Mighty Morphin Power Rangers: Season 2, Episode 15: Orchestral Maneuvers in the Park

In the latest episode of Mighty Morphin Power Rangers, Jason dealt with guilt over Tommy losing his powers.  Jason took the blame for choosing to save Angel Grove instead of stopping the green candle from burning to nothing.  Lord Zedd tapped into the guilt by making candles for the rest of the Power Rangers.  Jason overcame the guilt and saved the rest of his team before they suffered the same fate as Tommy.  In the end, Tommy said everything was okay.

This time around, we have an episode that I know nothing about.  The title implies that there will be a musical hook to the events.  Tommy isn’t on the team because his powers are gone and he’s not in Angel Grove.  That leaves Jason, Billy, Trini, Kimberly, and Zack to face the monster as a five person team.  What will they be going up against?  There’s only one way to find out.

Season 2, Episode 15: Orchestral Maneuvers in the Park

Zack’s cousin Curtis was performing in a jazz group at the Youth Centre but his horn wasn’t yet in Angel Grove.  Zack let him borrow their uncle’s horn to perform.  The performance went great.  People loved Curtis.  The only problem was that the horn went missing while he was talking to the gang.  They eventually got the horn back to Curtis and everything was fine.

Lord Zedd’s evil plan was to steal the horn and cast a spell on it.  The spell would cause the Power Rangers to hallucinate old enemies.  With the Power Rangers distracted, a new monster, made from the horn, would cause mayhem in Angel Grove.

Bulk and Skull stumbled upon the Power Rangers fighting imaginary foes as they were working on their new plan.  They would pour cement onto the footprints of the Power Rangers and match the footprints with the feet of the people in Angel Grove.  Bulk got the idea from watching Cinderella.  Of course, the cement ended up on them.  But they managed to see their plan through to the end.  They went to the Angel Grove Youth Centre with their cement cast.  They ran into a slight problem when Zack got Richie to turn on some music.  As people rushed past Bulk and Skull to the dancefloor, they dropped the cast and it shattered.  Their plan was foiled again.

Finally, we come to the three fights.  The first was a putty fight.  Zack went home to get the horn for Curtis.  He was returning with Kimberly and Billy when they were ambushed by putties.  They fought on a playground, which is my favourite setting because of the way people maneuver around the location.  It was a good fight, though it wasn’t memorable.  The second fight was a beach fight between the Power Rangers and the monsters of their past.  It played out like a putty fight.  The only difference was that the enemies were monsters instead of putties.  This fight was more memorable if only because of the monsters.  The final fight was the Zord fight as the Power Rangers went up against the trumpet monster.  It was a short battle that took about as long as this sentence to play out.

This was standalone type of episode that Mighty Morphin Power Rangers has shied away from recently.  With the whole Tommy arc, there wasn’t a chance for an episode to be self-contained.  There was always a little thread of story pointing toward Tommy losing his powers.  With that over, Orchestral Maneuvers in the Park stood as its own thing, not influenced by anything else.  This episode will not matter.  The show will move past it and pay no attention to it.  It is a nice break from the serialized story, and one that is needed once in a while.  Perhaps they’ll do one more before going forward with the show’s story.

One crazy thing stood out in Orchestral Maneuvers in the Park, and it was a small thing.  When the Power Rangers saw the first old foe, they were in the middle of the park.  The monster taunted them so they powered up.  They were immediately transported to a beach.  Nothing transitioned them to the beach.  There was no transition.  They morphed and were then at the beach instead of in the park.  Like I said, it’s not that strange.  It was just a location change that didn’t get set up in any way.

It’s time to wrap up this episode and look forward to the next.  Beauty and the Beast is coming up.  It seems that we’re in for a Kimberly episode.  It’s been a long time since one of those.  Her episodes tend to be some of the better self-contained ones, so I’m looking forward to this.  What will her story be?  What will they be fighting?  You’ll have to come back next time.  Until then, have fun in your life.