Mighty Morphin Power Rangers - S01E23

Welcome to Ranger Reviews, a webseries where we look at episodes of the tv show, Power
Rangers and then discuss it!
Today, we’re exploring the twenty third episode of Mighty Morphin Power Rangers, titled
“Itsy Bitsy Spider”.
We start this episode with Trini being Trini about an ugly ass statue in the park that’s
about to be torn down to put in a fire pit.
She’s attempting to collect signatures for a petition to make sure that no fun is had
in public spaces, and apparently this creepy ass statue has a legend about it that it protects
the people around it from harmful insects.
Oddly specific, but this is where we finally get Zack’s second character trait in 23
episodes, which is that he hates bugs.
Apparently the flower in the hair of the statue is supposed to represent all the great things
insects do for humans, which to be fair, is legitimate, but don’t worry, here come Bulk
and Skull.
They take a box of cockroaches from a nearby table which I can only hope are apart of Trini’s
plea for the petition that Bulk then throws all over a crowd of people, who immediately
disperse in panic.
In the pandemonium, somehow, a tarantula has found its way to Zack’s shoulder, which
Tommy straight up tries to smash with a binder like it’s a god damn daddy long legs, but
luckily, the spider moves out of the way, and Tommy just hits Zack instead.
Not gonna lie.
I chuckled a little bit at this.
At night, a gaggle of putties, Baboo and Squatt show up in the park to admire the statue before
they take it away.
The next day at school, Trini is upset that they lost all those bugs because evidently
they belonged to the science teacher.
Why did the science teacher just have a TON of insects around?
Who knows?
Billy shows up to ruins everyone’s day to show off his “lab assistant” Jack, who
is a miniature white mouse whose only purpose is to go onto the ground, climb up Skull’s
pants, and do a gag with that.
On the moon, Finster explains to Rita that he will create a monster named Spidertron
that will remain hidden inside a duplicate statue that they will then place in the park.
But wait!
There’s more!
They’re gonna also surround it by moths made of sleeping powder.
Why the duplicate statue?
Why is a monster that ends with the word “tron” not even remotely robotic?
Why moths made of sleeping powder?
We’ll never know because it’s time for the rangers sans Zack and Tommy to go looking
for bugs, and wow, Billy has shown up in full safari garb.
It’s marvelous.
But, this expedition is short lived as Rita sends down putties so that they don’t get
too close to the duplicate statue, and we get a pretty decent putty fight in a new location.
What’s Zack doing?
Teaching a bunch of white nerds how to fight dance.
Yup.
Welcome to Hip Hop Kido, bitches.
But before things can get too nasty, Zack realizes he left a tape in his car for the
best porno music, so he leaves the kids to practice some sweet moves on their own.
The sleeping powder moths show up in his absence and knock the kids out, and when Zack comes
back, this is looking like a god damn hate crime set up.
He tries to wake up the kids to no avail, and he contacts Zordon who tells him what’s
going on.
The moths show up and start….
chasing Zack, who runs away from these things on strings.
Luckily, Zack remembers that the statue in the park is supposed to protect humans from
insects which is definitely not the thing that Trini said about insects doing things
FOR humans, and when he gets there, he notices that there’s not a flower in its hair.
Instead, it’s a pair of snakes.
Zack decides to take matters into his own hands and morphs, taking out his Power Ax
where he promptly blows the statue up for no other reason than it was different than
he expected.
Spidertron hopes out of the statue’s remains, and all of a sudden, Goldar flies in to fight
Zack too.
Man, this is turning out to be a really shitty day for Zack.
Zordon lets the bug seeking rangers know, and they morph to the scene.
There’s a short battle before shoots them with his Blade Blaster, and for some reason,
Rita utilizes this opportunity to make Spidertron grow.
The rangers call out the Megazord, who quickly just punches Spidertron in the most comedic
way.
Then something mildly interesting happens!
The Megazord is hit so hard by Spidertron that they disengage from the formation, and
we get a nice little battle between the individual zords and Spidertron.
Then, Jason gets pinned down, so of course, we gotta call in Tommy.
Where has Tommy been this entire time, you may ask?
Just casually training with a sword in the forest.
As one does.
He morphs to the scene and calls on the Dragonzord.
They bring together the Dragonzord in Fighting Mode, which they now refer to as the Megadragonzord
which is kind of a better name in my opinion, and then straight up impale the shit out of
Spidertron.
Seriously, we see his smoking innards from the stab wound.
Zack goes back to the sleeping white kids, and yeah, they’re fine, and they all dance
together again.
But don’t worry.
This episode hasn’t been put out of its misery just yet!
We’re back at the high school where Zack brags to his friends that he’s over his
fear of bugs.
Tommy puts a plastic spider on his shoulder, and it totally freaks him out anyways, so
of course, predictability for predictability’s sake.
The end.
This episode isn’t nearly as bad as I made it sound, to be honest.
I think Zack has pretty much always been my favorite character of the original five, so
any focus episode for him is definitely a win in my book.
The fights were familiar but different, and I love when the rangers get isolated from
the others.
I don’t know why, but the fights always seem to really excel when it’s just a one-on-one
monster fight.
That being said, it’s a shame no one knows if it’s the Dragonzord in Fighting Mode
or the Megadragonzord.
What will they call it next time?
Find out then, and may the power protect you!

Mighty Morphin Power Rangers - S01E23 - Episode Review

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