Fox Years Retrospective: Series 1 — Mighty Morphin’ Power Rangers Season 01
“What do you think it is?” “It looks like a giant space dumpster!”
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So I kind of wish I had started writing posts about this show well before I finally have. I started watching Power Rangers around the start of the year on a lark because it was a huge part of my childhood and I thought it would be fun to keep going. I never thought it would actually become a thing, looking back after watching the first ten series.
As a child I was madly in love with Power Rangers. I wanted to be like Trini Kwan (despite being myself a dumpy Hispanic kid) and I thought all these characters were the coolest thing. Rita, and later Zedd, were the ultimate villains to my tiny child mind and oh god did I hate Bulk and Skull. I kept on watching through the entire multi-season run of Mighty Morphin’ Power Rangers. I owned the toys, dolls, merchandise. I wanted to BE a Power Ranger. I even saw the movie in theatres!
So it was pretty amazing to go back to the series as it began. It is if anything a product of it’s time and gives me insane nostalgia to 1990s.
Being that this is a multi-season series it’s a little hard to go back and cover it as one whole thing so I’ll probably have to do multiple posts about it. It’s kind of insane to have looked back and see how the series changed over the years. Because it’s the most popular as far as pop culture goes, the first season or so is the one that stood out in memory the most.
Jason, Kim, Trini, Zack, Billy and later Tommy. When you say Red Ranger or Green Ranger to anyone only somewhat knowledgeable about the franchise they are likely to tell you Jason and Tommy. I’d been like this for a decade at least despite watching all three seasons of of the original and bits of Alien Rangers and Zeo. It’s funny to look at in retrospect because when you say Red Ranger to me right now, I’ll think of Andros first and my favorite Green Ranger is Adam Park.
Though Billy will always be the Blue Ranger to me, but that’s a story for another day.
Gods, there’s just so much to cover. Too much to cover. There are so amazing (and ridiculous) moments in this season alone.
Like, for one, the Rad Bug?! How did I not remember that in 1990’s Angel Grove, Billy built a fucking FLYING CAR??? WHY IS HE STILL IN HIGH SCHOOL? WHY IS IT NOT UNTIL A WHOLE DIFFERENT SERIES THAT BILLY GETS FORCEFULLY GRADUATED EARLY? He shouldn’t be on fucking Aquitar after he leaves the Rangers — he should be getting Nobel prizes and shit like that!
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But, I digress, I am getting ahead of myself. Let’s go through a quick rundown on how I feel about the characters.
“Morphinomical!”
Jason Lee Scott
Talented martial artist, cares about his friends I guess? Vanilla white guy. After he leaves we get a dude with Mexican heritage, then the dude with Native American heritage steps up, and then a black guy. Then the streak ends. But I’m getting off topic. I basically have no feelings on Jason.
Billy Cranston
MY FAVORITE. I’m madly in love with Billy, which is further enhanced by how much I admire his actor, David Yost, for his real life activism. Billy is so cute. He goes from doofy nerd-boy to hot smart guy. Love it. It’s a shame he had to leave the series on such bad terms because his character was so great and they found such a stupid way to write him off the show. Also he was afraid of fish and that was pretty cute.
Zack Taylor
Bitchin’ dance moves, isn’t too stereotypically black? Great sense of fashion. Also not Adam Park who I like much better, even if my friends give me guff for it. He had sweet hair.
Trini Kwan
She was my favorite as a kid! I’m not sure why?? But she’s awesome, she’s smart, caring, and has such a believable teen girl friendship with Kim. She also doesn’t so much fall prey to the “I’m Asian so have this stereotypical and vaguely racist story about my heritage or me knowing martial arts” like later Asian characters do.
Kimberly Ann Hart
As a kid I always liked Trini better, but now as an adult I love Kim sooooo much. She starts off as a typical valley girl but comes into her own in a big way. I never really saw her as a good couple with Tommy, though. She ended up breaking up with him off screen through snail mail after the big cast change anyway — good on you, Kim.
Tommy Oliver
Tommy is… well. IDK. Girls when I was a kid were super into him for being “so cute” but my Nana just wanted to rip his ponytail off. I like Tommy better than Jason but……………….. that’s not saying much at all.
and honorable mention as being another favorite character;
Eugene Skullovitch
A few of my buddies prefer Bulk because let’s be real, Paul Schrier is pretty incredible. But Skull is my boy, through and through. I also kind of really ship him with Kimberly. His crush on her is kind of heartbreaking at times throughout the series. A later series had originally planned on him ultimately being with Kim but scrapped the idea, but I like to think it’s still a thing even if that didn’t make it into the show.
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Um, I’m not really sure what else to say from here so I’ll stop for now and come back to babble about Season 02 and Ninja Storm (which I’m currently on) at some point. Ciao!
“Mighty Morphin Power Rangers logo” by http://www.powerrangers.com/seasons-mighty-morphin.html. Licensed under Fair use of copyrighted material in the context of Mighty Morphin Power Rangers via Wikipedia — http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Mighty_Morphin_Power_Rangers_logo.png#mediaviewer/File:Mighty_Morphin_Power_Rangers_logo.png
