Yeah from memory at the time, I thought Drive just felt like an overreaction to Gaim, going to as back to basics of a Rider show as you could imagine. It does end up developing into more than that, but even if I had stuck with the show when it aired, I am not sure how much difference it would have made around my feelings towards the show for it to suddenly shift into something better so late toward the end.

The good thing about watching these shows years later is if I want to sit down and watch six episodes in a row or whatever I can. It doesn't mean the pacing issues necessarily go away, but it doesn't mean I get one half of bland case of the week, and then have to wait a week to see the second half, knowing all of these episodes play out in largely exactly the same way anyway.

I have mixed feelings about the two block case story structure thing and find myself sorta talking out of two sides of my mouth about it a lot. I think for as much as I loved Gavv overall, it was a reminder that your show being largely formless, largely structureless, actually often isn't healthy for a story, because your story lacks clear focus and a driving engine. You indulge on things which don't really add much to the overall story, and having some sort of framework to funnel you down the right path when you start veering off track would have taken a great show like Gavv to me, and made it even more special.

For all of Drive's own pacing issues, one thing it doesn't do is wander down tangent arcs that take up a lot of screentime and achieve basically nothing like Gavv did constantly. The two block case structure forced Drive to focus on its core elements always, almost to a fault at times, but I actually do think it was probably healthier for the overall story to shackle Drive into a framework until the end where they let them go Type Wild.

Yeah the Sixth Ranger is exactly what it looks like to me too, but more like the Power Rangers original ones they do cheaply and can only afford to have in a couple of episodes.