Episode 5 - "Different Drum"

I know what you’re thinking: “My life would be enriched if only I had some teenagers with attitude to read about.” I have heard your call, and I answer thusly:

RECAP

We start things off at the gymnasium/juice bar that our heroes love so dearly. Kimberly is teaching some kind of aerobics class. Either that, or she’s just being obnoxious and barking orders at people who are just trying to get some cardio in. Some people, you give them a magical power coin that transforms them into 15 year old Japanese stock footage and they think they own the gymnasium/juice bar. Ernie enters pushing a towel cart and doing what appears to be “the truffle shuffle” from “The Goonies.” He leaves his towel cart for a moment while he gets really INTO the music. Billy tries to look cool by copying Ernie’s dance (for a smart guy, he sure is stupid.) But in typical Billy fashion, screws up and trips onto the towel cart with such force that he and the cart go careening across the floor of the gymnasium/juice bar. Everyone screams and runs away while Billy flies back and forth (somehow the cart never slows down.) Kimberly is oblivious to everything that’s happening around her until Billy crashes into the wall beside her and falls down in a heap of towels and what looks like toilet paper. Kimberly sees her friend is hurt and leans down to help and ask if he’s ok. At least that’s what you’d think someone would do when their friend crashes headfirst into a locker. Instead she leans down and mocks him, saying it’s not a great way to meet girls. What. A. Bitch.

Meanwhile, on the moon Rita is pissed off because she doesn’t like Kimberly’s music. She chooses to turn the tables and “get back at them with music.” That’s right, Rita’s motivation in this episode seems to be “Those damn kids, and their music.” Presumably she’ll yell for the rangers to get off her lawn later also. Back at the gymnasium/juice bar Billy is still struggling to get to his feet and is groaning. I think he may have a serious head injury. Trini comes over and asks what happened even though she watched it happen. I think she’s just fucking with him, so far not much compassion from the females for ol’ Bill. She helps him over to the juice bar where Zack and Jason are seated. Billy complains that he can’t dance (alas he doesn’t sing the Genesis song) while they all watch Kimberly’s class walk back and forth clapping. Line dancing maybe? Two of the dancers bump into each other and it looks like they’re about to throw down but one of them just runs off prompting Kimberly to give her dancers a break and go talk to the poor girl. It seems the girl who messed up the dance moves is deaf. Her friend Billy nearly dies in a towel cart accident and she doesn’t care, but ONE deaf dancer trips someone up and suddenly she’s Oprah. We discover that Kimberly can read and perform sign language. She accepts full responsibility because she forgot to sign the moves. I think Kim might be being too hard on herself there. The moves were the same thing they’d been the whole time. Literally walking back and forth clapping, Kimberly in true Kimberly fashion points out that even “hearing people” can be fuck ups and points over at Billy who is still trying to figure out the whole dancing thing. Monsters better attack soon, because this is turning into Fruity Dancin’ Power Rangers…

On the moon Squatt and Baboo ask Rita to elaborate on her plan to defeat the Rangers with music. I predict she will trap them in the gymnasium/juice bar and force them to listen to The Jonas Brothers. She yells at Finster who tells he he’s hard at work on “a musical monster that eats cars and smells like a fish.” Nice work Finster. Truly terrifying. Rita tells him to forget his weird monster and start working on a musical one that will mesmerize the Rangers. She describes it as “like the Pied Piper, only meaner.” Sounds deadly. Finster claims that musical monsters are not particularly reliable and offers a “firebreathing hedgehog” instead. This just pisses Rita off. She’s really set on this musical monster, she threatens to turn him into a slug.

Back at the gymnasium/juice bar they’re still dancing. Luckily Bulk and Skull turn up but even they are goaded into dancing by Zack. Zack challenges them to a dance fight and we watch fatty cut a rug for little bit. Finally Bulk spins around before going for the splits and hurting himself. Zack goes in for the kill and does a little “jump off the counter top move.” Bulk just flips over it and everyone laughs at him. Sorry Bulk… YOU GOT SERVED. After what seems like an eternity the dancing stuff ends and we go back to the moon. Finster has created a monster that plays a hypnotic accordion… Seriously. He’s going to hypnotize some kids to lure the rangers to him and then he’ll defeat them once and for all. The monster looks a bit like a Viking Roseanne Barr. Some less attitudinal teens leave the gymnasium/juice bar and all fall under the spell of the hypnotic accordion. All, that is, except for the deaf girl (and you thought they just threw a random deaf girl into the episode.) The monster leads the hypnotized teens into a big cave. The deaf girl tries to follow but is thwarted when a tiny little rope mesh falls down over the opening of the cage blocking her entry. I assume she can’t just lift it because, while it LOOKS like rope it made the sound of an iron porticullis falling down which means it’s too heavy or something.

