The first episode of Power Rangers was a solid pilot that did a good job of presenting us an interesting conflict along with some great heroes and villains. While it felt rushed like most pilots, it was still a great way to start this series. So now that we know a bit about our heroes, does their 2nd episode build some more development to these characters? Or is it a by-the-books Power Rangers episode? Let’s find out with “High Five”.
We open the episode at the Angel Grove Youth Center as Jason is climbing up a rope. He’s doing particularly well until Trini begins to nag him about the possibility of falling off. And wouldn’t you know it, this causes him to almost fall, but quickly recovers. It’s pretty much well established that Trini has a bit of a fear of heights. After some comedic hijinks with Jason on Billy’s shoulders, Bulk and Skull arrive to torment our protagonists. Bulk and Skull once again believe they’re better than Jason at rope climbing, and Bulk makes an attempt that fails miserably. In fact, his 2nd attempt takes the ceiling down with him. On her moon base, Rita is planning her next move, which is to strand the rangers in a time warp.
Back at the youth center, Billy is rather excited over some techno jargon that only Trini really understands. I always liked that about Trini that she’s essentially a bit like Billy in terms of understanding technology, but nowhere as nerdy. Essentially, Billy managed to create communicator watches that will help the team keep in contact with Zordon and Alpha-5 at the command center, as well as teleport the team when needed. They enter the center to a painfully jive talking Alpha-5.
Back at the moon base, Squatt and Baboo tell Rita that the time device (which is shaped like a little rocket ship for some reason) is ready, and when it lands, it will trap the rangers in a time warp. Finster has also made a monster to help defeat the rangers. A skeleton by the name of Bones (well, that’s creative). Once the clay version of the monster is placed in the monster maker, it’s brought to life, and Rita puts her plan into action. I don’t know what it is about it, but seeing people in a bit of a panic over a tiny RC space shuttle driving down the street is quite hilarious. It eventually lands, and fires a beam.
The rangers teleport into action just as they get caught by a swarm of putty patrollers. They could just morph to even the odds in their favor a little, but that would mean resorting to more stock footage than normal, so they decide to fight on without the need to be mighty or morphin’. They hold their own in this fight a bit better than their first putty encounter, but are still easily outmatched. Billy and Trini run off in hopes of leading the putties away. All this manages to do is have them chase off Billy to the top of a cliff as Triny gets paranoid over the possibility of him taking a tumble.
Billy is still not a very good fighter. In fact, he’s pretty much useless in terms of actual combat. He even drops his power morpher. Trini, despite her fear of heights still decides to climb the cliff to help him out, causing a putty to fall to his doom to the ground below. They help the other rangers, as we get perhaps the strangest frigging attack ever, with Zack and Kimberly on Jason’s shoulders acting as some sort of spinning battering ram. But despite the strangeness of the move, it manages to do the trick, sending the putties into retreat.
Rita then sends Bones into the amusement park, and since this is all done in stock footage, it means that finally we get some power ranger action.Bones throws his head into the air, which traps the rangers into a time warp. They battle Bones and his own skeleton soldiers while the bumbling Squatt and Baboo plan to blow up the time device to trap the rangers. They use their blasters to destroy Bones, but he just reforms. Billy wraps the head up and throws it into a well placed pit, destorying it.
But Rita is prepared with another monster which she makes giant, it captures Jason, but ends up dropping him after a blaster shot. This means that it’s time to form the Megazord… or just the T-Rex zord. Well, that’s definitely something different, just one zord being useful in battle instead of forming the whole thing. Then again, the T-Rex zord was the most versatile fighter of the vehicles. It easily destroys the monster, as Rita is quite angry over this. Back at the juice bar, Billy tells the group that the communicators are functional. And the episode ends with Zack scaring Trini into climbing up the rope from the beginning of the episode.
High Five is a pretty solid 2nd episode. It flows pretty well, never getting too dull or too quick. There’s more ranger action in this episode, and something I almost forgot about before watching this episode, but the lack of a full Megazord battle didn’t actually happen in every episode like I had once thought. I also like that this episode still feels like a part of the pilot. The Rangers are still getting used to all of this, and are still not the more competent fighters that we’ll see later on, especially Billy. I will say the only part of the episode that did make me groan was the jive talking Alpha-5, but what do you expect? It’s the early 90’s.
If I were to nitpick anything, I would say the whole time warp thing was pretty confusing, especially after Bones is defeated, and the other giant monster just smashed a hole in the wall of the time warp, or whatever. Also, the time warp being delivered in a little space shuttle that just drives down the street was unintentionally funny. But for what they could do for plot convenience, they handled it well enough to still make this an enjoyable episode.
Next time, we’ll see how Trini and Kimberly use Teamwork to take down more of Rita’s menacing monsters.