Season 4, Episode 32: Do I Know You?

"Do I Know You?"
Episode 32
Air Date: September 27th, 1996

You know as we get closer to finding out who the Gold Ranger really is the writing is getting kind of convoluted. There is no reason why the Gold Ranger should be hiding his identity from the other rangers. I mean his excuses make no sense as he says if he tells them who he is, he'll lose his power forever....and yet next episode we find out who he finally is and his powers are perfectly fine, so what was the point of that line. I'm assuming it was just more prolonging the mystery of the Gold Ranger and once again, making it seem like Billy is the Gold Ranger when he's clearly not.  His whole random disappearances make no sense from a story perspective even if there are some fan theories of what Billy was possibly doing this whole time. But I honestly don't think the writers had any idea what to do with the story besides make it seem like anyone could be the Gold Ranger so they just made Billy randomly disappear working on "something" just for the hell of it.

Anyway, what's interesting about this episode is the arrival of the Varox, bounty hunter who seems to be after the power of the Pyramid. As the rangers are trying to figure out who the Gold Ranger is, he lands in Angel Grove and cloaks his Pyramid but the Varox bounty hunter has followed him and plans to steal his powers. King Mondo, of course, is intrigued by the Gold Ranger and furiously wants to know who he is, so he sends down his army of Cogs to go searching for the Pyramid aka Pyramidas.  Close by, Tommy and Adam see the Cogs looking for the Pyramid and surprisingly, just watch them try to find the Pyramid for them. I love it when the rangers are written to be smart.

But it turns out the only thing the Cogs found were Tommy and Adam as they morph and fight off the Cogs. They call for back up from the other rangers. who morph and join them. As they get overwhelmed by the swarm of Cogs, the Gold Ranger rescues them. As Varox approaches, Mondo and Sprocket appear to make a deal with him as they both are after the Gold Ranger and the Zeo Rangers respectively. When Varox attacks and weakens the Gold Ranger, the rangers order Alpha to teleport him to the Power Chamber while they call on their zords and deal with a defeated Varox who has been made bigger by Klank and Orbus. After destroying Varox, the rangers continue to wonder who the Gold Ranger is, especially when he knows who Zordon and Alpha are. Ehhhhh, more pointless misdirection and they don't even know who he is, so Zordon's line makes no sense only to continue to make the audience wonder. Otherwise, the episode is fine as I liked Varox and his deal with Mondo, but the Gold Ranger mystery is starting to become tiresome as you just want to know who the hell he is already!!! Luckily, next episode puts a final end to that!

Final Morph: B-