Power Rangers: the best show made in 20 years

Power Rangers. Everyone grew up on this show and there’s a reason: it was brilliant. But why? As children, we may not have been able to explain its glory, but as I become more collegiate, it becomes easier to explain. Some reasons are in the show’s nature, other’s are in the influence the show has had.

Let’s have a look at Power Rangers. One reason this show is sweet is that it was filmed in two countries. Japan did all of the crazy stuff with the aerobics and ninja stuff. They also had all of those nonsense scenes with the villains wearing rejected mascot outfits. Then we go over to America where they film all of the stuff with dialogue that no one remembers because I only tuned in for the action stuff.

In addition, every episode, no matter what, ended the same way. They’ve almost got the villain beat. He’s at the end of his rope. Then he gets zapped but that guy on the moon and gets natural villain enhancement, growing above the same building set they made for the last episode. So what are the Power Rangers going to do? Call on their Zords, gigantic mechanical animal fighting machines they pilot individually. They’ll rough each other up a bit before they finally decide to do what they did last time and combine their Zords to make a big man looking Zord who will bring the pain before shooting an orange beam that drops the enlarged villain before he explodes.

Power Rangers also managed to teach me all social stereotypes early in life. Let’s go with the color coordination first: the Black Ranger was a black guy, the Yellow Ranger was an Asian girl, and the pink ranger was the one white chick. There was a geek that was looked down on as the Blue Ranger; the Red Ranger was a white kid teaching karate like Mr. Miagi was his instructor. Oh, and don’t forget that the Black Ranger fought with dance moves at times…

This show’s influence is all over the place. The show has had 14 spinoffs of the original series, a feat that CSI has yet to reach. The series also managed to get two movies out of the show as well. With episodes now available on itunes, you too can relive the magic.