Power Rangers Zeo: Episode 6: Rangers in the Outfield

Previously in Power Rangers Zeo, Tommy and Kat had a child. Not really. They were taking care of a child as a part of a school project where they had to role play a married couple. The child was kidnapped by The Machine Empire and the Zeo Rangers fought to get them back. It was a fun episode filled with great action and high stakes.

Power Rangers Zeo was great with the character episodes early on. There was one about Tanya, one that had to do with Rocky, and then a Tommy/Kat split episode. That left Adam and Billy to highlight if the show wanted cover all the bases (no pun intended). Whatever the case, it seemed like it had to do with baseball. That was because the episode was titled…

Episode 6: Rangers in the Outfield

Adam and Rocky were part of the Angel Grove High School baseball team. During one of their practices, Tanya came to visit. Of course, she wasn’t only visiting the two of them. Her boyfriend was the captain of the team. He was the star player. When one of the balls went her way, Tanya threw it back to the coach. He liked her arm and decided to try her out as pitcher.

This decision put some strain on her relationship. During that initial practice, Tanya struck out her boyfriend. He was embarrassed and couldn’t handle that his girlfriend might be as good a player as him. The rest of the team, Rocky and Adam aside, made fun of him. He told Tanya that she needed to quit the team, which she wasn’t going to do. They broke up.

Meanwhile, Bulk and Skull were given a job by Lt. Stone. He wanted them to clean up trash around the sports complex. They were happy to do the job because it involved such a small amount of work. It involved such little work that they decided to step up to the batting cages for a couple swings. Bulk struck out immediately. Skull made fun of him. Rocky and Adam showed up to break up their fighting before everyone discovered that the batting machine was a monster sent by The Machine Empire.

The monster immediately hit Rocky with a ball, absorbing him. Then some Cogs came and fought Adam, only to steal Rocky’s backpack and morpher. Adam called upon the help of his friends and they began a lengthy fight to get Rocky’s morpher back and save Rocky. There were some strange things in that fight. The Cogs were racing go-karts around a dirt track. Adam jumped onto the track, got the morpher back, and stole a go-kart before tossing the morpher to Tanya. She ran around a jungle gym, getting trapped on a bridge. She tossed the morpher to Kat, who was in a paddle boat, being chased by Cogs in other paddle boats. Knowing she couldn’t escape, she passed the morpher to Tommy, who sped down a racetrack in a go-kart. He eventually got hit by the batting machine monster and ended up inside with Rocky. Luckily, he had Rocky’s morpher. They both morphed their way out. The enlarged fight was fairly standard. Battle helmet and sabre slash and it was over. It was that Cog/morpher fight that was the fun stuff.

It was unbelievable how much better Power Rangers Zeo was than the Mighty Morphin era of the show. The writing was tighter. The action was more fun. Everything felt like a step above what had come before. It was all on display in Rangers in the Outfield, from the passing of the morpher to the baseball relationship stuff. Everything clicked.

There were even appearances by people who hadn’t made appearances up to that point. Ernie was the commentator for the baseball game at the end of the episode. It wasn’t the Angel Grove Youth Centre, sure, but at least it was Ernie. After being in the opening credits of Power Rangers Zeo since it began, it was nice of the show to actually feature him. Billy made an appearance as well. Sure, Billy had been in every episode thus far. But he had only been in the Power Chamber, or in the search for the Power Chamber that preceded it. He hadn’t been shown outside of his new technical advisor position. The baseball game changed that. Billy appeared in the stands, watching his friends try to take down the rival team. It didn’t explain whether he still attended Angel Grove High School or not, but it at least showed that he had a life beyond the Power Chamber.

The baseball game also brought back something from the show’s past that hadn’t been mentioned in a while. The team that Angel Grove High School was playing against was Stone Canyon. That location was introduced back in season 2 of Mighty Morphin Power Rangers when Adam, Rocky, and Aisha were introduced. They were from Stone Canyon and had come to Angel Grove for a martial arts competition. They ended up staying after that, and now Adam and Rocky were playing baseball against a team they would have been on had they not become Power Rangers.

This tangent brought up one last thing. Over the course of the four Power Rangers seasons, six new teens joined the team. Tommy, Rocky, Adam, Aisha, Kat, and Tanya hadn’t been the original Power Rangers, but had taken on the roles as the show went on. For two of them, they had moved to Angel Grove before getting involved in the Power Rangers. Tommy was the new kid in town when Rita Repulsa used him to become the evil Green Ranger. The same was the deal with Kat. She had recently moved to town and Rita Repulsa used her for evil before she became a Power Ranger. Tanya was a little different. She was orphaned in Africa. That made her move fairly easy, since she could essentially be orphaned anywhere. It left the question of who her legal guardians were, and how she could be in school without a legal guardian, but the move itself was easy to explain. Adam, Rocky, and Aisha were a different story. Why did they move to Angel Grove? They moved because they became Power Rangers. That meant that the three teens had to convince their families to let them move cities and switch schools, without telling them that they were Power Rangers. That was a little bit of a stretch, and one that the show never explained. That didn’t have too much to do with Power Rangers Zeo, though. It was more an overall Power Rangers tangent.

Rangers in the Outfield was another strong episode of Power Rangers Zeo. It may not have progressed the battle between the Zeo Rangers and The Machine Empire, but it gave more insight into the relationships of the Power Rangers. It gave Tanya some more romantic conflict to work through. It had a nice moment between Adam and Tanya that ended the episode with a possible hint at a romance. Kat and Tommy still hadn’t had much outside of their one episode, and Billy was all but forgotten in terms of teen stories, though. It would be nice for some focus to be put onto what he was doing outside the Power Chamber. Maybe the next episode would cover that. See you soon for Every Dog Has His Day.