Minority Opinion Alert: Judd Lynn's Return to Power Rangers

*Dusts off blog*

So it's been awhile since my last blog post. My goal was to write a new one at least once a month, but clearly that didn't go as planned. Oh well, let's talk Power Rangers.

More specially, let's talk about a topic that I should have blogged about MONTHS ago when the news of it first came out: Judd Lynn coming back to work on Dino Charge.

When we first heard the news, I did get a few comments from people asking me to make a video on it. Thing is... I really had nothing to say. Nothing good anyway. So Judd Lynn's coming back. Yes, he is a good writer, and he is responsible for some of my favorite seasons. And yeah, I'm sure he'll do a great job whipping Dino Charge into a decent season at the very least. But so what?

When I tell you that I don't care about Dino Charge, I mean it. You know what season I did care about? This 20th/21st anniversary season. So Saban Brands decides to hire a capable writer that has previously worked on PR before and has knowledge about how the show works and its lore. That's great. That's wonderful. WHY THE HELL DIDN'T THEY DO THIS FOR MEGAFORCE!

Why are they working hard to make sure that regular ass Dino Charge is a good season, but dropped the ball completely on Super Mega Flop?! I don't understand this. If there was any season to bring Judd Lynn back for, it was Megaforce. The big anniversary season that is in DESPERATE need of storytelling and character development. The big anniversary season that is one of the worst seasons I have ever seen.

I am beyond disappointed in Super Megaforce. The Gokaiger footage was handed to SB on a silver platter, and yet they completely squandered it. So many potential storylines could have been built off of that footage, but we got nothing. There is literally nothing going on in Super Mega Flop. In every episode the nameless Alien Armada attacks, and the rangers fight them for 20 minutes. Sometimes with powers never seen before on this planet! That's it.

The rangers have Super Mega Mode, but you can forget about getting any answers on where the hell Gosei got such power, or where the hell the 563649278789274 zords in his arsenal came from, or where the hell Gosei comes from, or where the hell these villains come from, or how the hell the Sixth Ranger Key ended up on Orion's dead planet, or what adversity Troy went through, or why the hell T-roy was psychic for two episodes, or why the hell I'm watching a 20th anniversary season where people have no idea what a damn Power Ranger is and have no knowledge of Countdown to Destruction. I just... what?!

Oh, but Judd Lynn will be back for Dino Charge, and that somehow makes up for the fact that the 21st anniversary season is a joke? No! Too little, too late. Super Megaforce is the season that SB should have called Judd Lynn back for. Maybe then the season would have had a name that isn't ridiculous, and we could have had interesting characters, and amazing plots, and callbacks to past seasons that actually make sense!

Look at all this negativity. This is why I didn't make a video when the news first broke. I was sick of being a Negative Nathan about a franchise that, as a whole, I still love very much. The good seasons still outweigh the bad in my book. It's just that we haven't had a good season in a loooong time. And the one season that should have NEVER been bad... turned out to be garbage.

I truly envy the fans that are still excited about SMF and future seasons. Wish I still shared your enthusiasm. When it comes to PR, the only thing I care about at the moment is the MMPR Reboot movie. Please let that be good. Please.

Super Megaforce: Spirit of the Tiger Episode Review

I hate Casey. I despise that character and the season he comes from. I wasn't thrilled that his season was one of the few chosen to receive a tribute episode. I wasn't thrilled that Saban Brands decided to bring Casey back to represent Jungle Fury instead of RJ, the actual fan favorite of that season. And I sure as hell wasn't thrilled that Casey had some lengthy screen time in this tribute episode, compared to Jayden last week, who was almost a "blink and you miss it" cameo.

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.

Random Thought: Power Rangers Super Megaforce Earth Fights Back

A few days ago I had a random thought about the second episode of Power Rangers Super Megaforce. It's not worth making a video over, but I didn't feel like doing multiple 140 character tweets on it either, so I decided to put it on my blog. I need to update this thing anyway.

So this was the episode where the Mega Rangers defeated the Monster of the Day with the Legendary SPD powers. While I was re-watching that fight online (a fan-edited version with the SPD theme song added in), I started thinking about how cool it would have been if the rangers had pulled out the SPD morpher and did the "Judgment Mode" thing on the monster before delivering the final blow. Troy could have said something like, "you are charged with trying to cause mass destruction, judgment!" Then the morpher would flash that giant red X on the monster to show that it is indeed guilty of such evil. After that, the monster would ask, "Are you going to arrest me now?" Then the rangers would respond with, "Nah, we're just going to destroy you. Delta Max, load! Fire!"

How messed up and hilarious would that have been? Yes? No? Well I laughed for a solid minute over the thought of it. If I'm laughing alone, that's cool. Just a random thought.

Bad boys, bad boys. What you gonna do? What you gonna do when they come for you?

