Pilot Episode: Day of The Dumpster

"Day of The Dumpster"
Episode 1
Air Date: August 28, 1993

Well, Ranger fans!!! This is where it ALL began!!! Back in the early 90s, no one had seen a show like Power Rangers before (....well, unless you lived in Japan! lol) A live action series featuring a bunch of teenagers turning into multi-colored suited heroes who fought monsters on a weekly basis and command an arsenal of wacky weapons, high octane fighting moves and gigantic robot machines. All of that mixed with typical 90s fashion, pop culture references and generic goody good storylines that would teach kids a lesson. The funny thing is....it all worked and started here. Haim Saban finally made his dream fully realized with "Mighty Morphin' Power Rangers", a show adapting footage from Japan's highly popular Super Sentai franchise and using American footage for the non-in suit action scenes. The show would come to evolve and mix it's own American fight footage with the Sentai footage but that's getting ahead of ourselves! Here the show is rather basic; heavily relying on it's source material for the action portions of the show and keeping the teen airtime to a minimum. I mean come on, when we were kids, we just wanted to see these guys fight, right?? But let's get to the Pilot Episode:

The show opens up with possibly the catchiest and iconic theme song from a kid's show. EVER!!! Seriously, who DOESN'T know that MMPR theme song??? O_o Anyway, two astronauts (in clearly old Asian footage) arrive at the moon and find a stone bin....(even though they call it a dumpster, it's not, it's a bin or barrel!) Anyway, they open it up and out magically appears the henchmrn of the main villain: Goldar, the lead general, Finster, the monster maker, Squatt and Baboo....who....well....are useless comic relief when it comes to the villains. Literally, they are just there to sound funny and barely do ANYTHING during the MMPR era of the franchise, an era that lasted 3. FREAKIN'. SEASONS!!! Anyway...again! Lastly, Rita Repulsa, the main villain and most iconic villain of the series rises and scares off the Asian men in stupid looking astronaut suits away. She then declares to concur the closet planet, revealing Earth right after that declaration quickly.

Soon we are introduced to our heroes! Jason, who will the Red Ranger, is a stoic martial arts teacher....even when he's suppose to be a freshman in high schoo, but whatever! Then there's Zack, who will be the Black Ranger, who is Jason's fun loving best friend who also teaches a class: Hip Hop Kiddo (Don't ask, it was the 90s!) Then there's Trini, the Yellow Ranger, the disciplined, mature student of the bunch who is also practicing some karate moves and near her is Kimberly (ok, keep you childhood boners down!), a gymnast practicing her routine on a balancing beam who is our Pink Ranger. Lastly, we have Billy, the scientific nerd of the group who will become the Blue Ranger. Billy arrives to Jason's class for his first lesson, only to be interrupted by the arrival of....sigh....the most annoying duo of characters....Bulk and Skull.....I'm gonna be talking very little about those two because they are embarrassing comic relief that last FAR too long throughout the franchise's first 6 seasons! I mean these guys are suppose to be considered bullies yet immediately get their asses kicked by Kimberly and Trini....yeah....moving on...

Rita begins her attack on Earth by conveniently attacking where the rangers so happen to live, Angel Grove, which alerts the Command Center. There we met Zordon, a wizard stuck in a time warp, who will be the rangers' mentor and his technical expert, Alpha 5....who has a teddy bear in the episode that's never seen again. You can tell the writers had no idea how to write these characters yet as Zordon casually tells Alpha to teleport 5 "overbearing and over emotional humans"....ummm....what!!?? O_o lol During the earthquake, those 5 teenagers (who we've been following so far) are teleported to them, who are conveniently wearing the same colors that their respected suits will be.....oh boy! Then we get some of the heaviest exposition I have ever seen from a show: Zordon just tells the rangers the plot of the show, right down to the power coins, morphers, zords and what the hell is going on with this Rita chick. He even issues them their ranger colors by telling them each of their specific, special characteristics. Clearly, the teens don't believe the giant floating head and live, once again, Alpha and Zordon handle this so casually....I mean it's only the fate of the world? Why randomly chose 5 teens instead of military trained adults, etc.? Anyway, Rita spies on the teens as they leave the Command Center and decides to kill them...I mean destroy them (we'll be hearing that a lot throughout this show). She unleashes her foot soldiers: The Putties! So the teens decide to defend themselves...except Billy who gets his ass handed to him first without little effort. Soon they all are defeated and decide to finally morph (Isn't it funny how they never gave those back before leaving???) So they morph and become the Power Rangers for the first time! Alpha's all excited and Zordon tells them to teleport them to the city where Goldar is attacking with more Putties. More bad special effects and bizarre editing later, we get to the main action where every ranger is kicking ass, including Billy ( I guess morphing gives them the power to fight???!!) O_o Then Rita makes Goldar grow and we immediately get our first zord summoning sequence as well as fight. Man, those Japanese animatronics  still hold up well nearly 25 years later, the original Dino zords are so cool! Less cool is how the rangers all of a sudden know how to use these zords...but OK! The first zord fight isn't the best but it gets the job done. The episode ends with Zordon finally convincing the rangers to stay and stop Rita! Kimberly's lame joke about her hair in the helmet we'll just avoid and the teens put their hands together and jump; saying "Power Rangers"!

Now the first episode has A LOT of problems: bad editing, poor acting, cheap writing, etc. But overall, this was a pretty fun pilot episode. The main characters seems likable so far, the threat is silly at best but legit and the mythology of the show is handled nicely despite a few glaring moments. As the start to a worldwide, international phenomenon, this could have been FAR worse.

Final Morph: B-