1.21 Green with Evil Part V: Breaking the Spell

Season 1, Episode 21

"Green with Evil Part V: Breaking the Spell"
Writer: Gary Glasberg and Stewart St. John

Director: Robert Hughes

Episode Summary:

The Rangers are still in disbelief that Tommy could be the Green Ranger (the DNA match courtesy of Alpha).  Now that Jason's back in charge he directs the other Rangers to split up and try to find Tommy and appeal to him on a personal level. There's no way anybody can be evil because they want to be - it has to be a spell!  Predictably, Kimberly finds him at Ernie's and whispers to him that she knows he's the Green Ranger and that they can help him overcome Rita.  His eyes glow green and he greets her as "Pink Ranger" (HE KNOWS!) and declares once again that Rita is his queen so back off.  We close-up on Kimberly's face and discover that she really needs to clean her eyebrows.  Seriously.





Rita gives Tommy his very own zord - DRAGONZORD! which he summons with his Dragon Dagger (a dagger that has a flute built in to it - very manly).  Dragonzord goes on a rampage through the Warehouse District in Angel Grove and the Rangers morph into action.  Alpha revives Zordon who then revives the Rangers Zords by making their morphers glow.  Jason's T-Rex then battles Dragonzord and wins (you'd think Dragonzord would have the size advantage, but no).  Jason jumps to the ground and decides to have hand-to-hand combat with Tommy and Zordon informs Jason that he needs to destroy Tommy's Sword of Darkness to break Rita's spell over him.  He knocks said sword loose and destroys it with his Power Blaster freeing Tommy.

Jason asks Tommy to join the Rangers and fight on the side of good, which he bashfully declines since he's so ashamed of his actions.  The other Rangers convince him and then we morph as a six-member team and pose for the camera and say various threats to Rita about how awesome being good is.  Zordon then displays a toy commercial, I mean, new battle-mode for Dragonzord that combines the Mastodon, Triceratops, and Sabre-Tooth Tiger (I totally had this toy - and it was awesome).  Tommy takes the same pledge the other five Rangers took in episode 1 and we end on a high-five, er, six shouting "POWER RANGERS!"  The epic Green Ranger mini-series concludes.

Facts:

-First Line - Kim "I can't believe that Tommy's the Green Ranger."
-Last Line - All "POWER RANGERS!"
-Focus - Tommy
-Jason says "morphinominal" for the first time
-Rita introduces us to Dragonzord and the Dragon Dagger and the summoning song
-Zordon introduces Dragonzord Fighting Mode
-Tommy joins the Rangers, our first sixth Ranger

Observations:

Alpha really drove most of the action in this mini-series.  He kept morale from hitting rock-bottom by giving his rousing speeches, he discovered the identity of the Green Ranger, he protected the Command Center from further damage, and he revived Zordon - TWICE.  Forget Jason and Zack's leadership ability in this mini-series, for the first time ever I'm on Team Alpha.  Ai yi yi yi yi indeed.

This episode really shows the limitation of using the Sentai footage as in Zyuranger the Green Ranger is driven to tears (in his un-morphed form) to dissolve the Sword of Darkness because he cannot bring himself to kill his brother (the Red Ranger).  Additionally, Dragonzord is battled by Goldar and Megazord in Zyuranger since the Green Ranger attempts to assassinate Bandora (Rita).  Furthermore, since the Zords are "guardian beasts" in Zyuranger, they automatically come together to show the Rangers the new battle mode instead of having Zordon introduce it.  Obviously MMPR could not use all of this footage in their storyline and had to splice the Dragonzord footage, cut out the assassination attempt completely, and film an entirely new scene with Jason shooting the Sword of Darkness.  If you go through the final fight with Jason and Tommy slowly, you can definitely pin-point when we switch from the Japanese to the American footage because a) Tommy's shield suddenly becomes some cheap material instead of metal and b) US Jason is a much bigger guy than Japanese Geki.

So now the Morphinominal Project takes a new turn - looking at the composition of a six-member team.