Season 25, Episode 15: Tech Support

"Tech Support"

Episode 15

Air Date: September 29th, 2018

Well, THIS is certainly A LOT better! At first, I thought this would be a MUCH improved episode over the last couple of stinkers but then.....Emma came on the screen during a usual but great ranger fight against the Basherbots...and it seemed all would be lost again! O_O Thinking she could fight as good as the Power Rangers for some reason after training a bit with Brody, she goes in and thinks she defeated a couple of Basnerbots and helped the rangers when she was really putting herself in danger, not to mention getting in the way! -_-  I liked the fact that they are using modern day technology to show how quickly someone can become famous by going viral with one of the civilians the rangers were protecting records Emma during the fight.  Getting more into her head that she's awesome with people praising her viral video and asking for autographs, Brody tries to reason with her and tell her she is putting her life in danger and really should just let the rangers do their thing. Emma.....blows off his advice and continues to think the rangers need her in battle until they have to save her and literally take away so she can leave.  I gotta say....I absolutely enjoyed how this episode was handled, especially when it came to Emma's eventual contribution to helping the rangers. It reminded me of older Power Rangers episodes like "Mean Screen" when Adam went to one of the students to help them stop a virus that King Mondo had planted within the electronics of Angel Grove.

For once the lesson of the day is "shown" instead of being "told" aka being talked down to because the show is for the kids.  Kids understand and need to be given more credit in seeing things like that and learning from them without a character having to talk like they are talking to the child viewers than the actual character who needs to learn the lesson.  Here, Emma quickly realizes she' no fighter (and insanely delusional if you ask me) but the rangers still find a way for her to help with actually using something she is good at via her technology genius with software when a ranger infects their weapons with a virus.  They even manage to have some nice continuity here with Mick needing to hide because of Emma noticing him as a teacher and Emma telling Redbot how much she loved his book! :)  Also, the monster of the day, while nothing groundbreaking, had the best pun name in a while (Typeface) considering his face is literally a keyboard.  Seriously, Sentai has the wackiest designs in the world.  Those crazy Japanese creators! :P

From there, the episode turns out to be your usual but there's no shoehorned lesson having to be taught.  Emma just learns her lesson through the rangers needing her based on her specific talent; showing that you can be essential to something by not needing to try to be something you're not.  At the end when Brody and Emma were talking, I actually started to kinda like her and maybe she could even be a love interest for Brody for the rest of the season??? Meh! Probably not! Anyway, "Tech Support" is a more straight forward episode that shows the characters interacting and reacting more realistically than the after-school cliches it's been running to as of late.  The show just feels a lot more natural and enjoyable when the characters are figuring things out for themselves and act in such a way that they learned their lesson, NOT having to be taught all the time by adult characters. Nice! :)

Final Morph: B+