Season One: Episode Seventeen: Green With Evil pt. 1

 

                         Green With Evil

                     Part one: Out of Control.

                                                        Enter the Green Ranger. 



Sentai Notes: 

    Kyoryu Sentai Zyuranger was revolutionary in introducing a sixth ranger to the team, considering how the Super Sentai franchise was usually a five person team from the start. The Green Ranger's introduction in the Sentai show is set with suspense, where Gnome's grandson, Ryota, finds the key to a chamber hiding the warrior, Burai, and seeks to open it, as he idolizes him. Unfortunately, his grandfather and Barzai don't think so, and it becomes a case of grandson pitted against grandfather and the Zyurangers are pitted against their mentor, which Bandora takes advantage of. Ryota opens the chamber at the urging of the bad guys, resulting in a Pandora's Box incident where Burai comes out, but not as heroic as thought. Instead, what comes out is an angry man claiming to be a Yamato tribe prince. The poor kid then retreats to his grandfather and apologizes while Burai mops the floor with the Zyurangers. 

   If it seems spooky to see Rita doing sorcery in Power Rangers, her Sentai counterpart was doing something even worse in the footage it's based on. She was channeling with the Devil himself to grant her a wish to defeat the Zyurangers. 

   The episode also contained more to the fight footage, where at one point the Green Ranger hits the Black in the groin (edited out in Power Rangers for obviously reasons). 

Strategy Notes:

   Once put on Rita's spell, Tommy carries out his mission with a strategy of his own. He infiltrates the Command Center like a saboteur, using the powers of the Green Ranger to slip past the defenses (in The Movie, years later, Alpha states "Nobody enters the Command Center without a power coin", which gets contradicted a second later). He then pulls a Pearl Harbor on the Power Rangers by infecting Alpha with a virus via a disk, then he pulls apart the consoles that allow for the Rangers to communicate with Zordon. Now the Power Rangers find themselves unable to teleport anywhere and have to use the RADBUG, except once they are morphed. Then they find their mentor gone and Alpha compromised. 

   But when  Goldar comes down, the Rangers have no choice but to fight him. That's when the Green Ranger hits again, leaping up into the Megazord cockpit, a place the Rangers had previously thought was safe. He knocks them out of the cockpit and fights them on the ground, using many tricks to take out all five Rangers. The Rangers are outmaneuvered and outclassed, and therefore must retreat. 

   In all, the Green Ranger makes a quick defeat of the Power Rangers simply by hitting where it hurts most. The monsters thus far have only hit the Power Rangers from the front, which admittedly leads to sparks on the chest, but it's something they get over with at the end of the day. The Green Ranger, meanwhile, hits them in the back with a sledgehammer and then in the gut with his foot, which renders them incapacitated against him. 

Biblical and Mythological Homage:

   The five episodes titled "Green With Evil" come from the expression "green with envy." Envy, in Christian doctrine, is one of the seven deadly sins, sparked with resentfulness at seeing one doing well. The connection is in the Sentai version, where Burai is envious of being part of Geki being prince inYamato Tribe, and leading to the defeat of Bandora. 

Misc. Notes:

   It's established that Jason and Tommy are equals in combat in their match, which ends as a tie. Tommy's fighting skills are demonstrated also in his holding off the Putties easily, whereas all five Power Rangers had to morph first. Then again, there is a possibility the thing was rigged in his favor, considering how later episodes had Tommy overpowered by the Putties. 

   The episode features Tommy telling Bulk and Skull to back off and then demonstrating his karate to frighten them off. This in contrast to later when he tells kids "Never, ever, practice in school. [emphasis added]"

   The 2010 release of the episode (the Special Edition of the Power Rangers, which sought to clean up a few things and add additional affects, though it lasted only thirty-three episodes) had hearts forming around Kimberly as she stares after Tommy. 

