Yesterday on Power Rangers: Day of the Dumpster
On April 19, MIGHTY MORPHIN POWER RANGERS: ONCE AND ALWAYS premieres on Netflix. I’m writing about all 60 episodes of MMPR’s first season in the lead-up to that premiere.
If you’d like to follow along on this rewatch, entirety of MMPR’s first season is available for free (with ads) on YouTube.
One-sentence synopsis: Five teenagers with attitude are recruited to save the world from a space witch who crawled out a dumpster.
Why it matters: It’s the first one. If you’re reading this, chances are better than not that you’ve been a ride-or-die for Power Rangers since the beginning, and this episode was likely your fandom’s point of origin. All of the show’s staples — attractive and athletic young adults of varying ethnicities; over-the-top dialogue; in-your-face SFX; big-ass robots fighting big-ass monsters; a lesson of the day; and, of course, colorful spandex — are thrown at you over the course of 20 minutes. If the entirety of Power Rangers history was wiped from your brain except for “Day of the Dumpster,” you’d have no trouble telling someone what the Power Rangers bran is about at its core. What more can you ask from a premiere? It’s a perfect introduction, and remains a great encapsulation of the incredible #content that has followed in the 30 years since it premiered on Aug. 28, 1993.
Episode MVP: Unnamed astronauts. Without them, Rita and her crew would not have escaped, Zordon would not have needed to assemble a group of Power Rangers to wrangle them, and I wouldn’t have spent thousands of dollars on memorabilia over the last 15. It was delightful that this naive duo — ripped straight out of Zyuranger, the Super Sentai series from which MMPR is adapted — got some love at the start of Boom! Studios’ Go Go Power Rangers comic series. It’d be fun to see them revisited in a one-shot or miniseries of some sort — they’ve gotta be battling some major PTSD. Imagine their therapy sessions!
A good quote: “Teach us how to beat people up.” — Bulk
Rating: 5/5 Alphas
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