1.7 Big Sisters

Season 1 Episode 7
"Big Sisters"
Writer: Gary Glasberg and Shuki Levy
Director: Jeff Reiner

Episode Summary:
We open with Kimberly looking for Punky Brewster Maria at Ernie's.  However, Maria is a trouble-maker and turned off the hot water in the guy's shower room.  Figuring that all Maria wants are friends, Trini and Kimberly volunteer to be her "Big Sisters" and hang out with her and talk with her any time she wants . . . unless it's after this episode.  Zack and Trini have a good cuddle at Ernie's and then Kim and Trini take Maria to the park for a picnic where she is bombarded with traditional teenage girl questions such as "who's the most rad boy at school."  Rita discovers the location of the Power Eggs which are ancient mythical eggs that only a child can take out of the box they're kept in.  Thank goodness the writers have cleverly written a child into this episode.

Ages ago, the Morphing Masters put these eggs to sea to protect the world from universal danger.  Rita creates a Chunky Chicken monster to kidnap Maria to open the egg-box and OH NO teleportation and the communicators are down (OVERUSED PLOT DEVICE) forcing the Rangers to use Billy's newest invention - the Rad Bug.  They take the Rad Bug (a suped up old VW Beetle) to the Command Center and inform Zordon of Maria's capture (apparently he did not sense this danger as he seems to sense all other danger).  Chunky Chicken ties Maria up and threatens to kill her, the Rangers form Megazord to catch her from falling and kill the monster.  We end at Ernie's with Kim holding a bowl of Ernie's Veggie Chili.  Apparently this is a popular item as she announces it's on the house and then drops it on an unassuming Bulk and then she utters the funniest line ever said on Power Rangers, "It was supposed to be on the house, Bulk, not on you."

Facts:
-First Line - "Hey Ernie, have you seen a little girl wearing long black pig-tails?" - Kim
-First on-screen Ranger - Jason and Zack
-Last Line -Kim, see above
-We first learn about the Power Eggs - and never hear about them again
-Billy invents the Rad Bug
-Maria is intentionally dressed like the child from the Japanese Sentai footage

Observations:
The Rad Bug seems to come at a very convenient time even though we had no prior knowledge Billy had been working on it.  We later see it used to transport the Rangers to the monster without actually seeing the American actors inside - obviously the Japanese footage had a similar car so this is really just convenient.

Maria wears awkwardly long pig-tails and an outfit that you'd really only ever see on Punky Brewster, which seems odd at first until you realize that it's to blend her in seamlessly with the Sentai footage which contains a similarly dressed Japanese girl.  This will start the beginning of the trend of using small children as plot devices and dressing them very oddly so they match up with the Japanese footage.

This is also the first episode we don't see Bulk and Skull starting trouble.  They're just sitting down at Ernie's trying to enjoy a sundae when Kim accidentally spills veggie chili on him.  While we won't see the transformation of Bulk and Skull into good citizens for another two seasons, it's good to see that they're starting to be more than just one-dimensional generic high school class clowns.