I am an idiot and a fool. (Alternate Title: Secretcode's Descent Into Madness)
 

So a few months ago (May, specifically) I had a brilliant idea: Watch every single episode of Power Rangers before the 20th Anniversary (August 23, 2013) and see what has held up and what hasn't. I needed a place to write down my rants/thoughts, so I figured this place would be the best to do it.

It's challenge time, as well. I challenge each and every one of you to watch every single episode of Power Rangers (Or cheat and start with the episode I'm currently on) and ride along with me into my slow descent into madness. Feel free to post your own thoughts as I go along or as you watch the show yourself!

Thoughts of prior episodes, summed up:

MMPR:
- Nothing is more grueling than watching 155 episodes of Mighty Morphin Power Rangers. The show hasn't held up worth a damn over the years, and yet I couldn't look away.
- Aisha is truly the world's most useless ranger. Even including Justin.
- Ninjor sounds more like Marvin The Martian than I remember
- Were the Thunder Slingers used just as little in Zyuranger?
- Seriously. Aisha is horrible.

Zeo:
- Let it be said: I am horrible biased on this season. It was my favorite as a kid, and it's still my favorite now.
- The Gold Ranger Red Herring Teases got annoying pretty fast.
- The Super Zeo Megazord is the most broken Megazord of all time.
- I'm highly disturbed by Archerina and Prince Gasket being married. Not because the idea of two robots being married confuses the hell out of me and reminds me of the shady side of the Transformers fandom, but because they were cousins in Ohranger. And they also married. I may be from Kentucky, but come the fuck on.
- Tommy and Jason are the best duo ever.

Turbo:
- Hey you know what's more grueling than watching 155 episodes of MMPR? Apparently watching the first half of Turbo.
- Justin really grew on me by the ending of the season. I feel that a lot of the hate for the kid is highly unjustified.
- You know who deserves more hate? The villain cast. Elgar is a joke and a huge annoyance (Even to his fellow villains in In Space, much to my amusement) and the villains as a whole make the show not just unwatchable, but uninteresting.
- That being said, I feel the show found it's true legs when TJ and the others joined up. JDF and the other actors seemed incredible tired of doing the show, and I can't blame them a bit.

In Space, pre-Finale:
- I didn't watch most of this show as a kid, so a lot of it is a surprise to me.
- I hated Andros at first, namely his actor's capabilities. I've warmed up a bit to him, especially during Karone's initial side-switch
- Zhane is a smarmy bastard.
- TJ is the biggest surprise to me this season, being somewhat of a joke of a leader (He blew up both Megazords to try and kill the final boss, only to kill it by self-destructing the last of their equipment, fucking them over for when the invasion started) to being a calm, competent badass, even despite the two severe ass-kickings he's recieved so far.
- Dear Bluefin. Forget about doing a Facebook poll. Just make SHFs of the Psycho Rangers.
- Hey, people who complained a bunch about Justin: You think he was bad? He was at least useful for shit. Silvy? She's not only the most annoying character in the show, she's also the most useless. She served no purpose other than annoying Carlos for an episode and... well...
- The Battlizer. I have no problem with the idea/concept of the battlizer armor being a last-ditch armor that Rangers use in moments that they have no other choice. I'm fine with some of the more questionable design choices in the various armors. I'm fine with the whole "TO SELL TOYS" aspect, as we sure as hell never saw this ever in children's shows before, nope. But the way this one was introduced was one of the BIGGEST ass-pulls from the brand as a whole so far. "Oh hey, a little girl pressed the third unused button in a moment of need by accident! OOPS! Oh it's okay Andros now has a six pack and can fly." If you're going to use this stuff, at least do it in a way that's smart and not embarassing. And not use it as a "Instant Win" button for the rest of the series.
- Very impressed with how the Megazords were defeated this season. They weren't all destroyed in one swoop like in the various MMPR destructions. They weren't idiotically blown up through a HORRIBLE. FUCKING. PLAN. They were taken out in different episodes through different means. One was destroyed in a brutal battle with Red Ecliptor, one kamikazes itself against a giant mechanical monstrosity, and the other survives and lives on for the next series.

