#the justification makes sense but there was no foreshadowing and it was explained w no fanfare quietly in like 30 seconds

[acerikus]

Finished umbrella academy season 4. What the fuck

[tobiasdrake]

Power Rangers Turbo E03 – Shift into Turbo, Part III

Kinda weird that this is Part III, rather than a new episode. Part II featured the defeat of Divatox’s forces, the disarming of the bomb, and the completion of the Turbo Rangers’ graduation ceremony. The only thing left unresolved is whatever lascivious intentions Lerigot, Zordon, and Alpha have towards that supple, pulsating wormhole. But that’s more foreshadowing than an ongoing plot point.

Recap

We open on Tommy driving his racecar super fast, as a reminder that Tommy’s doing that now. Meanwhile, Kat, Tanya, and Adam are at the Youth Center getting pizza. As part of her college program, Kat’s been assigned a student-teacher role at Angel Grove High, working with the freshmen class. As part of an Education course, that makes sense, but I feel like it’s too early. Kat’s basically being thrown to the sharks without so much as an Intro to Education 101.

Of course, I never went to college. Too poor, plus I hated the American education system in general. So maybe that is actually how they do it, I don’t know.

Speaking of Angel Grove High, Principal Kaplan pops by the Youth Center to give everyone the good news. It seems the producers decided they didn’t want to go to all the trouble of building an elementary school set, so Justin’s skipping two grades to enter high school as one of Kat’s freshman students!

Meanwhile, in Divatox’s sub, Rygog is celebrating the fact that the planet will be completely undefended very soon. Divatox instructs him to prep the pirates for a full-scale smash-and-grab looting raid on Angel Grove. Pillaging, plundering, the works!

At the Youth Center, Justin’s like, “Wow, I can’t believe I’m going to be in high school. The producers really did just throw a brick with the words ‘KID SIDEKICK’ written on it into the writing room, didn’t they?” But the veteran Rangers assure him that he probably won’t be relentlessly mocked and bullied for his age.

He’s totally going to be relentlessly mocked and bullied for his age. Good thing he’s a triple black belt master from the Overcompensating Justification school of martial arts.

Zordon pages the Turbo Rangers. They report into the Command Center to find Lerigot propped up against the wall, high off his balls as always. Zordon gives them the news. “Lerigot has found a way to jailbreak the containment that forces me to be on this planet, tolerating all of you. I actually had a life before all of this, and I am hopping on the first space train back to it. I quit, I’m going home, and you can all suck my throbbing blue space dick.”

I honestly thought they were all going on a vacation or something and had prepared to make jokes about a booty-call to orgyville, following up on that whole wormhole robot porn thing. But this is way better. Zordon is straight up just flipping them all off and going home. He was only ever here because he was required to be. Zordon’s been a pretty shitty Big Good, all things considered, and this explains so much.

Like, if this had happened between shows, you could say that after defeating the Machine Empire, the Earth is safe. Zordon sees an opportunity to retire. But that’s not what’s happening. The Earth is currently under attack by a new threat, and Zordon’s like, “Not my fucking problem anymore. ZORDON OUT, ASSHOLES!” This is amazing.

So, Porto reports to Divatox that something is actually coming out of the wormhole and headed towards Earth. Divatox checks her periscope, then promptly shits herself. She screams at Porto, “CLOSE THE WORMHOLE! I don’t CARE if that doesn’t make sense, we’re motherfucking space pirates! I will pillage the laws of physics if I have to!”

And then this fucking thing walks in.

Meet Amphibitor, who is wearing the mouth of another creature as a fashion choice.

Having already pillaged the laws of physics in order to create a submarine that can shoot off into space and achieve FTL, Porto quickly whips up a device that he names the Wormhole Fucker Upper. Amphibitor will plant it on Earth’s surface and it will do its work.

Tommy shows up just in time for Zordon to make his departure. Lerigot begins casting his spell, but at the same time, Amphibitor plants the Fucker Upper. Alpha detects the wormhole closing and Zordon’s weirdly chill about it. He’s just like, “Well, fuck. Better luck next time.”

But Justin exclaims, “NO NO NO We can’t let this happen! I barely just met you and I’m already sick of you! We have to keep that wormhole open!”

But Divatox foresaw the Turbo Rangers’ involvement. She’s sent Elgar with some Mad Max raiders to ransack Angel Grove. So the Turbo Rangers have to deal with that instead. The team morphs,  deploys their Turbo vehicles, and rolls out to intercept them in the Max Max Desert.

