Mighty Morphin Power Rangers: Season 3, Episode 11: Fourth Down and Long

In the previous episode of Mighty Morphin Power Rangers, Rocky learned that you should always be prepared.  He switched places with his science teacher for a day.  When the teacher was turned into a monster, it was up to Rocky and his Power Rangers teammates to save the man and turn him back into a human.  It was a fun little throwaway episode that helped give a break in between the serialized stories.

Up next is an episode that seems to have something to do with football.  It shouldn’t be a Rocky episode since the last one was.  But who knows?  They’ve done stranger things before.  Hopefully it links up to the rest of the season in some way.  Whether it’s building character, leading to Kimberly’s exit, or just pushing some element forward, it would be good to have some momentum.  We’ll see how that goes in…

Season 3, Episode 11: Fourth Down and Long

In science class, things weren’t going well for Rocky’s lab partner, Alan.  He couldn’t get his calculations right.  He was making small mistakes that ended up ruining entire projects.  This lack of perfection put his high school football career in jeopardy.  Luckily, Rocky’s uncle was coming to town.  He was a football player named Joe Haley who had gone through some similar difficulties to what Alan was experiencing and would help Alan get better at his studies.

The villains on the moon conveniently ended up with a football playing monster at the same time.  The Centiback was a cross between a centipede and a quarterback.  They thought that the monster would be a great one to send down to Earth while Joe Haley was in Angel Grove.  And they were almost right.

While Rocky brought Alan to see his uncle on the football field, the monster was sent down to attack them.  Its main power was a football that would turn anyone it hit into footballs.  This caused a problem when Joe Haley and Alan were turned into footballs, as well as Bulk, Skull, and all the Power Rangers aside from Rocky.

What were Bulk and Skull doing there?  They were Joe Haley’s security patrol.  They were tasked with protecting Joe Haley.  Lt. Stone thought they did a pretty bad job of it when he found out about the football incident.  They were punished and told that they would never be on security detail again.

In terms of the fighting in the episode, there was some good stuff to be had.  The first fight was the one that saw everyone being turned into footballs.  The Centiback threw its football at Rocky, and Joe Haley jumped in the way to save his nephew.  The Power Rangers were taken down one by one while trying to stop the Centiback.  It’s always more fun to see the Power Rangers struggle in their battles.  Having most of them get defeated made the later success feel more earned.  Rocky retreated after the initial fight to try and figure out what to do.  He teamed up with Ninjor.  They used a bucket to catch the Centiback’s ball and toss it at the footballs of their friends.  That turned everyone back to normal so that the Megazord and Ninjor could team up and take down the giant monster.

The last little note of the episode was learning that Alan had dyslexia.  The reason he was getting the formulas wrong in science class was that his dyslexia was acting up.  Joe Haley had gone through the same thing in school and assured Alan that everything would turn out fine.

Mighty Morphin Power Rangers was at almost full strength in Fourth Down and Long.  It was a standalone episode that had a message and gave Rocky something interesting to do.  He had learned from his always be prepared lesson of the previous episode and was prepared for the challenge he would face this time around.  Children would discover that a learning disability like dyslexia wasn’t something that would ruin their lives.  It was an obstacle they could overcome.  Every standalone episode should be this good.

The one thing that seems to be suffering in this section of season three is the absence of Kimberly in the non-fighting scenes.  She no longer hangs out with the rest of the characters.  She’ll be off on her own until they need her help for a fight.  Amy Jo Johnson was getting ready to leave the series, so her time working on it was being lessened.  But she just kind of disappeared as a character, for the most part.  That’s going to change a little bit through the transition from Kimberly to Kat.  These standalone episodes feel off without her character there to banter with the rest of the teens.  There’s a noticeable hole in the cast.

The next episode is the first part of a two-parter, so maybe Kimberly will be back with something to do again.  One can only hope.  She’s one of the more fleshed out characters on the show, so the lack of her feels like there’s a lack of some much-needed depth.  We’ll find out if that’s different in Stop the Hate Master, Part I.  Come back soon for that post.