Power Rangers: Season 1, Episode 12: Happy Birthday, Zack



As I continue my way through Mighty Morphin Power Rangers, I’ve seen episodes focusing on each of the characters in the group.  This is an easy way to build up the characters and get the audience to come to appreciate them much more than they already do.  It’s something that has been done well on many different shows.  Mighty Morphin Power Rangers takes time to make their characters likeable.

It was only a matter of time before I stumbled upon an episode focusing on Zack.  That would be this post’s episode.

Season 1, Episode 12: Happy Birthday, Zack

Everyone is at the Juice Bar planning a surprise party for Zack.  The girls are decorating, while Ernie is making a cake with Billy’s cake-o-matic machine.  I don’t quite remember what Jason is doing.  The cake-o-matic machine doesn’t work and covers Ernie, the guy running the Juice Bar, in icing.  Bulk and Skull show up and try to ruin things, only to be given their just desserts. (Pun completely intended.)

Zack is sad because he thinks everyone forgot his birthday.  When he drops hints to Kimberly, she says that he reminded her of her poodle’s birthday.  Zack decides to go hang out on a hill by himself.  Rita Repulsa shows up and sends a monster after him.  Zordon sends the other Power Rangers to help.

The Power Rangers try to fight the monster with their power weapons.  Their weapons get broken.  The monster grows.  The Power Rangers zord up and the power sword gets broken.  They discover that the monster is reflecting their power back at them, so they use the zord to reflect the monster’s power back at it.  I’m not sure how it worked, but it did.  The Power Rangers win.

When they go back to the Juice Bar, people jump out and shout “Surprise!”  Zack is happy.  Everyone dances at his birthday party.  Freeze frame of Zack in mid-dance move.

This is not a great episode of Mighty Morphin Power Rangers.  It would never be remembered as one of the best episodes.  But there is one thing that it does fairly well.  The episode brings out some emotion in Zack.  There is some good work from Walter Jones as Zack, who is sad because he thinks that his friends have forgotten about his birthday.  You could feel a little bit of the pain that he was experiencing by the neglect that he thought was apparent.

There isn’t much else to say about the episode.  It’s nothing that is going to truly resonate and have a lot of meaning in future episodes.  It’s encapsulated into this single episode and I cannot imagine the events of this episode ever coming up again.  As its own episode, it is good.  As a piece of the series, it doesn’t affect much of what is going on.

I’ll see you next time for another episode of Mighty Morphin Power Rangers.

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