A monster truck car crunch gets behind Tommy. Its jaws scratch up the back of Red Lightning, forcing him to call for support. Justin somehow pulls a 180 in Mountain Blaster without rolling his truck, then uses the momentum to drift to an intercepting angle. Once the monster truck’s within his sights, Justin guns it and T-bones the fucker.

Kat spots a raider coming up behind her. In the desert ahead, a second raider is headed straight for her. One raider behind, one ahead, and stretches of open desert to the left or right. Kat panics and releases the steering wheel, holy fuck.

Suddenly Kat remembers that Wind Chaser splits to form the Megazord’s arms. She hits the Megazord button and splits her car in two, whipping past the raider ahead of her and letting the two enemy cars trash each other.

Justin spots a jump in the track and he hits it just for lulz. Because he’s 12. And driving a giant truck.

Since Kat already hit the Megazord button, they figure why not. Kat splits Wind Chaser again and guns it for Mountain Blaster which is, in turn, gunning it for Kat. Wind Chaser docks to Mountain Blaster while the vehicles are still in motion; the whiplash nearly breaks her neck and the airbag deploys to punch her right in the face. Kat learned a valuable lesson about the physics of momentum today.

Tanya’s like, “Huh, I guess we’re doing this.” She and Adam race ahead to dock their zords together, then spin 180 degrees for Mountain Blaster to come forward and collect them.

All that’s left is Red Lightning, but Elgar’s death machine racer isolates him and separates him from the rest of the Megazord. Tommy, however, pulls a “Hey look over there” to distract Elgar and force him to plow straight into a large rock. Elgar’s car violently explodes. But apparently he’s okay. Popped another 1-Up from his supply.

Tommy docks with the others and they form Turbo Megazord! For, uh, for some reason. They came out here to trash Elgar and his cars, and they did that. But the Megazord sure is cool. Seriously, the next shot of Elgar we see is him and the Mad Max crew driving away with white flags taped to their cars. The Rangers just formed the Megazord ‘cause they wanted to play with their new toys.

The Turbo Rangers return to the Power Chamber for their usual debriefing. Zordon tells them that Divatox’s Fucker Upper is accelerating the wormhole’s collapse. It will close soon. But not so soon that they can’t still leave right now, so it’s nothing to worry about. After a quick farewell from Zordon and a more heartfelt one from Alpha-5, Lerigot casts his space travel spell and the pair turn to gold dust flying off into space.

Just then, the Command Center’s alarm blares. Tanya checks the system’s readouts and declares, “It’s the Fucker Upper! Apparently closing the wormhole will cause the wormhole to close!” This moment is exactly as stupid as it sounds.

We move to Amphibitor, who’s been standing at the Fucker Upper staring at the wormhole’s penetration while grunting heavily this entire time. I guess Alpha-5 isn’t the only person who finds it sexy; this motherfucker’s straight up wanking off to it.

Tanya brings up visuals on Amphibitor and Tommy’s like, “Gross. Alright, let’s go fuck him up.” But Tanya actually beats Tommy to the “Back to Action” line.

As soon as he sees the Turbo Rangers, Amphibitor breaks out a knife and fork. He races up a staircase to lunge at the Rangers, but they’re sorely unprepared to defend themselves on account of him having not zipped up his pants first. Tommy and Tanya take hits to the chest as Amphibitor whips between them. Tommy tumbles down the concrete staircase, grateful to the Morphin’ Grid for absorbing these repeated impacts.

Kat and Justin enthusiastically do cartwheels and shoulder rolls to distract him. Tanya tries to join in, but Amphibitor lands another swipe on her. Tommy races back up the stairs and shouts to his squad, “Guys, what the hell?! Killing this guy isn’t our mission here! Justin, you’re new and 12, you have Fucker Upper duty!”

Kat and Adam grab Amphibitor’s arms to hold him back, but he wrenches free and kicks Kat hard in the stomach. She goes flying from the force of impact and slams into a door. Meanwhile, Justin heads down the same stairs Tommy tumbled down earlier (wait, why couldn’t Tommy just grab it?) and moves for the device.

