for them. In a scene that shows dozens of Angel Grove citizens not do a darn thing to save a baby in peril, Bulk and Skull know the proper thing to do and spring into action. Rocky, Adam, and Aisha win the competition and Zedd kidnaps them and their teacher Mr. Anderson, the father of that runaway baby, and tries to turn them over to the evil side.

Episode 23- The Ninja Encounter Part 2: This episode really needed to be a 2-parter. There is so much filler here. The filler is made even worse when you take into account that Jason, Trini, and Zack are regulated to background characters. During these episodes, those three usually fall victim to Zedd's spells and monsters, making Tommy, Kimberly, and Billy needing to save the day. This really grinds my gears because it lessens the quality of their characters. These aren't just 3 side characters. They are 3 of the original 5 Power Rangers and they're made to look like chumps over and over again. I really wish they would have finished the episodes that were needed to transition their characters out, do the ADR, and then leave on good graces.

Episode 24- The Ninja Encounter Part 3: With Tommy, Kimberly, and Billy needing to teleport back and forth to save Rocky, Adam, and Aisha and Jason, Trini, and Zack, battling two different monsters, and accidentally revealing their identities to their new friends, you start to realize that this 3-parter doesn't really mean much. It could have been 2-parts. The first part, they meet their new friends and their new friends are kidnapped. The second part, they save their friends while accidentally giving away their secret identities and their new friends vow not to give up their secret. It's THAT simple. I will say that I do enjoy the Bulk and Skull stuff in this 3-parter though, stepping up to try and save Mr. Anderson's son Jacob, and also trying to take care of Jacob after Mr. Anderson is kidnapped. Plus, I lose it every time they yell "THE BAYBAY!!!"

Episode 25- A Monster of Global Proportions: Billy is leading some kind of junior United Nations conference and Goldar kidnaps the ambassadors unless the Rangers give up their Power Coins. This calls back to Return of an Old Friend, but the Rangers replace their coins with replicas made of chocolate. The episode also debuted the new shuttle zord Tor. Not quite as good as Titanus, but a fun little artillery zord nonetheless. I also really liked the use of Bulk and Skull in this episode. They see the six foreign ambassadors and assume that the Power Rangers would be six strong, intelligent, confident humans. So they deduce that the ambassadors are the Rangers. While not correct, it's nice to see that the wheels are turning logically for Bulk and Skull's plans. It's becoming more possible that they could eventually end up figuring out who the Power Rangers are. I think we can say that we didn't think that would be possible at the beginning of the season.

Character Spotlight: Kimberly Ann Hart, played by Amy Jo Johnson

The absence of Jason, Trini, and Zack left the door open for Kimberly, Billy, and Tommy to get a lot more exposure and development than they had previously received. This was the first time in the season that I really noticed that Kimberly had stepped away from the Valley girl stereotype. In one episode "Two for One," we can see that her relationship with Tommy is more open and public since she has a date with him. She really started to blossom into a role model for young women at this point, as opposed to being a stereotype of the early '90s.

Character Spotlight: Tommy Oliver, played by Jason David Frank

Tommy was developed more than any other main character in this season with the loss of his Green Ranger powers and his return as the White Ranger. As the White Ranger, his powers are incapable of being taken over by the powers of evil and it is through these powers that he is made the new leader of the Power Rangers. That's a huge shake up for the team because it pushes Jason to second in command. Of course, Jason was only there in spirit, so he probably couldn't put up a fuss. Anyways, with the White Ranger footage, you would normally see him separated from the Rangers. That's because the Sentai footage they used for him was completely different from the Sentai footage that gave us the original 5 Power Ranger suits. Yet, this White Ranger costume fits just as well with the team as the Green Ranger suit did. In fact, the White Ranger is my favorite Ranger costume of all time. Not really a surprise, since the White Ranger is my biggest first memory of Power Rangers. This is nostalgia at its finest. My favorite Power Ranger ever, in my favorite version of his character.

But we can only do bad dubbing and background acting for Jason, Trini, and Zack for so long. In Part 4, I'm going to look at the debut episodes for 3 new Power Rangers...


Mighty Morphin Power Rangers and images are copyrighted by Saban Entertainment