Countdown To Destruction Thoughts:
- Really dug the reuse of stock footage to show off the Machine Empire and the Cog Army
- In terms of returning good guys, I'm torn. The reappearance of the Phantom Ranger from earlier this season was appreciated, and the return of the Blue Centurion, Trey and the Alien Rangers was unexpected. I just wish there were some older rangers who would at least return in human form in this episode, especially Justin and Adam from earlier in the season.
- Bulk and Skull were the big surprise of the finale for me. They went from comedy relief characters and a "threat" to the Rangers in MMPR to one of their biggest allies and some of the most courageous non-Ranger figures in the history of the franchise. I mean, yeah. It was a huge "I AM SPARTACUS" moment, but honestly, who gives a damn. It was a big sign of growth in their characters, and for them to ACTUALLY join into the battle itself rather than remain on the sidelines was fantastic.
- Andros went on a fucking suicidal mission to end it all. If that's not what Red Rangers should be like, I don't know what they should be. He eventually accepted what he had to do, and accepted that protecting the peace was necessary more than anything else.
- I understand now why PR fanboys hype this series and the finale so much. It's actually worthwhile to see all of the 7 years of the Zordon era finally culminate into one "final" battle, and unlike Forever Red I think this one is worth the hype.
- I feel really bad for Ecliptor, and I have since his forced reprogramming mid-series. He was Astronema's "Father figure" of sorts, and while he did hide her origins from her, I highly doubt it was with malicious intent. There was good in him at some point, but I guess because he was a robot more than anything and his programming was what made him who he was, there was no chance of a purification with the Zordon Wave, despite his original programming breaking through after Andros defeated his sister by accident.
- One of these days, I hope that the chunks of Dark Specter's corpse that landed on Earth would be used as some sort of Evil MacGuffin.
- The Zordon Death was kind of symbolic in my head. Andros insisted on continuing fighting, whereas Zordon was always as he's been since Season 1 and insistant on peaceful, alternative means rather than the escalation and continuation of conflict. Zordon's utter plea to Andros was a bit of a slap in the face for Andros, as ultimately, it seemed the Rangers forgot about the whole "no escalation of conflicts" thing and began to do things out of sheer emotion, especially Andros himself.
- The erasing of all the villains was kind of a cop-out, in retrospect, regardless of the purification of several of the humanoid villains. Karone's return was honestly a welcome moment of happiness after the melancholy feel the series kept dipping back into over and over again.
- Kinda cold in that finale, eh Ashley? I didn't realize the weather on the planet during the apocalypse was so... nippy.
- Overall: In Space was the only series so far that I've legitimately enjoyed, regardless of rose-tinted glasses.

Ten episodes into Power Rangers: Lost Galaxy
- Leo's pretty damn reckless, Damon is pretty forgettable, Kai does... nothing, Kendrix is kinda adorable, and Maya... well.. uh... I'm gonna go watch Not Another Teen Movie for a bit.
- The series has some legitimately dark moments so far, between the mass genocide of Magna Defender's planet (including the On-Screen Death of his really young son. I mean, holy shit), the petrification of Mirinoi, and the "death" of Mike.. I honestly think this series is overlooked constantly.
- My gripes about his voice aside, MAGNA. FUCKING. DEFENDER.
- HIS SWORD IS A FUCKING SHOTGUN.
- SHOTGUN. SWORD.
- Going back to Leo for a bit, he's honestly the best Red Ranger actor so far. He actually shows legitimate emotion in his acting, such as his constant depression over his brother, his sense of justice, and how quickly he can go from being playful to the most serious motherfucker around. Hell, look at how he reacted toward Magna Defender's blind destruction in Episode 10.

Last Episode Watched: Power Rangers Lost Galaxy, Episode 10. "The Sunflower Search"
Number of Episodes Watched: 303
Number of Episodes Remaining: 463
Number of Times Secretcode has went "Goddammit" while watching the show: 67
Number of Times Secretcode has went "The fuck?" while watching the show: 29
Number of Times Secretcode went "You know what? Fuck this. I'm watching more Breaking Bad": 16

Goodness man, watching every episode of Power Rangers is torture, especially when one can argue that more than half of it is garbage. I actually tried with MMPR, but gave up midway during Season 2, I just couldn't stand the insignificance of everything happening. I'll never have your courage but good luck man. :D

dude i stopped on mmpr at like 51

You're a braver man than I'll ever be. A good half of Power Rangers just doesn't hold up and the first season is bad enough without adding to the fact it leads to Alien Rangers. "shudders"

I wanted to do something similar to this.
Loaded up episode 1 of MMPR on Netflix.
Said "Fuck this. Where's My Little Pony?" by episode 3. Never looked back :lol

I'm working on it. Luckily I have a high tolerance for this kind of stuff haha. Still only about 1/5th through MMPR, but I'm doing alright so far. Just can't wait for season 2 to start.

So far, I've only ever managed to sit though Alien Rangers, and that's because I'm desperate for Kakuranger...

I've been doing something similar, although I watched them out of order and watched everything post-In Space first (most of which I'd never seen). I finished up MMPR s3 last week and now I've only got Zeo, Turbo and In Space left to watch.