For reasons unfathomable to me, Justin stops at the bottom of the stairs and shouts to the guys that he’s almost completed his mission. Amphibitor hears this, thus shattering Justin’s stealth advantage. He finds an opening by shoving Adam away from him and shoots a bolt of lightning from his right-hand fork. The bolt strikes and explodes on impact directly beneath Justin, hitting the kid like a brick wall and then skipping him across the concrete.

On Divatox’s command, Porto loads a pair of torpedoes and Rygog fires them. The torpedoes hit Amphibitor, infusing him with giant size metaphysic whatevers. In addition to looting the Machine Empire’s warp cogs, I see they snatched Orbus’s stockpile of Make Monsters Giant fluid too.

It’s always interesting to see what new method a new villain will use to achieve the same effects for the sake of formula.

Now having an actual reason to use it, the Turbo Rangers redeploy Turbo Megazord. The Megazord zips straight into Amphibitor at maximum speed. Once the Rangers draw close, Tommy presses a button to hold the Megazord’s sword outstretched and then do spinny loops in place.

Before Amphibitor can even react, the Turbo Spinny Loop attack hits him like a buzzsaw, tearing him right in half and ending the battle. Well, that was fast.

Amphibitor’s death abruptly causes the Fucker Upper to stop working. The wormhole stabilizes and Zordon and Alpha make their way safely home. Lerigot peaces out immediately after his work is done ‘cause there is a crack pipe on Planet Middle-Earth with his name on it.

The Turbo Rangers take a moment to really consider the ramifications of this place being entirely theirs. No Alpha, no Zordon, and Billy isn’t living out of a supply closet down in engineering anymore. It really is the end of an era. Plus with Jason and Rocky bailing and everyone else moving on to college, like. Were it not for Divatox, closing up shop might be a conversation worth having. The Machine Empire is destroyed and Zedd and Rita haven’t shown their faces again, after all.

But suddenly there comes a horrible noise from across the room. Alpha-6 walks in, the new model installed with the latest edgy 90’s smack-talk software. Oh, I think I’m going to hate Alpha-6.

Suddenly, a bright light flickers on and off. After thumbing the light switch back and forth for a couple seconds, the new Zordon makes her entrance.

The Ghost of White Ninja Rangers Past is here to teach Tommy that if he had been more thoughtful and considerate in his youth, Kimberly would still have moved to Florida and dumped him.

Her name is Dimitria of the planet Inqueris. Kat asks if they need to introduce themselves and she just sounds off into this shpeal about, “Is not who you are more than who you think you are or are you merely the sum of who you think you are?” Oh god, she’s worse than Zordon.

Adam, confused and a bit put off, states that they weren’t sure who to expect as Zordon’s replacement. This asshole says, actual dialogue, “Would you be surprised to learn that there are many unexpected events in your future, Rangers?” She is trying so hard to sound wise while saying absolutely fucking nothing of value.  She is a perfect replacement for Zordon in all the worst ways.

Divatrox throws a typical villain failure tantrum like Zedd and Rita used to do but Mondo was too posh for. However, she’s not really upset about Elgar or Amphibitor’s defeat. No, she’s upset because she knows Dimitria personally and despises her. Why? What’s their history? Something interesting, perhaps?

No, Divatox explains at as, actual dialogue, “She’s the embodiment of good. I’m the embodiment of evil. You do the math!” Since when are you the fucking embodiment of evil, Divatox?! You’re a space pirate. A villain totally lacking in redeeming qualities to be sure given the hardcoded Black/White morality of the setting, but the embodiment of evil is a bit of a stretch.

But okay. I guess Divatox is the physical incarnation of all evil now. The Piccolo to Dimitria’s Kami. Time will tell if this is really a thing or if, like the Machine Empire successfully conquering the entire universe and Earth being the last remaining bastion of freedom left in existence, this is just going to turn out to be some hyperbolic villain hyping that never comes up again (and is actively contradicted down the road).

Divatox starts spouting cliché lines that she thinks makes her look badass because she’s a gigantic fucking dork and I love it. Behind her, Elgar tries desperately to swat a flying fish; I’m not sure if the fish is supposed to be a robot or if that’s just the low-budget 90’s prop being fake as shit. Either way, it comes in for a landing on Divatox’s top knot. As Elgar prepares to initiate his own castration, the episode tragically ends before he can make the swing.

Final Verdict: 6/10

This episode was fun to watch but I have serious concerns about the plot developments.

