Power Rangers Zeo: Episode 13: Mean Screen

In the previous episode of Power Rangers Zeo, Adam tried to get to the bottom of mystery music at Angel Grove High. He discovered that the mystery musician was Skull, who was a terrific piano player. Skull didn’t want people to know, though, because he thought they would make fun of him. Adam convinced him to perform in the school’s talent show and everyone loved it.

Now it’s time for something a little bit different. There won’t be any Skull playing the piano. That was a one-episode thing. Instead, there will be something related to a screen. So, either a computer or a television. I say that because the bad guys are The Machine Empire and those are machines. I could be wrong, but they seem like good guesses. The only way to know for sure, though, is to check out…

Episode 13: Mean Screen

Adam and Tanya were in the Angel Grove High School library, learning how to use the internet. It was 1996. The internet was still in its early stages of public use. Tanya opened a random link, which was clearly a computer virus. The teacher or tutor or whoever had to be quick on his feet and get an antivirus cooked up on the fly. He did it. The computers were saved. They lived on for another day. Or another few minutes, really.

The Machine Empire saw the whole virus thing unfold. They knew it was a great basis for their newest evil plan. King Mondo got a monster called Mean Screen to go to Angel Grove and infect all computers with a virus. It worked so well, in fact, that the virus got into the Power Chamber and infected the Zeo Zords. The Zeo Rangers no longer had their greatest weapon.

Adam, who was still in the library when the new virus came along, had an idea to save the Zeo Zords. He approached the teacher or tutor or whoever. He was in his Zeo Rangers suit. He asked for the antivirus, saying it was the only way to help save Angel Grove. It worked. The antivirus cleared up the Zeo Zord infection and allowed the Zeo Rangers to use their Zords against the monster.

Before the Zeo Zords were back up and running, the Zeo Rangers had to fight Mean Screen with whatever other tools they had as their disposal. The problem was that Mean Screen could scan any of their weapons and quickly create a shield against them. The blasters wouldn’t work because of that shield. It was only when their Zords were back that the Zeo Rangers were able to lower Mean Screen’s defenses. They got the Zeo Megazord together as quickly as possible. Then they started changing helmets. Adam tossed on the green helmet and rammed the horns into the monster. Rocky threw on the blue helmet and started slamming Mean Screen all over the place with a gravity ray. All they had to do was break Mean Screen’s screen, which they did, and then slash the monster to kill it.

Once Angel Grove was safe, the teens retreated back to the Power Centre, where they talked about how tough the monster was. They didn’t have their tech guy with them. Billy had gone to Aquitar a few episodes prior. But they got the job done anyway. Adam’s quick thinking to get the tutor or teacher or whoever to provide the antivirus saved the day. Then a voice rang out. Billy appeared on the viewing screen to say he was coming back to Earth. The Machine Empire intercepted the message and decided they were going to do whatever they could to keep Billy away.

Power Rangers Zeo set Mean Screen up to be a simple self-contained episode, until the end hit. The final few minutes tied things into a continuing story. Billy left Earth at the end of Graduation Blues to help the people of Aquitar survive a monster attack. It wasn’t known if he would return. Well, looking at it from twenty-five years out, it was known. But it wasn’t known when the episodes originally aired. This episode also pushed forward into the next, though I don’t know if the next episode will be the only one involving Billy’s troubles upon returning.

I didn’t mention the Bulk and Skull storyline in Mean Screen because there wasn’t much to it. It seemed like something that happened simply to have them in the episode. They were radioed to go to a specific location to do traffic duty. They went to the wrong location. They got in trouble and lost their traffic gloves. That was it. I want to bring it up for something that happened within it that felt a little dumb, even by Bulk and Skull’s dumb standards. The wrong location that Bulk and Skull described was an intersection. They were supposed to be controlling traffic in an intersection. For some reason, though, they were at a dead-end cul-de-sac. They kept saying two street names, but they were clearly at the end of a cul-de-sac. I don’t think that’s how road geography works.

The other dumb thing I want to mention didn’t have anything to do with Bulk and Skull. It had to do with the initial virus, the one that Tanya opened a link to. Maybe it’s simply because I’m used to modern computers and modern internet browsing. It seemed completely false to me that the virus she opened would say something along the lines of “You have thirty seconds to stop me, or this virus will be on your computer.” I feel like most viruses just automatically go onto the computer or into an email account. There’s no warning. They just infect. The warning was really odd.

Mean Screen was, for the most part, a standard episode of Power Rangers Zeo. There was something seemingly random brought into the lives of the teens. The Machine Empire was inspired by that random thing to create a monster. The Power Rangers fought the monster. Bulk and Skull did their own thing. It wasn’t until the final moments that this episode became more. It became important to the show. That importance will continue in Mr. Billy’s Wild Ride. I’ll see you soon for that post.