Needless to say I'm looking forward to Zeo :D

I've been rewatching Wild Force. Not for the 20th, just because I never saw how it ended.

The rest of them? I use netflix, skip the bulk of the episode, and watch the end fight/zord battles.

I tried watching them out of order too. I started off with Jungle Fury, of all things, then moved to SPD, then In Space, then Time Force. Now I'm focusing just on Super Sentai, because it takes me far too long to complete just one season of anything.

You've definitely seen Zeo before this, but what about Turbo and In Space?

I saw them both as a kid, but my memory of them is very hazy aside from key episodes. Obviously I'm looking forward to Space a lot more than Turbo :lol

Space turned out better than I'd hoped. But Turbo was sorta bad at the start and when the secong half began, it took a sharp nosedive.

But it did get JYB his start and now he's a kickass Voice Actor, so it's not all bad.

Just finished In Space. Added thoughts to main post, pasting them below:

In Space, pre-Finale:
- I didn't watch most of this show as a kid, so a lot of it is a surprise to me.
- I hated Andros at first, namely his actor's capabilities. I've warmed up a bit to him, especially during Karone's initial side-switch
- Zhane is a smarmy bastard.
- TJ is the biggest surprise to me this season, being somewhat of a joke of a leader (He blew up both Megazords to try and kill the final boss, only to kill it by self-destructing the last of their equipment, fucking them over for when the invasion started) to being a calm, competent badass, even despite the two severe ass-kickings he's recieved so far.
- Dear Bluefin. Forget about doing a Facebook poll. Just make SHFs of the Psycho Rangers.
- Hey, people who complained a bunch about Justin: You think he was bad? He was at least useful for shit. Silvy? She's not only the most annoying character in the show, she's also the most useless. She served no purpose other than annoying Carlos for an episode and... well...
- The Battlizer. I have no problem with the idea/concept of the battlizer armor being a last-ditch armor that Rangers use in moments that they have no other choice. I'm fine with some of the more questionable design choices in the various armors. I'm fine with the whole "TO SELL TOYS" aspect, as we sure as hell never saw this ever in children's shows before, nope. But the way this one was introduced was one of the BIGGEST ass-pulls from the brand as a whole so far. "Oh hey, a little girl pressed the third unused button in a moment of need by accident! OOPS! Oh it's okay Andros now has a six pack and can fly." If you're going to use this stuff, at least do it in a way that's smart and not embarassing. And not use it as a "Instant Win" button for the rest of the series.
- Very impressed with how the Megazords were defeated this season. They weren't all destroyed in one swoop like in the various MMPR destructions. They weren't idiotically blown up through a HORRIBLE. FUCKING. PLAN. They were taken out in different episodes through different means. One was destroyed in a brutal battle with Red Ecliptor, one kamikazes itself against a giant mechanical monstrosity, and the other survives and lives on for the next series.

Countdown To Destruction Thoughts:
- Really dug the reuse of stock footage to show off the Machine Empire and the Cog Army
- In terms of returning good guys, I'm torn. The reappearance of the Phantom Ranger from earlier this season was appreciated, and the return of the Blue Centurion, Trey and the Alien Rangers was unexpected. I just wish there were some older rangers who would at least return in human form in this episode, especially Justin and Adam from earlier in the season.
- Bulk and Skull were the big surprise of the finale for me. They went from comedy relief characters and a "threat" to the Rangers in MMPR to one of their biggest allies and some of the most courageous non-Ranger figures in the history of the franchise. I mean, yeah. It was a huge "I AM SPARTACUS" moment, but honestly, who gives a damn. It was a big sign of growth in their characters, and for them to ACTUALLY join into the battle itself rather than remain on the sidelines was fantastic.
- Andros went on a fucking suicidal mission to end it all. If that's not what Red Rangers should be like, I don't know what they should be. He eventually accepted what he had to do, and accepted that protecting the peace was necessary more than anything else.
- I understand now why PR fanboys hype this series and the finale so much. It's actually worthwhile to see all of the 7 years of the Zordon era finally culminate into one "final" battle, and unlike Forever Red I think this one is worth the hype.
- I feel really bad for Ecliptor, and I have since his forced reprogramming mid-series. He was Astronema's "Father figure" of sorts, and while he did hide her origins from her, I highly doubt it was with malicious intent. There was good in him at some point, but I guess because he was a robot more than anything and his programming was what made him who he was, there was no chance of a purification with the Zordon Wave, despite his original programming breaking through after Andros defeated his sister by accident.
- One of these days, I hope that the chunks of Dark Specter's corpse that landed on Earth would be used as some sort of Evil MacGuffin.
- The Zordon Death was kind of symbolic in my head. Andros insisted on continuing fighting, whereas Zordon was always as he's been since Season 1 and insistant on peaceful, alternative means rather than the escalation and continuation of conflict. Zordon's utter plea to Andros was a bit of a slap in the face for Andros, as ultimately, it seemed the Rangers forgot about the whole "no escalation of conflicts" thing and began to do things out of sheer emotion, especially Andros himself.
- The erasing of all the villains was kind of a cop-out, in retrospect, regardless of the purification of several of the humanoid villains. Karone's return was honestly a welcome moment of happiness after the melancholy feel the series kept dipping back into over and over again.
- Kinda cold in that finale, eh Ashley? I didn't realize the weather on the planet during the apocalypse was so... nippy.
- Overall: In Space was the only series so far that I've legitimately enjoyed, regardless of rose-tinted glasses.

