Season 23, Episode 7: Home Run Koda

"Home Run Koda"

Episode 7

Air Date: March 19th, 2016

Ummmmm, so what was the point of this episode again??? -_-  Oh yeah, teaching us a lesson that Riley had to learn about what's more important aka living out his dream through Koda vs his ranger duties.  You know an episode has problems, well at least for me when it reminds you of "In the Limelight".  You know that episode from Lightspeed where Dana becomes an obnoxious snob obsessed with being a model and suddenly decides being a ranger is more important at the end....when that was NEVER called into question before out of horrendous plot convenience at the expense of her character for one episode. -_-  It just seems so out of character for someone like Riley to get so caught up in sports and easily dismiss the urgency of the situation when there is literally a bomb in the stadium where hundreds if not thousands of people could be hurt! Also, why does Koda need some magical bat he mistakenly took from a villain to suddenly be this world famous baseball player?!??!  Seriously, what is the time fame of this episode??? O_O  Weeks? Months? And this coach so happens to be the coach of the famous Earthquakes, which are a major team in the PR universe's equivalent of the MLB!?? O_o  

Why is Riley suddenly all into baseball now when it's been shown he is more into math and sword fighting; even sword fighting with Ivan several times as a training activity!??? Now he had these strong dreams of being a baseball player in the championship and acts like it means more to him than being a ranger.  The resolution of it is even poor when Koda tells Riley being a ranger is more special than his dreams, blah, blah, blah....and Riley does a 180 so fast and is just back to normal like nothing happened! I mean it would make sense if he was under a spell or something, but this is Riley completely turning into a jacka$$ for no apparent reason but to serve the episode's plot.  All dismissive of the rangers and possible trouble in the city just to be hard on Koda about his training and skill.  Not to mention, it turns out to not even be Koda but the bat itself!!?? O_O  I just.....why not just have Koda naturally extremely skilled at baseball, loving the fame, especially when a kid becomes a fan of him that reminds him of his little brother Tiku, etc.  My god, who wrote this one!?  Seems Judd Lynn and Becca Barnes which I'm honestly very surprised by!!! O_O  It just feels so unnatural and out of nowhere.

I guess because they were using a monster themed after sports again like say "Strikeout" from Turbo, they of course needed to have the human plot centered around that but unlike "The Curveball", T.J.'s dilemma made waaayyy more sense and was in character! He actually earned something because of his selflessness because the guy he saved realized there are things more important than winning.  But nope! Honestly, the monster plot isn't that great either to begin with as Game Face wants to train some Vivix to be a stronger, less pathetic team than when they went against the rangers last time.  I guessing the whole training sequences were suppose to go hand and hand with Riley training Koda but I wasn't entertained by that either! -_-  Anyway, Game Face and his team face off against the rangers, even leading to the rangers using the new Dino Victory Charger which draws power from the other rangers into Tyler's T-Rex Supercharge blaster for one massive finisher as tradition on this show.  But soon even Heckyl starts punning with the sports references and makes them all grow as the rangers summon their zords to destroy them.  They finish them off with their 3 individual megazords before forming the Plesio Charge Megazord Pachy-Rex formation to destroy Game Face once and for all.  Oh and it turns out Koda can naturally hit home runs after all..........:).......*HEADDESK RETURNS* Sloppy writing, silly characterizations, boring plot, etc.  Next!

Final Morph: D