Mighty Morphin Power Rangers: Season 2, Episode 38: A Reel Fish Story

Previously in Mighty Morphin Power Rangers, a blast from the past arrived for Aisha as Shawna, a friend from Stone Canyon, visited Angel Grove for a gymnastics competition.  This led to a rivalry with Kimberly for Aisha’s friendship.  Lord Zedd took his opportunity to strike at Aisha by taking both her friends, and sending a monster to Angel Grove at the same time.  The Power Rangers overcame the obstacles, and Aisha helped Shawna realize that they would always be friends.  It was as happy an ending as Mighty Morphin Power Rangers has ever had.

Now we move onto an episode about fish.  Okay, maybe not completely about fish, but they will be a big part of it.  The storyline might bring up the last time fish were a major part of the show, or it might ignore that completely.  Either way, it will be the last episode before the serialized push that the show got with Rangers Back in Time.  Let’s not get ahead of ourselves, though.  Let’s watch…

Season 2, Episode 38: A Reel Fish Story

Rocky, Billy, and Aisha were at the local beach, where Rocky was a lifeguard.  One of the children playing near the water was afraid to go in because he thought there might be monsters in the water.  Rocky and Billy assured him that there weren’t, which wasn’t a lie until Lord Zedd sent some monsters down to terrorize people.  The child overcame his fear when he had to go into the water to save some people later in the episode.

The people he saved were Bulk and Skull.  Their great idea for the episode was to pretend to be lake monsters.  It would attract the attention of the Power Rangers, and they would then be able to find out who wore the helmets.  Billy and Rocky told them to knock it off, so the two bullies just swam around for a while.  When their inner tube disappeared, they had trouble getting back to land and needed saving.

Lord Zedd didn’t only send one monster down to Angel Grove in this episode.  When he heard about the possibility of lake monsters, he resurrected four water monsters that the Power Rangers had already fought.  Rocky, Billy, and Aisha went into battle against them at the beach and were having trouble.  Tommy, Adam, and Kimberly were called from scuba diving to help them and the full team managed to take down the fish monsters.  The final move in Lord Zedd’s plan was to turn Bulk and Skull’s inner tube into a monster to terrorize Angel Grove.  Tommy stayed at the beach to make sure the previous monsters didn’t cause any more trouble while the other five Power Rangers went to fight the giant inner tube monster.

The smaller fight ended up being the final fight.  The Megazord defeated the inner tube monster pretty quickly with a slash of its sword.  The main fight was the beach fight against monsters that had already been in the show.  It was like a putty fight, only the putties were the sea creature monsters in their small forms.  It was the punching and kicking that makes the American footage so fun to watch.  There wasn’t too much to say about it outside of it was fun to see the monsters fighting like that instead of the putties.  A team of monsters went up against a team of Power Rangers.  It’s not something you see often.

Mighty Morphin Power Rangers has really been hitting its stride in the middle of season 2 in terms of building out its universe.  Not only have there been hints at other worlds and other forms of life beyond Earth, but there have been callbacks to events that happened earlier in the series.  A Reel Fish Story had a callback to Billy’s fear of fish in Something Fishy.  It also brought back many of the fish related monsters that have been featured throughout the past season and a half.  Building upon the history and mythology of the Power Rangers will help to strengthen the show in the long run and make the characters feel more fully formed.  The show has improved upon that greatly, and can only improve more from here.

One disappointing thing about Mighty Morphin Power Rangers at this point in season 2 is how little focus is put onto the Zord fighting.  It seems as though every episode is becoming a quick slash of the sword and the death of the monster.  Perhaps that’s a problem in the Sentai itself.  The American adaptation may have taken all of the exciting fights for the earlier episodes in the season, leaving little to no excitement in the remaining footage.  Whatever the case is, these climactic battles need a shot of adrenaline so that they don’t feel so underwhelming leading into the final run of the season.

That wraps up another episode of Mighty Morphin Power Rangers.  It was a fun enough episode but not one that is going to leave a lasting impression.  The rest of the season should be interesting though.  There are five multiple episode arcs coming up and two standalone episodes, then the season is done.  The next episode, Rangers Back in Time should be just as fun as this one, if not more, since there will be a little tampering with time in it.  We’ll find out next time.  See you then.