Season 19, Episode 17: The Great Duel

"The Great Duel"

Episode 17

Air Date: November 17th, 2012

Continuing where the last episode ended, The Great Duel seems more concerned with retreading old waters instead of actually building on a storyline they set up with Lauren suddenly being revealed to be the REAL sealing symbol holder/true Red Ranger.  Jayden....I will never like or understand this character! Even to a lesser extent, Mentor Ji! The fact that Antonio has the foresight to go after Jayden and try to bring him back says a lot when the rangers' mentor seems less caring and insightful than even one of the rangers he's suppose to mentoring! -_-  Why did they even let Jayden go??? As a matter of fact, where the hell is Jayden suppose to go?!! He's just suppose to wander aimlessly like some homeless person??? Where does he sleep? Eat??? The Shiba House has been clearly stated as his ONLY home yet they let him go off.  Not to mention, once again, Jayden just taking off is causing more harmful conflict to the group than by bringing the team closer together.  More apprehension of getting close to Lauren because everyone just can't stop thinking or talking about Jayden.  Meanwhile, Lauren continues to NOT belong on this show as Kimberly Crossman brings such maturity and grace to the role that it just makes the others look more intolerable as characters.  She can easily outfight them and seems to be the only one focused on the overall goal of trapping Xandred for good while the others b!tch and moan about Jayden.  I guess her finding Mia's awful cooking was funny...mostly because this is the only time where the joke lands by establishing how much Lauren's life must have sucked if she thinks Mia's food is amazing! O_o lol

Then you have Jayden who has no point or purpose anymore...until he runs into Dekker and suddenly he wants to fight him to the death......ummmmm...why??? Apparently he has to because he has no real calling anymore outside of being a ranger/Samurai anymore so fighting Dekker gives him something to stop or challenge him or whatever.  Suddenly Ji comes out of nowhere and intervenes because....now he wants to find Jayden and try to get him back.  After falling over a cliff and Jayden managing to save him, Jayden and Jo have a talk about what he's going to do now after leaving the team but Ji trying to convince him to come back....so you didn't think about this BEFORE he left???  Why would you even let Jayden go when he has no other place to go???  He can't live there anymore or what??? This whole plot point reeks of forced melodrama and I'm sick of this show using poor writing to create some sort of conflict that we must be invested in when....NO...NO....NNNOOOO! -_- And the episode just ends with them continuing to fight as they plan on fighting until the very end aka until one of them permanently defeats the other.  So this episode becomes retroactively NOT "The Great Duel" then because it makes no sense if that's next episode and this feels more like padding until the two have yet again another showdown to the death.  What happened to all that talk about losing you edge Jayden and letting Dekker get into your head??? O_o  Bah!

Anyway, the rest of the team are dealing with yet another Nighlok attack in the form of Gigatrox but I'm just so into the visual of a female Red Ranger that I'm just focused on Lauren.  I mean she's really the only thing this show has going for it anymore as the other rangers are practically Jayden worshippers now with no other defining traits.   Lauren manages to use Super Samurai mode as the team defeats him but of course, a zord battle occurs as he grows.  They use the Samurai Gigazord to finally defeat him as Lauren orders the team to give her all their zord symbol powers for one last strike; destroying Gigatrox once and for all. Yeah, that's about all to be said about this one.  The season is finally coming to a close so that's all I'm looking forward to at this point so.....

Final Morph: C-