Surprisingly though I didn't hate this episode. It was... so-so. It's a typical, average episode of Power Rangers that I would expect from Saban Brands. An episode that puts in the bare minimum of effort and does nothing really special. Well OK, maybe to some fans bringing Casey back is special. Fine... but that's not special to me though since I, you know, hate the character. *Shrugs*
The episode had the Megaforce rangers visiting a local zoo and looking at all the different animals held in captivity. At one point, the rangers made their way to the tiger den, and they saw a guy cleaning in there while standing near a tiger. The rangers were amazed that the guy would have the balls to clean so close to a tiger. Now while I agree that it does take some courage to stand anywhere near a freaking tiger, Noah took it too far with one of his comments. He said something similar to, "It's like he and the tiger are connected." Umm, that tiger was lying down minding his damn business. He didn't even pay attention to the skinny white dude moving dirty around in his den. How did they look like they were connected? Ugh, but that's nitpicking, so I'll move on. But hey, the guy cleaning the den was Casey! LOL TIGER BOY!!111!!
Later in the episode, Jake ends up walking with Emma in the park. Naturally they talk about Gia, and Jake tries to probe Emma for information. OK, here's the thing. I am sick to DEATH of scenes like this. I am tired of the writers bringing up Jake's crush and then doing NOTHING with it. It's been over a year now, and Jake has made zero progress with Gia. Why the hell hasn't he asked her out yet? This is TV. Something should have happened or progressed with this "relationship" by now.
Jake asked Emma if he really had a shot with Gia or not. He felt that since Emma is her best friend, she might have some insight on how Gia feels about him. Now if Emma actually had revealed some new information in this scene, then maybe I would have liked it. For instances, if Emma had said something like, "I think Gia does like you. She just has a hard time showing her true feelings to people. You're a good guy, just take a chance and ask her out", then I might be praising this scene like a bunch of PR fans are. But she didn't say shit to Jake. Jake asked her the question and she ignored it. She ignored it because she saw freaking Casey in the park and ran to speak with him. Ugh!
So Emma and no-pussy-getting Jake spoke with Casey for a bit, found out that he's a martial artist, thought that was cool, and then ran off to deal with a monster attack. After the Monster of the Day rendered the rangers' weapons useless, Emma and Jake decided that they should have Casey train them to be better fighters with their hands so that they don't have to depend on their weapons.
Casey agrees to train them, which then leads to him bringing up one of the few concepts from Jungle Fury I liked: the idea that everyone has an animal spirit inside of them. Casey also tells Jake that his spirit is the snake and tells Emma that hers is the phoenix. I loved that. He even had the two rangers sparring each other in the Snake and "Phoenix" techniques. Fucking awesome. And to those few PR fans that disliked that Emma's spirit animal was a phoenix because those animals don't exist... the fuck is wrong with you? This is Power Rangers. If dragons exist in this world, a phoenix can too. Plus, as any Jungle Fury fan will tell you, there was a fighter in that season that had the Phoenix spirit.
The end result of the two minute training that Emma and Jake endured was that they defeated the MoTD and unlocked the Jungle Fury Zords (I think that makes 1 trillion zords in their arsenal now). The five rangers went back to the zoo to thank Casey, but he was gone. And one of the workers there told the teens that no one named Casey worked there. OK, what? This is ridiculous. First Jayden disappearing like Batman on the rangers last week, and now this. Why so mysterious? This is unnecessary. And Casey knew the whole time he was training Jake and Emma that they were rangers, and he waited until the last possible second to tell them he knew... for no reason. Again I ask, why so mysterious? Why the secrecy? You are all rangers, stop playing stupid games.
And another question: why didn't Casey help fight? I've never heard of rangers who still have their powers not fighting. It's beyond ridiculous. If Adam took his ass out and fought with a fucked up morpher in In Space, then damnit, Jay Jay and Casey can use their perfectly functional powers and battle.
OH! One more thing. I completely forgot about this while I was writing. Freaking Troy. Alright, so the rangers struggled a bit in their first battle with the MoTD because he managed to take away their weapons. After that fight, Troy. Was. Pissed. He kept saying over and over again that a ranger must never let go of his weapon, and he yelled at his team when they told him he was overreacting. In one scene, Noah was trying to research past ranger weapons to find one that would be hard for the monster to take, and Troy snapped at him. "A ranger must never let go of his weapon. So we won't. Now shut your bitch ass up Noah!" OK, Troy didn't say that last part, but with his attitude, he might as well.
Seriously, where the hell did this anger come from? We all know that Troy doesn't even have a personality, so him getting so pissy-wissy over random monster stealing his weapon was so left field. If Troy was in season one, he would have been mad as shit at the rangers for losing their weapons to Pudgy Pig. Damn.
So yeah, it was an average episode. Nothing to praise in my book. Didn't even feel like recording a video review for this. I don't understand how some fans thought that this was the best episode out of the Saban Brands era so far, but whatever. Different opinions. So if anyone reads this longwinded review, let me know what you thought of the Jungle Fury tribute episode of Super Megaforce.