The deaf girl runs back to town to search for help, she finds Ernie and Jason and we basically get the whole “what is it girl? Do you think she’s trying to tell us something? Is it trouble? Billy’s in a well?” routine. Finally she gets the bright idea to write down the problem and Jason leaps into action. We cut back to the cave where the hypnotized girls are having a crazy dance party with the putties. Well, not really dancing, kind of prancing in a circle. There is like a 3 minute scene of the girls dancing, the monster pointing out that they’re dancing and Squatt and Baboo talking about eating bugs. I’m guess that the script ran a little short in this episode. The monster goes to sleep which just pisses Rita right off, she gives them an earful and the monster turns invisible for some reason. Then he ties his shoes because he smells the power rangers coming.

IT’S MORPHIN TIME!

There is only one big group pose this time before the rangers charge in with their weapons and make sparks and smoke fly off the monster. They’re not messing around this time. They fuse the weapons together into the rainbow bazooka and blow him up. But, Rita throws her cane down and makes him both reform AND turn really big.

WE NEED DINOZORD POWER. NOW!!!

After the familiar stock footage of dinosaur robots charging out of the wilderness the rangers pose and jump into the air and pose in their cockpits. Apparently Jason has shit to do because rather than trying to fight with their individual zords like normal he calls for them to go straight to megazord power, but to keep things a little fresh Jason instructs his teammates to “power up their crystals, they’re going to tank mode.” I’m pretty sure we’ve seen the tank before and they only just got the crystals last week, but I’m going to ignore that. The rangers stab their crystals into the dashboard and we see the Megazord tank form up and roll into battle. The monster (who has been waiting patiently during all this) shoots a big laser at them. It must have been a big one because Jason quickly changes his mind about tank mode and goes to big robot mode. Megazord steals the monsters rake (yes, that’s right rake. He has a giant rake.) But the monster busts out his incredibly annoying accordion. Thankfully, Megazord punches it and it finally shuts up. The monster shoots more lightning but the rangers are having none of that. They bust out the mega sword and kill the monster. Jason then tells his team it’s time to “get the girls out of the cave and take em’ home.”... It’s good to be the red ranger…

The prisoners tell Kimberly and the rangers how cool the power rangers were. The teens play it cool, but I’m pretty sure they’re developing egos. Those teens sure have attitudes. Back at the gymnasium/juice bar Ernie announces that the rangers and their deaf friends are getting “soda’s on the house.” Now, Ernie doesn’t know that these kids are the power rangers so he can’t be rewarding them for saving the day, so why is he giving them free drinks? That’s just bad business Ernie. The rangers toast the deaf girl, who looks scared because she can’t hear what they’re yelling at her. Jason tries to say something to the deaf girl (I’m not sure what) but apparently he tells her his dog smells. Hilarious. Deaf girl asks Billy to dance. They launch into a very sexy line dance that looks kind of like “the monkey-dance”. The rest of the rangers talk about how awesome the deaf girl is (I think her name is Melissa, to be honest I was a bit distracted by Billy’s dance.) Billy starts doing some crazy break dancing moves and the rangers and one random girl who didn’t have any lines that episode look on.

THE GOOD

I think the only really great part of this episode was Squatt and Baboo randomly eating bugs.

THE BAD

This whole episode was pretty bad actually, but the worst was the sound of the freaking hypno-accordion. It was terrible.

THE HILARIOUS

They went to such great lengths to teach us how deaf people can save the day and will likely abandon this character after this episode.

All the dancing.

Overall, not a strong episode. I give this one 2 power coins out of 5.

Next week on Power Rangers we have an episode called “Food Fight” wherein Zack goes up against Iron Chef Bobby Flay. The secret ingredient is… JUICE!!!!