1.10 Happy Birthday, Zack

Season 1 Episode 10
"Happy Birthday, Zack"
Writer: Stewart St. John

Director: Jeff Reiner

Episode Summary:

We open on Billy and the other rangers at Ernie's preparing for Zack's surprise birthday party.  Apparently it's Zack's birthday today, and nobody told me.  Billy invents the Cake-o-Matic to make a cake and it's causing Ernie some grief since it's malfunctioning all over the place.  Billy dances around mindlessly listening to a cassette tape of Kimberly's in this thing called aWalkman and says some geeky technobabble about how he likes the band (thank god Trini translated).  Kimberly says the best MMPR line ever when Jason looks at her after Billy says something very Billy-esque, "Don't look at me, I don't speak Billy."

Zack is bumming because he figures his friends forgot his birthday - yet Kimberly remembers it's her poodle's birthday - what a slap in the face.  Wearing his Malcolm X baseball jersey, Zack takes off on his own and Rita decides to give him a special birthday surprise, if you know what I mean.  Attacked by Rita's Nasty Knight and Goldar, Zack morphs and fights the monsters alone until his friends come to help him - I mean, if they're not too busy or anything.  We call on Megazord to defeat the Nasty Knight and we're home in time to enjoy Zack's surprise party.  Trini (not wearing monochrome yellow - but light brown rather) receives a hug from Zack as a thank you and they all dance the night away to a live band that doesn't have a singer.  Morphinominal.

Facts:

-First Line - Billy "You're right, Kimberly"

-First on-screen Ranger - Billy

-Last Line - Jason "Let's party, everyone!"

-Kimberly owns a poodle

-Billy invents the Cake-o-Matic (never seen again on the show)

-Skull hits on Trini instead of Kimberly

-First monster not made by Finster's machine (Rita used a spell to make him from a sword)

Observations:

Ernie states that the Power Rangers will do for Angel Grove what Batman did for Gotham City - I love the homage this pays to MMPR's true predecessor - Adam West's Batman.  That's the only way to explain how they get away with the campy fight scenes (BAM!).  Though - I am quite surprised Toei (production company for Sentai) allowed them to reference a DC comic when they partnered with Marvel for the Spiderman tv series.  And now I've put more thought into this episode than the writers did.

Zack continues to use his 90's "I'm the token black guy" slang, dance his Hip-Hop Kido, and goes a step further in wearing a Malcolm X baseball jersey in this episode.  I appreciate that we're getting to know Zack better (we know his birthday now, we know he likes being remembered by his friends, we know he's way into Trini) - but I'd like it better if they made him something more than a 1990's racial caricature.  Compared to Tony Wicks from California Dreams, Zack could be a little less of a stereotype.  But again, we're in the early episodes and basically everyone's a stereotype until we have further character development.