1.38 A Bad Reflection on You

Episode 38, Season 1

A Bad Reflection on You

Writer: Peggy Nicoll

Director: Robert Hughes

Episode Summary:

Scorpina is tasked with a mission alongside The Twin Man – duplicate the Rangers and ruin their goody reputation.  These “evil” rangers wear sunglasses and chew gum and go on dates with Skull, so you know they’re bad news.  They’re so bad, they put laundry soap in the water fountain so Principal Caplan would get creamed in the face with a bunch of laundry soap.

That said, our teens get detention for the “evil” rangers crime!  In detention, we learn that Bulk is sadly illiterate.  Rather than pity him for spelling his own name incorrectly, the “good” Rangers laugh at him.  He pulls out a massive feast his mother packed him for detention and once again they laugh at his unfortunate battle with obesity.  Through Bulk’s television set he brought to detention, we learn that the “evil” Rangers are attacking ordinary citizens with lawn chairs – IT’S MADNESS!

 

Zack confuses Bulk and Skull with this concept of “counting” so they can morph of there and save their reputations.  The “good” Rangers battle the “evil” rangers –  “evil” pink tricks Trini into kicking “good” Kimberly - who turns out to be a putty in disguise.  We uncover the Big Bad – The Twin Man and beat him with the power weapons.

We transport back into detention and watch as Bulk and Skull are sentenced to another detention because the Rangers are big fat liars.

Facts:

-First on-screen – All

-First line – “Mr Caplan – can we give you a hand?” - Billy

-Focus – All

-Last Line – “Get a life.” - Zack

-Bulk spells his name “Buulk”

-The actual Rangers do not appear until 4:30 into the episode

-Sunglasses and gum = up to no good

Observations:

This is quite an enjoyable episode.  Obviously the same actors play both the evil and good Rangers, but all five of them differentiate their evil counterparts enough to make it believable that they actually are being framed.  We also learn that, yet again, evil Billy dresses much better than and is way cooler than real Billy.  I want to give credit to Trini for being the most believable of the five – everyone else performed caricatures of themselves where as her “bad” was much more subtle and evil in a way.

The unmorphed sequences show the actors have some decent acting chops, I don’t think a story-line like this could be pulled off with the same amount of believability by the cast of Samurai . . . but maybe Megaforce.  This episode brings the five rangers back to their roots before Tommy.  It’s a good standalone story that is just fun to watch.  We don’t progress the story any and we don’t earn any new weapons, but we don’t need to – the mid-season finale is about to come up (*spoiler alert*) in the next two episodes.

The thing is – this “evil” Rangers story line works so well in this episode I wouldn’t be surprised if we see it again . . . and maybe again . . . and possibly even again.  Obviously if something works well, do it over and over and over.