It was the early 90's, the era of totally radical attitudes and bright colors. Also apparently another moon landing. Yes, astronauts on the moon find and open up a "space dumpster," unwittingly releasing the long-imprisoned supervillain Rita Repulsa (later joined by Lord Zedd), who decides her first act upon release will be to conquer the nearby planet Earth. The only hope of stopping her is good space wizard Zordon, who summons five teenagers with attitude to don the brightly colored uniforms and vaguely dinosaur-themed weapons of the Power Rangers!
I probably don't need to say a whole lot about this show. (I will anyway, of course, because my first language has always been and will always be filibuster.) If you're the kind of person who cares about Power Rangers, then you already know about it. Hell, you probably know at least a little even if you don't care at all.
What you might not know is that Power Rangers is the "fortified wine" of television. That is, they took an existing product, mixed it with some stuff of their own, and presented it as a new thing. In this case the base was Japanese action series Kyroryu Sentai Zyuranger (Dinosaur Team Beast Ranger), part of the long-running Super Sentai franchise. Saban Entertainment used battle footage from Zyuranger, and later on Gosei Sentai Dairanger (Five Stars Team Great Ranger) and Ninja Sentai Kakuranger (Ninja Team Hidden Ranger), added new story scenes featuring American actors, and released it to western audiences. The result was a hit show despite its flaws, and the beginning of one of the longest running franchises on television, celebrating its 25th anniversary this year.
I'll be going over all of the Rangers series to date here. No, not all at once as that would get boring for both of us, but I will keep up with it over time. So, on to our review.
So, the question on everyone's mind... is the nostalgia here deserved? Well, I would argue that nostalgia is never deserved or undeserved it simply exists on its own... but that aside, is the show good? I would say yes and no.
On the one hand, the show gave us some classic episodes and storylines. The most notable example of this is, of course, the story of Green Ranger Tommy Oliver, who started out as the most threatening and successful villain on the show, turned to the side of good, and eventually became a permanent part of the team as the heroic White Ranger. You might have heard of him as the most popular Power Rangers character ever and probably the longest running, not only following the other old school rangers into Zeo and Turbo, but also reappearing as a recurring character in Dino Thunder.
On the other hand, episodes and storylines like that were the minority. Most of them are really just "okay" at best. The show definitely tended towards the BAD side of campy in most cases. Evil tubes of lipstick and rapping pumpkins were common enemies. The "teenagers with attitude" were actually overly idealized with basically no flaws or attitude at all. (They also weren't played by teenagers, but you probably could have guessed that.)
It also suffers pretty serious decay later on, with eventually the two most threatening villain lackeys - Rito Revolto and Goldar - becoming absolute jokes who were regularly defeated by unarmed 10 year olds. And no, don't get me wrong, I'm not saying I want to watch Rito and Goldar chop up a busload of little kids any more than the show's producers want to show that. Obviously. I just also don't want to watch the villains who I'm supposed to find intimidating get humiliated by tweens with water balloons. Yes, that happened. So... I don't know, maybe just don't write yourself into that corner to begin with? It's not hard, you just have to care about what you're doing.
And yes, I get that the show was aimed at kids and was meant to be funny, but that's no excuse. There's a difference between making your show accessible to everyone and just insulting the audience's intelligence. There's also a difference between telling jokes and BEING a joke.
So overall, it's kind of hard to give this show a single rating. Power Rangers was a roller coaster of quality. The good episodes were really good and would warrant an easy 4, while the bad episodes oscillate between a soft 2, a hard 0, and a middle finger before being tossed in the trash. Overall, I'd give it...
MEDIOCRE
While the show was mostly mediocre on screen, when it was off the screen... it was a hot @#%$ing mess. It was run by greedy dick Haim Saban, whose basic plan was just to make the cheapest show possible with a scheme that only beats out Vince Perri's Action 52 scheme by virtue of the fact that Saban's Get Rich Quick Plan actually worked.
Aside from the cheapness of just re-using scenes someone else shot, the actors were treated like slaves. Amy Jo Johnson (Kimberly, the Pink Ranger) has called it the lowest point of her entire career. Austin St. John (Jason, the Red Ranger) stated in interviews that he would have made more money working fast food. David Yost (Billy, the Blue Ranger) was so mistreated by his co-workers that he nearly walked off the show multiple times because the constant anti-gay bullying he suffered made him want to kill himself.
It's ironic that, in spite of how troubled the production was, this is also the most lighthearted and idealistic series of the entire franchise. The heroes have zero flaws, society is perfect (or at least has problems that are easily solvable), the only true evil out there comes from obviously bad space demons... I guess the ultimate lesson we can learn from this is that, just like the rich philanthropist who runs a secret sweatshop (ie. Haim Saban himself) anyone who puts that much effort into being so obsessively nice is DEFINITELY hiding something.
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