I'm glad you enjoyed In Space. Unlike the nostalgia glasses everyone wears for the original MMPR, In Space really does deserve the praise it gets.

zeo - red zeo ranger get powers before pr zeo 's 1 ep
4 zeo rangers get powers in zeo 's 2 ep

I agree with almost everything. The points about the Battilizer are dead on. Now, I love the damned thing. Mystic Force being my favorite and OO's being the worst. .. A face in his chest... really? That tops Quantam's Rollerblades of Doom.

My only problem comes from Justin. I didn't like him. I didn't like his personality, I didn't like the "A kid's a Ranger!" arc, and the acked on 'His Father's Moving, that's how he leaves the Team' idea was way cliche'd. Not as horrible as Aisha. But he's in a very close second.

And yet he's still not even the worst Blue Ranger. Thanks for that, Operation Overdrive. :thumbdown

Sorry but I still say Justin Is worst blue ranger

I have to disagree. In fact, I would argue that not only is Dax the worst Blue Ranger, he is, hands down, the worst Ranger ever. Period.

Which one was Dax?

The Blue OO Ranger.

aka the anthropomorphic personification of obnoxiousness.

Justin wasn't all that bad...I liked him more than Time Force Blue.

There was a Time Force Blue?

:p

Exactly :lol
That guy blended into the wallpaper so well I'm pretty sure the Circuit, the owl, would've made a better character.

I hated most of Time Force. ... -dashes to the unpopular opinion thread-

Exactly my point. DAX is a better blue ranger than Lucas and is close to Lightspeed Rescue's blue

Still disagree. Lucas was boring and barely on the show; the Madison of Time Force. I can live with that. He didn't punch you in the nuts over and over and over and over again with his "quirkiness" like Dax did.

Dax was a really terrible and annoying attempt to redo Chip from Mystic Force. Chip, in turn, was just a terrible and annoying attempt to redo Bridge from SPD. Bridge worked. The knock-off didn't. The knock-off of the knock-off really didn't.

You can see this when they brought Bridge back in Once A Ranger :lol

Part of why Timeforce Blue didn't become memorable is because he didn't suffer from a serious illness. Having to deal with dying at any moment gave Time Blue a good bit of character to him. TF Blue had nothing really wrong with him so people didn't identify with him.

It's intermission time!

