Season 1, Episode 3: Teamwork

"Teamwork"
Episode 3
Air Date: September 8, 1993

Hmmm, this episode is kind of hard for me to sit through only because it establishes character traits from the original rangers that I don't like: that they're so environmentally friendly and unrealistically  responsible. It's a problem that would last for a couple more seasons until the writers decided that these rangers should have flaws. I just find it hard to believe high school freshmen would care about signing petitions and cleaning up a waste dump site when they could be at the mall, playing video games or worrying about bullying. Speaking of bullying, after the guys flack on the girls about heading to the dump site with them after school, Bulk and Skull do their gross, obnoxious shtick and actually succeed at bullying one student! ....Before getting embarrassed again by Kimberly's perfectly timed gymnastics! Seriously, in real life these two would be the bullied and would have gotten kicked out of school by now for their dumb shenanigans! Anyway, Rita watches and decides she wants to ruin the girls' cause and pollute the earth (Call Wild Force!) So she sends some Putties to inconvenience the girls and a fight ensues. Kimberly kicks and runs as Trini does her karate thing better than her, with some bad editing I might add.

Meanwhile, Zack is teaching Alpha...sigh....hip hop moves....until the alarms of the Command Center go off and Zordon tells them the girls need help. Soon Jason and Billy arrive and plan on helping the girls out but Rita has Finster make her a monster and sends him down. The Menacing Minotaur is another generic foe for the rangers but what I like about this situation is the guys are forced to fight the Minotaur while the girls have to defeat the Putties on their own and fight Goldar who is also attacking. We even see both of them fight Goldar head on, the first general/ranger fight and Trini gets a good kick out of it that sends him down.  Soon the Minotaur is grown by Rita's magic staff again and the team have to reunite for a zord battle. What I like about this zord battle is seeing each individual zord fight.  The Saberbooth Tiger blasting, Triceratops shooting its horns, the Mastodon blowing it's cold air and the Tridactyl taking care of Goldar and the Putties. Soon the rangers are teleported mid-fight back to the Command Center where Zordon gives them their Power weapons for the first time.  I LOVE these weapons, each fitting their individual ranger wielder.  Once back in action, the rangers use their weapons on the Minotaur, eventually combining all of them to make the Power Blaster. The Minotaur is defeated and we get a quick epilogue of the rangers talking about how working as a team was great....even though they spent most of the episode split into two teams but whatever!

Don't have much to say about this one, it's average at best. The action was a little different this time around, both ranger and zord fights. Cool seeing the Power Weapons used for the first time and seeing the zord fight individually. But the waste dump plot sucked and is pretty much forgotten by the end. Oh and Mr. Caplen is weird. Just throwing it out there! O_o

Final Morph: C