Power Rangers: Excessive Force
I’ve found the episode of Power Rangers with the most ridiculously skewed relationship between the stakes of the story and the force used to resolve it.
In “Reign of the Jellyfish,” the gang is putting together a time capsule for a school project. Every student adds something and explains why its meaningful to them, and the teacher concludes by adding a picture of the Power Rangers so that future generations will know about these great heroes. Watching a teacher lecture a class about the virtues of the Power Rangers is pretty hilarious on its own, but the episode is just getting started.
The main villain, Rita Repulsa, has been using her magic telescope to spy on this high school classroom. And when the teacher adds a photograph of our colorful heroes, Rita totally flips her shit. HOW DARE these humans respect and admire the heroes that have saved them from her countless attempts to kill them all?
No! Rita absolutely will not have it. If people in the future are going to know anything about the 90s, it’s going to be all about her. For maximal pettiness, she decides to replace the photo of the Power Rangers with one of herself, so that future generations will know she’s awesome. To that end, Rita sends a small army of goons, as well as two of her recurring henchmen, to steal the time capsule. In the middle of a public park. In broad daylight. There are numerous flaws in this plan, but I’ll limit myself to pointing out three:
Rita Repulsa is here to conquer Earth. She shouldn’t be worried about how people will remember her 100 years from now—of course all the history books will have photos of the evil space witch that took over the world!
Rita betrays a defeatist mindset by hyper-fixating on the photo situation. If that picture plays any role at all in her legacy, then she has already lost. Rita is preemptively preparing for defeat before the fight has even begun, which is not typical megalomaniacal villain behavior.
We know from the intro sequence that Rita is at least 10,000 years old. She doesn’t need to worry about how she will be remembered in 100 years, as she will most likely still be alive to tell her side of the story.
Of course, the bad guys are seen by the Power Rangers and this kicks off a big superhero brawl. In the middle of a public park. In broad daylight. You can see civilians fleeing in the background, trying to avoid the giant pieces of obviously foam rubble.
From there, the conflict eventually escalates into a giant robot battle in downtown Angel Grove. At one point, the Megazord gets thrown through an office building. There is no way at least a hundred people did not die in the disaster that followed. But that never gets the slightest mention.
Fortunately, the Power Rangers persevere. They destroy Rita’s monster, and send her henchmen skittering back home to hide behind her skirt. Thanks to the strength and courage of these young heroes, the Empress of Evil’s sinister plot was foiled before she could… put her picture in a time capsule. Good thing they managed to stop her with only a few million in damages!
I understand villainous plots on shows designed for children have a tendency to be kind of silly. A previous episode of Power Rangers had Rita infect Jason’s dog with alien fleas so that they would spread to the whole team and then the Rangers would be too itchy to fight. But even if the plot is ridiculous, there are usually real stakes. Alien fleas is a ludicrous plan, but it was done to get Rita’s enemies out of her way so she could conquer the world—pretty serious stakes for such a silly plan. The odd thing about this particular episode of the show was that there were virtually no stakes at all. If Rita succeeds and puts her picture in the time capsule… then what? What horrible fate befalls the denizens of Earth if Rita Repulsa’s photograph is included in this time capsule? The show doesn’t even offer one of its usual hand-waving explanations. The kids just don’t want her picture in their capsule, and they were willing to demolish a city block to keep it out. If they devote the same energy and effort to their schoolwork, I imagine the citizens of Angel Grove will find themselves spectators at a giant robot brawl to determine the class valedictorian.