Intermission #01- Mighty Morphin Power Rangers: The Movie
- First ten minutes summed up: WE'RE EXTREME, YEAAAAAH. SKYYYYYYDIVIIIIIIIIN' WOOOOOOOOO! YEAAAAAAAAAAH ROLLER BLADING! FUCK YEAH!
- As much as I dug a bunch of the designs in this film, I still can't get over Zordon's appearance in this movie and I'm not even talking about before he became a bedridden weird blobman.
- I really dig Alpha's look... outside of the doorbell on his head. I don't know what the hell they were trying with that.
- ...is Zedd's voice actor different in the movie, or was his voice overprocessed?
- Who the hell is the Pig Dude supposed to be?
- Ivan Ooze is a glorious bastard and the saving grace of the entire film. S.H. FIGUARTS, WHEN?
- I like the implications the movie has of Zordon constantly using a bunch of teenagers to do his bidding for thousands and thousands of years. Makes you wonder how many Rangers there have been.
- I still hate Aisha with a passion.
- It sorta bothers me that the only returning weapon is Saba, especially as the rangers have Blade Blasters attached to their hips at all times.
- TIME TO TELEPORT TO A PLANET WE HAVE NEVER SEEN OR DON'T KNOW IF WE CAN COME BACK FROM BECAUSE ZORDON HAS HOURS LEFT TO LIVE. WISEST. DECISION. EVER.
- Mmmmmm Dulcea. You can make my stick whistle anytime.
- I really prefer this origin story of the Ninja Powers instead of "Hey we found this blue Marvin The Martian-sounding dude in a jar" to be honest. The idea of the Ninjetti and the sacred animals sounds a lot better than "Hey sup, I helped make the dino coins. It's cool, I'll help you out."
- Poor Adam. "I'm a frog... :("
- Evil Megazords/Mecha really needs to be used more in PR/Sentai.
- OH NO THE PARENTS ARE KIDNAPPED AND DOING WEIRD SHIT.
- Really dug the dinosaur fossil fight scene. I just wish Billy at some point went "....Tri... TRICERATOPS?!"
- No yeah Tommy. Keep hitting those bones with a fucking stick. No, okay. Yeah. Jam it in his eye hole. That's gonna solve everythi- okay you just pulled out what appears to have been The Master Bone out of sheer luck.... good job, I guess.
- The Gargoyle fight was pretty cool, except for the "Ninjetti Corkscrew Kick". That was... geeehhhhhhhhhrhhghhghh.
- For fucks sake, Aisha. Get your headband on straight. Stop being incompetent at everything you do.
- Bad CG aside, I really liked the direction the zord battle went in terms of how the zords fought and how the cockpits looked. That and the two mecha that Ooze had avoided the somewhat laughable trope of "Hey the bad guy is giant now" even with Ivan becoming one with the mecha. It works, considering that the machine was running on Ooze.
- Wait... is that the Shogun Megazord's fish sword?
- Regarding the whole LEAP TO OUR DOOM subplot: 1) It was nothing more than a time filler. 2) Bulk and Skull were hanging out with a bunch of kids... why? 3) Who gives a fuck?
- Hey remember that comet that was briefly mentioned during the whole YEAAAAAAH EXTREME thing in the beginning? It's Deus Ex Machina time!

The movie, overall, is a lot more solid and not as unbearable as MMPR itself. The ONLY thing worse than the actual show itself are the zords. I mean, come on. Look at this thing.

I was so baffled as to how they could drop the ball on the Megazord so badly...

I thought the Megazord was so cool as a kid but yeah...it hasn't held up well :lol

But I agree, the movie isn't amazing but it doesn't deserve some of the flak it gets. How did you feel about the suit redesigns Secretcode?

I love them, outside of the random gadgets they threw in like the flashlight and weird scanner. I really wish some other PR series got this hollywood-style treatment in terms of suit design, namely the In Space team. Feature the head-based gadgets in a more visual sense, have the colored squares on the chest actually be LED panels that are unlit other than the color the Ranger actually is... make the Battlizer not look like shit.

What was the CGI budget for that megazord? 5 dollars. It.looks like it was made by a 5 year old

Yeah, that Megazord, especially the face were always WTF to me.

Its clear they were going for a "this is a visible cockpit rather than a face" look with it, but that's literally about all the thought they gave it :lol

After doing some research regarding the movie, it appears the movie suffered a bunch of horrible budgetary and scheduling decisions such as:
- What can only be described as a timing clusterfuck: There were no studios ready to do the film during the only timeframe they had initially had available (Oct-Dec 1994), which was wintertime, leading the crew to go to Australia- which in itself became a whole slew of other problems.
- Doing initial shootings with the helmets having no visors to help "convey emotion", then realizing that the visors were there to keep their identities secret reshot every action scene and morphed scene with the visors back into place.
- Fitzpatrick had to be replaced as Dulcea due to an ovarian cyst, having another actress spend four weeks shooting the scenes with Dulcea, only to not like her work and give back the spot to Fitzpatrick after she had healed. Due to this casting mistake, as well as the helmet issue 70% of the footage they had shot by November was completely unusable, leading to dozens upon dozens of reshoots.
- With reshoots having to happen, they had to not only pay the actors and crew for extra time to work on the movie, but also partially move the production of the TV Show over to Sydney to make up for lost time. This is easily seen in the Return of the Green Ranger and the wedding of Zedd and Rita.
- Ernie's actor was paid despite never actually making it to the final cut. An entire set was made for his restaurant, and was ultimately unused.
- The big "fireworks" display at the end of the movie was completely botched, due to the wind, and had to be digitally inserted.

With a budget of $15,000,000, I wonder how much of that was completely fucking wasted on unused footage, and I wonder if that had any effect on the CG quality for the final battle.

The bit where the kids are having the ooze party before they go off on the monorail has an "Ernie's" sign on it somewhere, so I've always wondered if he was actually meant to have a role in it.

He was apparently on set and paid for two months worth of work, despite never actually making it into the film.