Honestly, I could mark this episode down for Zordon up and abandoning everyone just as Divatox shows up to threaten the Earth. But Zordon’s been such a shitty mentor figure. He withholds information for the sake of preserving dramatic tension all the time. He handles the Rangers on a need to know basis and he regularly answers requests for advice with by shrugging and passing the question back to its asker.

When I was a kid, I was taken in by Zordon’s Wizard of Oz appearance and his All Knowing And Wise voice. But Zordon fucking sucks. This reveal that Zordon’s been begrudgingly protecting the Earth out of sheer obligation because he’s forced to stay here could be seen as Character Derailment but honestly I appreciate this development. It makes a hell of a lot more sense than Zordon genuinely being an entity of pure wisdom and goodness or whatever.

In fact, this very episode features Zordon’s terrible leadership. In a stunning final display of how badly he sucks, Zordon takes Alpha and heads for the collapsing wormhole while not even making a token effort to have the Rangers stop Amphibitor from collapsing it. He knew this was happening, and he was just like, “Well, I guess I’ll be standing in it when it closes; better than spending another second with these losers.”

I have low hopes for Dimitria, because the problem with Zordon wasn’t that he was a consciously bad character. No, the problem with Zordon was shitty writing. Zordon was a plot device for delivering exposition moreso than a character, so the writers had him deliver exposition or break out new powers or toys for the Rangers however the plot demanded. Which meant, often enough, that inevitable twists and turns that cause the plot to go south were often Zordon’s fault for not sharing valuable intel or solutions quickly enough.

He had them. He just didn’t share them until it was time for the Rangers to turn things around and win. Because his job was to be uselessly silent when the plot demanded that they struggle, then break out the information and tools they needed when the plot demanded that they overcome.

I don’t expect this to change with Dimitria in his place. But if Zordon was prone to flowery dialogue that masks little useful information behind way too many words to make him look wise and intelligent, holy shit, Dimitria is already five times worse about that.

I’m going to need some time and more exposure to really make up my mind on how I feel about Alpha-6. I think a lot is going to depend on how hard the show tries to push him as the cool new robot that’s hip to the young people (but is written by exactly the kind of out-of-touch old white guy that would write words like “hip to the young people”). I’m getting red flags, but we’ll see.

Also, seriously, we’re now saying that Divatox is the embodiment of evil?! That’s a pretty major status upgrade from space pirate and I have very strong reservations about whether or not she’ll actually live up to it. It reeks of the kind of line a Power Rangers writer would throw into a script just ‘cause it sounds all cool and menacing, without spending even two seconds thinking about how it plays into the story. “Kids are stupid, nobody will care.”

The last five or so minutes of this episode set up a lot of status quo stuff that I’m nervous about. But the fifteen minutes or so that preceded it were really cool, Zordon being useless and nearly killing himself through negligence aside.

The ground battle against Amphibitor was a serviceable bit of Power Rangers action. It suffered, however, from abruptly stopping at its most interesting part. Justin’s badly wounded and straining himself to reach for the Fucker Upper, the other Rangers are struggling to hold back Amphibitor—WHOOPS NEVER MIND let’s go to Kaiju fight. And then the Megazord anticlimactically oneshots him.

Amphibitor got screwed by a phenomenon that plagues some Power Rangers episodes; the villains kick off a Zord battle when the monster is already winning the ground battle, thus giving the Rangers an opportunity to flip the table by Megazording him in the face. Episodes like this tend to bother me when it feels like the monster could have won if the mastermind had just kept their kaiju-boner in their fucking pants.

The stand-out high point of the episode was the Mad Max car battle. If this is setting the stage for what we can expect from future Turbo episodes, I take back what I said about Car Zords being stupid. That was a really cool chunk of vehicular action! Could have been better, I’ve got my nitpicks about it (KAT), but overall that car fight was a fun thrill ride from start to finish.

Best Ranger: Tommy Oliver, Red Ranger

“I don’t know why you guys started forming Turbo Megazord, but sure. Let me just defeat Elgar and win the battle for us, and then I’ll be right over there.”

Worst Ranger: Katherine Hillard, Pink Ranger

One car ahead coming your way, one car behind coming your way. Miles and miles of open desert to either side. Which way do you turn, left or right? If you answered “I scream in abject terror, take my hands off the steering wheel, and let physics decide this,” then you’re Kat today.

“Jesus take the wheel” is not, and has never been, an appropriate response to a perilous vehicular scenario.