Super Megaforce Plots That Will Never Be

Oh Super Duper Megaforce. So much potential, but I don't expect much from you at the moment. Power Rangers has such a rich history that is just waiting to be tapped into, but honestly I don't think this season will. At least, I don't think it will at the level that it should. Remember, this is the 20TH ANNIVERSARY season where people don't know what a Power Ranger is or that aliens fucking exist... Lawd Geezus...

Now Super Megaforce may surprise me and turn out to be very good. I mean, Megaforce is... decent so far and is LEAGUES ahead of Samurai. However, that still doesn't change the fact that there are many things that I KNOW the writers won't do in this season. Things that I would have loved to see. And that's what this blog post is about. I'm going to list some of the things that I think would have been cool to see in Super Megaforce. Oh the fangasms that will never be.

1. Tommy and Kat Married:

I'm still pissed that we're not getting a Mighty Morphin tribute episode with most of the MMPR people. But I get it. It was too expensive for a multimillion dollar company to bring them back. Fair enough. However, for me it would have been cool to at least see Tommy and Kat appear for an episode together and be married. That silly christmas episode from Zeo hinted that they'd end up together. It would be a nice and simple way to build on the show's history.

2. Billy:
There's so much that could've been done if they brought back old Billy boy. Last time we saw him, he decided to stay on Aquitar so that he could fuck around with some fish lady. A tribute episode could've led to some focus on the Aquitian rangers as well as Billy. Two birds with one stone! I'm very curious about what's going on with William these days. Is he married? Does he have kids? If so, are they Power Rangers? Maybe have Billy show up on Earth to give the Megaforce rangers a new weapon. Or perhaps the villains want to kidnap Billy and use his incredible genius for their own evil purposes, and the Megaforce teens have to save him. Hell thinking about it, Billy probably should've been the mentor for this season...


3.Gosei's backstory:
Let's be honest. They are not going to explain where the hell Gosei comes from or how he ended up on Earth. I tried to have faith that they would but... they won't. They barely focus on him in the episodes now. He's just this giant, tiki looking plot hole, and the writers are content with that. "Oh, let's just say Zordon placed him on Earth. Those old, crusty fans will love that." NO! I don't love that. Not if you're not going to explain when Zordon did this. But even if they do explain it, will they do so in a way that makes sense? The only time Zordon could have ever "placed" Gosei on Earth was during Turbo. Gosei could not have been on Earth during MMPR, otherwise Zordon should have contacted him for help during the 908904839 crises that happened during that time. Do the writers know that though? Doubt it.

And I'm not even touching that fact that Gosei missed multiple alien/demon/mutant attacks before finally waking his ass up from his deep sleep. Sigh why couldn't he just have been a friend of Zordon's from Eltar who decided to come to Earth this year to help the humans fight against an upcoming threat? Hell, why did the Megaforce rangers need a mentor anyway? It's not like Gosei has done a lot so far. Why not just have the Morphin Grid act on its own and pick some rangers. If it can talk to Kira and Ethan and show them the future, it can pick some rangers.


4. Troy's Visions:
Oh Troy. This guy has got to be the blandest red ranger we have evah had. The writers do nothing interesting with him, and all his character interactions suck. But he can see da fewchaa! Why, we don't know, but I'm curious to find out. Too bad we probably never will.

Power Rangers fan Fury Diamond, who seems to be in the know about a lot of behind the scenes stuff with PR, stated that the writers originally had a plan to explain why Troy can see the future in his dreams... but this plan was later scrapped. Ugh. So they have time to shove a shitty music episode in Megaforce at the last minute, but they can't be bothered to explain why Troy is clairvoyant?  We still know nothing about this walking mannequin other than he's the red ranger. Seeing a story arc explaining his visions could have been cool. Oh well...


5. Referencing Countdown to Destruction:
This is on the list because I'm just tired of this not being brought up. This was the most important war in Power Rangers history, and it's NEVER brought up (except for in Lost Galaxy because LG is awesome). The villains conquered Earth. Hell, they conquered the universe. The rangers should be reading about it in their history class.

If any season should bring C2D up, it's this one. But it won't. *Cries thug tears* T_T


6. Jake and Gia Dating:
Ok, this one may actually happen. At least I hope it does. I want to see these two become a couple and date a couple times in the show. That could be fun and it could lead to lots of wacky antics. Buuuut I'm not getting my hopes up. Power Rangers has a bad track record with romance these days. If Jake and Gia never date and only end up together during the last scene in the finale, I will scream.

I want these two crazy kids to be the new Zack and Angela. Let them date!


I'm sure there's more, but I'm done with this list for now. So listen. I'm going to be fair and not judge Super Megaforce for not doing everything I want it to do because they do only have 20 episodes to work with next year. They have to balance focus on the current team of rangers with tributes to the past seasons. That can't be easy. So really, I just want to be entertained. Just do that, and I won't bitch (too much).

Nevertheless, I will always think about what could have been. If Power Rangers could have had a 40+ episode adaptation of Gokaiger, imagine the possibilites. Under capable writers who know the Power Rangers lore, we really could've had something great.


P.S. Check out when I did this for Power Rangers Supah Samurai.