   This is the first time Rita is given original US footage, though her face is hidden as her actress, Machiko Soga, wasn't available, I guess, for this moment (though Saban also oversaw addition shots filmed with her for those "Magic Wand, Make My Monster Grow" shots, along with new Goldar footage, long since known as Zyu 1.5, in honor of the later episodes having shots of Zyu 2, which we'll hear more of later). A stand-in wearing the Bandora costume thus substituted.

   There were two versions of the Dragon Shield the Green Ranger wears. The first is the Sentai version, seen whenever morphed. The second is the American version, seen when Tommy is morphed and in the Command Center. From what is gathered from reviewers, the Sentai shield is better than the American, which looks pretty fake. 

   The verbal interaction between Zordon and the Green Ranger seems like a foreshadow to Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince, where Draco Malfoy approaches Professor Dumbledore with the intent to kill him. Unlike Draco, Tommy goes through with his deed. 

   The Sentai footage of the Green Ranger entering the Megazord cockpit, which is translated to him doing so to the Power Rangers, bares a remarkable resemblance to the hijacking of a plane by terrorists, such as in the 9/11 Attacks. Green Ranger's "Long Live Empress Rita" even makes anyone who saw the attacks find it similar to one yelling Allahu akbar! Though this episode aired years before 9/11, the connection is too much to ignore, largely as we see the bad guy hit in what is supposed to be safe and expose the vulnerable side of the good guys. Incidentally to the connection, the show also first aired months after the World Trade Center bombing. 

Thoughts.

   This is it! It's finally come! We are first introduced to Tommy Oliver (played by the late Jason David Frank), who is to become a legend among the Power Rangers. Here, we first make our acquaintance with him where he is a new student who could match with Jason in a sparring match, and is handsome enough to make Kimberly swoon. Of course, Kimberly isn't the only female character to have a crush on Tommy. So does Rita Repulsa, who sees him as a tool in her victory over the Power Rangers.

    She kidnaps him with her magic and bestows on him the powers of the Green Ranger while casting a spell to make him evil. I always like how Jason David Frank played him in this, coming off as a nice guy with the bad boy kind of vibe, then speaking in a low octave upon becoming an agent of evil. He even proves to be more hammy than Rita herself, considering how he does more in one episode than she does in the past seventeen. He infects Alpha with a virus, cuts off the Power Rangers from Zordon, hops into their Megazord, then beats them to the curb single-handedly. In each encounter with a monster, the Rangers always outnumbered them, but the emphasis on team work is what carries it through. Here, the Rangers are caught off guard by someone who is like themselves and therefore are unable to defeat him. For the first time since they got their powers the Power Rangers have met an opponent who could truly defeat them and they are badly damaged, having lost Zordon and the Command Center in shambles. So it becomes surreal to see the "To Be Continued" text put at the end of the episode. 

    This episode marks the moment Power Rangers "grew the beard", as TV Tropes calls it, and it's also the moment Season One gets kind of darker than before. In the latter, it's because we are now entering the middle chapter of the story, or the middle act of the play. As George Lucas once said, "In the first act, you introduce everybody. In the second act, you put them in the worst possible position they'll ever get into their lives...In the third act, they get out." In the first sixteen episodes, we have been making out introduction to everyone here. From "Green With Evil" onward, we start to see things get dark. First sign of it is witnessing Rita Repulsa use her dark magic to give Tommy the Green Ranger Powers. She even chants some kind of dark magic chant while waving her hands over a crystal, with lighted candles near by, allowing for a blatant image of sorcery to be displayed (when watching the Sentai counterpart, it's even more scary when you see Bandora using it to communicate with Satan, in manner of Saruman communicating with Sauron). Then in this episode, we see how the Green Ranger hits the Rangers hard and puts them in the worst place yet by having Zordon out and the Command Center damaged, while also knocking them out of their zords. Even the way Tommy becomes the Green Ranger is dark where he had no choice in the matter, whereas the other Power Rangers chose to leave and then become Power Rangers when Rita attacked. The spell cast upon him is how he is forced into doing so. 


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