Mighty Morphin’ Power Rangers Episode 3: Teamwork

Kimberly and Trini work on closing down a dump site. Rita sends a minotaur to fight the Rangers. Teamwork is involved somewhere.

Episode Summary

In Angel Grove High School, Kimberly and Trini work on getting signatures for a petition to shut down a local dump site. Here, we meet Mr. Caplan, the school’s principal, and his mannerisms and dialogue paint him as a lovably incompetent individual.

The girls try to convince Jason, Billy, and Zach to go with them to the dump site to deliver the petition, but they all give lame-o excuses on why they can’t go. “It would be a lot more impressive if we acted like a team,” says Trini.

Comic Relief

As the guys leave, Bulk loudly belches. Yes, it’s that time again. Time for a comic relief scene featuring Bulk, Skull, and…wait, who’s that? A mute, punk girl with sunglasses is now with the duo. Her name is Sharkie and she was supposed to have a recurring role in the show, but for some reason or another that fell through, and now she only pops up a couple times in these early episodes.

Rita’s Plan

On the moon, Rita exclaims that her “pollution will ruin the whole planet.” What? Is this an episode of Captain Planet? She spies on Kimberly and Trini with her telescope and sends down a group of Putties to fight them. By the way, it’s always bugged me that whenever a Putty got hit, we heard a metal clank. They’re made out of clay, not metal!

Enter the Minotaur

Trini and Kimberly finish off the last of the Putties and are joined by the other Rangers, but now they all have to deal with Rita’s latest monster, the Mighty Minotaur. “This is the toughest situation they have faced yet. Perhaps the time has come for me to reveal to them the ancient secrets of the Power Weapons,” muses Zordon.

Rita throws her wand and makes the minotaur giant-sized, and the Rangers call their zords to form the Megazord. Zordon immediately decides the Rangers should retreat. Isn’t it a little too soon for that?

Introducing the Power Weapons

The Rangers teleport back to the Command Center, where Zordon gives them all the Power Weapons he alluded to earlier, then sends them right back to the battlefield. The minotaur has returned to regular size, giving the Rangers the perfect opportunity to try out their new weapons. How convenient.

The Rangers combine their weapons into a larger weapon with multiple cannons, the Power Blaster, and zap the minotaur into nothingness. Battle over.

Epilogue

Back in the high school, the five teens use super speed to clean up a mess Bulk and Skull made earlier in the episode. Zordon contacts them on their communicator watches to talk about how great it is they’re working as a team, and we get an awful scene of Alpha practicing some dance moves Zach showed him earlier in the episode.

Thoughts

This episode is as weak as the ones that came before it. The whole pollution storyline is dropped very quickly. When we discovered that Rita was behind it, I thought Trini and Kimberly would find the source of whatever was causing the pollution and destroy it. Instead, they just fight Putties then leave.

Teamwork?

The episode’s lesson of teamwork isn’t delivered very well because the Rangers have been working as a team since day one. The combining of the weapons into one big weapon to destroy the monster does symbolize teamwork, but then again, so does the Megazord.

I would rather have seen the Rangers struggle at doing something by themselves at first, then learn that they have to work together. Some of this was touched on in the beginning when Jason, Zach, and Billy decline to go with Trini and Kimberly to the dump site. The episode should have ended with all five teens going to the dump site together and successfully closing it down.

Instead, we got Alpha 5 dancing.