Remember the Time: Power Rangers

It's funny that I was getting ready to do a post on the Power Rangers when I came across this series of videos, HERE. He is on season 2 and he has a long way to go. I don't think I would ever analyze it that much, but it is a good video to watch if you are a fan.

I remember turning on the t.v. one afternoon watching what I considered to be a live version of Voltron. Now, Voltron was one of the greatest cartoons on t.v. growing up, so to see a live version was intriguing. I just remember the horrible acting, the bad costumes, and the fight scenes were blah. To me it was a slap in the face of the greatness that was Voltron. I later learned it was Voltron that pretty much copied everything from this show. Voltron was more violent, which probably still makes it better.

Yet, I still watched it. It wasn't until they introduced Tommy, who would become my favorite ranger of all time, that I really paid attention. He added a solid character and storyline that was missing. By creating Tommy, the show now had a continuous story. Whereas before it was just a bunch of episodes where the order wasn't important.

Tommy was bad ass. He went from evil Green Ranger, to good Green Ranger, White Ranger, to Red Ranger, and then back again as the Black Ranger (all of them above minus his Black Ranger suit). He made the show for me. Of all the characters to ever be on the show, it was his that actually had some depth to it. But even though I thought he was a bad ass on the show, he is a real bad ass now because he is an MMA fighter. Yeah that's Tommy now.

Just when I was ready to change the show, they do something like bring back the original Red Ranger, Jason, as the Gold Ranger during Power Rangers: Zeo. It was a totally unexpected move, since they still had Billy on the show, yet he wasn't a ranger. It was things like that that kept me coming back for more. The unknown.

The show lost a ton of steam with PR: Turbo. They brought on some kid to be a ranger. It was like watching Cousin Oliver on The Brady Bunch. And then Tommy left the show, there was no reason for me to keep watching.

Then something amazing happened. The next season, PR: In Space, Zordon was showing up again, he was kidnapped during Turbo (I think). Long story short, they had strung together like 6-7 seasons of Power Rangers into this grand finale. It was great. It even had some drama with Zordon sacrificing himself to save the universe. All of the previous seasons all added up to that one finale. After that episode, Power Rangers changed.

Every season would see a new cast, new costumes/Zords, new enemies, and pretty much zero continuity to the previous season. It was because of this change that I really didn't care about the show anymore. Although there was one episode that caught my eye. When the show celebrated it's 10th season or some episode milestone, they had a special episode Forever Red. This episode have EVERY Red Ranger since Jason in season 1. It was a fun episode, but the rest of the season sucked. It was fun to see the inside jokes about the show and to see Jason and Tommy back on the screen again was simply awesome.

Then, I read online that Tommy was coming back. Now he was a lot older, in fact he was a teacher on the show. It was great to see Tommy back. The best was when he sort of broke the fourth wall. Every ranger wears clothes that match the color of their ranger, ie. red ranger wore a lot of red. So after he gets the power to be the black ranger, he makes the comment that he needed to go shopping since he had a serious shortage of black. Classic.
Dino Thunder was the last version of Power Rangers I watched. I can't tell you how many more were after that or anything else. I loved the show and realized it forever has a special place in my childhood/young adult memories.