Season 5, Episode 4: Shadow Rangers

"Shadow Rangers"
Episode 4
Air Date: May 1st, 1997

Wow!!! A decent episode of Turbo already!!? O_O I'm shocked!!! Then again, I do remember liking this episode the last few times I've seen it, even if I HATE that cold opening of Tommy and Justin working on a car. -_-  I mean where is this sudden interest in cars from Tommy??? Oh and last episode, we found out apparently that Justin is literally a prodigy and is now going to Angel Grove High.  Honestly, why didn't the writers lead with this in the movie??? Making Justin this super smart kid from the Orphanage would have been more of a probable reason why Rocky and especially Zordon recruited him!!! -_- But ok, lets just try to make last minute sense of this new, extremely young character by making him more apart of the other rangers' lives by having him go to the school that they just graduated from....wait....what??? O_o.....Anyway....

The episode's main plot deals with Divatox's latest monster, Chromite, who attacks the other 3 rangers and uses a device to steal their morphing energy to create duplicate rangers of themselves he calls the "Shadow Rangers".  The Shadow Rangers are pretty badass, able to out fight the rangers in cool but brief individual unmorphed vs morphed fight sequences. Of course, the real rangers are no match for their morphed, evil counterparts without their powers and get captured; leading Tommy and Justin having to investigate and see what has happened to their friends at the construction site. Of course, an overzealous Justin tries to morph and a Shadow Ranger of his own appears.  Surprises me that Tommy had the only decency to not morph; knowing it was probably a bad idea. As Tommy and Justin fight the 4 Shadows, it's just funny seeing Justin standing up to adult rangers that could easily kick his ass. That's the problem with Justin, you just can't take the fights seriously when he’s in them like this. Anyway, Justin gets captured and Tommy is left to find out how to save his friends.

What follows next is another reason why I will always LOATHE Alpha 6 (or at least this version of him anyway), giving Tommy unneeded attitude when Dimitria does her first of many annoying "questioning" bits with the rangers. I get that the writers probably wanted the rangers to have a mentor that made the rangers think for themselves for once BUT that’s no excuse for the now obnoxious and plain rude new sidekick to rub it in when the other rangers' lives are in danger!!! -_- Anyway, Alpha was luckily monitoring the fight as Tommy realizes the Shadow Rangers are made up of light and he needs to use darkness to defeat them.  We get a cool fight scene where Tommy defeats each Shadow Ranger by either throwing them or leading them into the shadows.  After Chromite gets scared away, Tommy morphs and uses Justin's new homing device to find them in the cave. He defeats the last Shadow Ranger there to free the other rangers.  The 4 other rangers morph as the 5 Turbo Rangers head out to.....*groan*....stop a detonator at the construction site. But Chromite is there to stop them and a good fight ensues.  Tommy gets an idea to use the Turbo Megazord to defeat both Chromite and destroy the detonator since both are powered by light.  As the Turbo Megazord covers them in shadow, both Chromite and the detonator disappear.

Meanwhile, Tommy, Katheine and Justin track down the whereabouts of their stolen stuff as well as others with Justin's homing device that reveals that....*GROAN* -_-......that the Bulk and Skull chimps did it...but of course, no one knows they are Bulk and Skull or even questions where they've been since they never showed up at graduation. Jesus, I know those two were annoying pain in the asses but some wonder and compassion would be nice guys!!! O_o  But the worst part of the episode is finding out Ernie is apparently gone off to Amazon; leaving Lt. Stone in charge of the Juice Bar....ummmm...WHAT!!!?? -_- Since when is a Police Lt. qualified to run a Juice Bar??? Ummm, what happened to his job as a Police Lt.??? Dammit writers, what is up with the needless writing out of character with this series??? Did Stone just quit the Junior Police Patrol???  Uhhh, what happens to Bulk and Skull because of it.  I mean it would have made more sense if Bulk and Skull actually left the show, so Stone would close down his Detective Agency to run the Juice Bar, but NOPE!!! Errrrhhhhhh!!! Anyway, "Shadow Rangers" is a pretty good episode despite the continuing nagging issues that plague this mediocre season so far.

Final Morph: C+