Teamwork opens at Angel Grove High School, which will be the secondary main location for the Rangers in their civilian forms throughout the majority of the Mighty Morphin era. Trini and Kimbery are rallying fellow students to sign a petition to shut down the local dump site due to the pollution and smell coming from it. What’s interesting (in a way) about the rangers is that their extracurricular activities are at times astounding. They head multiple different clubs, teach classes at the youth center, not to mention help set up school functions. Add the shtick of being power Rangers and these teens are pretty busy.
Trini and Kimberly are praised for their work by the school principal Mr. Kaplan, who has the most obvious “for comedic effect” toupee I’ve ever seen. Watching from her moon base as usual is Rita Repulsa, who decides that this whole “polluting the earth” idea sounds like a jolly good time. Back at the school, the girls ask Billy, Zack, and Jason to come along with them as they plan to present their petition at the dump, but it just so happens the three of them have their own clubs/convenient reasons to bail on them, meaning that Kimberly and Trini are on their own for this one.
After the guys leave, Kimberly and Trini are then annoyed by Bulk, Skull, and… this other female bully. Yeah, some of the early episodes (or maybe just this one as I’m still getting back into watching each episode) had Bulk and Skull with this third female bully that never spoke, and really didn’t click. Did she even have a name? Anyway, they mock their whole petition campaign, and then try to attack them, but are easily beaten as usual. Speaking of antagonists, Rita announce their plan to ambush the duo with putties at the dump before the rest of the rangers can help them.
Kimberly and Trini make it to the dump, which looks as polluted and dingy as you’d expect it to be. Gotta love the logic of just waltzing around a dump that’s contaminated with god knows what. Perhaps this plan would have worked better if they had set this up with the owners of the dump somewhere not filled with steaming pipes and barrels of chemical waste. But, you know, story and all. Speaking of story, the putty ambush goes as planned. They try their best to battle the putties. Though by now they’re holding their own far better than before.
We then cut to the command center where Zack is showing Alpha-5 his hip-hop akido skills, and it’s pretty damn epic honestly. This is cut short as Zordon alerts them about the ambush at the dump. Billy and Jason arrive as things aren’t going to well. Finster’s monster of the day is the Minotaur, which she sends into the mountains. Since the great and powerful stock footage demands it, the guys have to go battle it instead of helping the girls out.
Kimberly and Trini finally get the victory over the putties, but Goldar attacking with even more putties. They morph to the scene, and despite an early amount of success, they’re quickly bested by Goldar. Seeing that things are looking grim for the rangers, Zordon says that perhaps it’s time that he teaches them about the power weapons, which are now available at a store near you! Beg your parents for every obscenely expensive one!
The Minotaur continues to beat down the other rangers, and Rita trumps it by making it grow. It’s time for the rangers to use their zords to battle the bipedal bovine beast. After some good old stock footage, they actually use the zords separately for battle, which as the series goes on seems to happen far less. The vehicles actually put up a good fight initially. However, when the Minotaur starts to get the advantage, they put their vehicles together to form the Megazord. However, since there’s about 5 minutes left in this episode, Zordon sends the rangers back.
Zordon feels that it’s now time for the rangers to get a bit of an upgrade through the addition of their power weapons. Considering they were sent out with just blasters and their fighting skills, perhaps some extra fighting weapons would be helpful. I’d complain that it’s something that could have been implemented in the first episode, but there was enough stuff going on in that part for it to fit well.
Jason gets the power sword, Billy the power lance, Zack the power axe, Kimberly the power bow, and Trini the power daggers. They once again do battle with the Minotaur (who isn’t a giant anymore for some reason), and activate their weapons, which manages to easily beat it down. But that’s not all. The weapons form together to form a blaster that destroys the Minotaur once and for all. So once again Rita has been bested by the power rangers.
The episode ends as the rangers notice the school is still trashed after the encounter with Bulk and Skull. The teens activate their Benny Hill powers to clean the mess up to the shock of Mr. Kaplan. And we end with Alpha’s dance skills being so bad that he’s destroying the control console.
Teamwork was a pretty good episode. It’s the first time we see the Rangers have to split up to fight their foes. There was a lot more actual fighting in this one, and way more ranger action. Still weird to see no Megazord being used to finish the main monster off. As I remember this show more and more, this still seems like such a foreign occurance. The “side-plot” with Alpha wanting to dance comes off as extremely cheesy, but it does get to show off Walter Jones’ dance moves, which are pretty solid. All in all, it’s a fun ranger episode as usual.