[Lord Benendearu]

I felt I was back in the 90s, watching an episode of the first season of Mighty Morphin Power Rangers, as this had all the ingredients of one:

* The Rangers being high schoolers.
* An anvilicious lesson of the day. (Confront your fears and everything will automatically go right for you)
* One of the rangers having a problem in real life that ties in to the lesson of the day, which magically gets solved at the end of the episode. (If getting your drivers license is that easy in the Power Rangers universe, I really would like to live there. Monster attacks be damned.)
* Completely non-threatening villains and monster.
* Weapons and zords being handed out to the rangers whenever they need them.
* A slapstick comic relief duo that has nothing to do with the plot.

I would have absolutely no problem with these things....if this were the 90s and I was actually watching Mighty Morphin Power Rangers. But since I am not, this episode only proves that the franchise has regressed back to the Mighty Morphin era, which is certainly not a good thing, as Mighty Morphin really did not age well.

In fact, I even daresay that this episode handles the aforementioned tropes worse than MMPR did. Bulk and Skull wouldn't stoop so low as to resort to fart jokes for an entire episode. And I can't remember the MMPR rangers doing unrealistic things like going from being too afraid to drive a car to getting a driver's license in less than a day. It took years for me to get my license in the real world. This plot point would have been excusable if Calvin simply told the team he was taking up driving lessons. This would show that the character is willing to confront his fear of driving, but does not turn him into an unrealistic instant expert.

All in all, I really didn't like this episode as it showcases everything that is wrong with this current era of power rangers, as summed up by Kickback in this post.