Season 18, Episode 9: I've Got a Spell on Blue

 

"I've Got a Spell on Blue"

Episode 9

Air Date: March 20th, 2011

Still, not a bad episode at all! Even tho the episode begins with too much forced exposition of what's going to be happening to Jayden and especially Kevin.  Outside of that, once again, we have a monster that poses a genuine threat to the rangers in Madimot, the newest Nighlok out of the Sanzu River who reveals to Xandred that he has control of the ancient Tiger zord that he took from one of the former leaders of the Samurai Rangers. Also, one again we have nice use of the Sentai footage and once Kevin does become taken over by Madimot's magic, he is actually pretty badass and even forces three rangers to demorph by pure skill alone. DAMN!!! O_o  Of course, Jayden is the only one left to defeat the monster and try to reverse the spell on Kevin and I honestly enjoyed how resourceful Jayden was in countering Madimot's spell with his symbol power skill; not to mention managing to find a way to break Kevin and the zord of the spell.  Even tho Kevin's natural Samurai skills could have been built up more before the heavy handed Kevin worship at the beginning, it's nice to see progression in his character....as a fight anyway.  Najee-De-Tiege can actually give a decent performance when he doesn't sound like he's about to be out of breath from running a marathon or a soft spoken voice that feels so forced and inauthentic.  Yeah! O_O

Back on the villain side of things, continuing right where we left off, Deker brings Dayu back to Xandred but clearly it is made apparent that Deker is a rogue Nighlok and a powerful solo warrior to warrant not surviving him.  Deker so far is a very well made mysterious character...who's relationship with his sword is a bit creepy but even creepier is his human form as RIchardo Medina Jr. returns to the Power Rangers franchise as Deker's human form.  Gotta say, he's doing A LOT better than his over the top performances of Wild Force (Just saying, subtly seems to be his comfortable range of acting! O_o) and I like how he just walks in during the fight between Jayden and Kevin to pretty see if Jayden is worthy of fighting him as well as knowing exactly what he was going to do to beat Kevin.  Also during this scene, I love the moment Madimot just blasts the other 3 rangers for shouting during the fight! HA! Thank you! It was getting annoying quickly! Sorry guys! :P  Love you Mike tho! While the fight scene between our Red and Blue rangers was mostly, if not entirely Sentai footage, it was definitely great action and well done, entertaining fight from start to finish.

Like I said, Jayden manages to be very resourceful and free both his allies as now the rangers have the Tiger zord under their control and even use it to make a new formation of the megazord: The Tiger Drill Megazord; which they use to destroy Madimot's powerful shield as well as himself.  The episode does end with a nice quota for Jayden and Kevin, once again, subtle and not over doing the acting.  Maybe there was some decent direction these last few episodes??? O_o Oh and Bulk and Spike.....moving on! Otherwise, this was a great episode as a whole showing a strong strategy from the team leader, a formidable opponent for the team and some nice fight scenes that were thrilling. :) Maybe Samurai will be a lot better than I remember??? O_o *False hope begins*

Final Morph: B+