Mighty Morphin' Power Rangers: Season 1, Episode 4: "A Pressing Engagement"

When Mighty Morphin' Power Rangers first aired, there was no precedence.  Yes, there were the Japanese monster movies that got dubbed into English and had footage reshot and spliced in.. but television is a different beast.  Creating character arcs, story arcs, coherency... it takes a lot of creativity and even great shows can have inconsistencies due to the different people working on any given episode, actor availability, and budget restraints.  So as simple as Power Rangers' final product is as a narrative, it does take a tremendous amount of creativity to look at fight scenes and write a story around them. Unfortunately, A Pressing Engagement lacks such creativity.

The episode finds the tens at the Juice Bar, where Jason is trying to beat the bench-pressing record currently held (inexplicably) by Bulk.  Wackiness interferes, and Jason doesn't break the record, and proceeds to feel bad about it while Zack and Kim console him.  This gives Rita the idea to separate Jason from the others while he's still feeling down using King Sphinx's mighty wings.  She sends him down to the park to "take it over," and Zordon promptly alerts Jason, Zack, and Kim.  They fight him for a bit, along with some putties, but are blown back to the Juice Bar (because heaven forbid they were sent to some other location unmorphed).  The Sphinx teleports himself and Jason to the desert, and the two duke it out for a bit.  Trini and Billy, who are just chilling in Billy's garage during all of this, are informed of the situation and the group teleports to the Command Center.  Zordon tells them to use the Power Crystals activated from their coins to help locate Jason.  They teleport the crystals to him and then that let's them... teleport to him?  It's actually a bit confusing.  Cue zord battle!

More than anything, A Pressing Engagement just feels... lazy.  Everything feels half-assed, with element like the Power Crystals being wholly underdeveloped as a concept.  Jason trying to break a bench-pressing record is totally in-character for him, but the previous record being held by Bulk?  I don't know.  I can't picture Bulk being committed to anything that exhausting (unless he cheated, which is totally likely).  The shenanigans at the start of the episode with Zack crashing into Kimberly's bubble gum... balloon... thing were really awkward and painfully unfunny.  Why not have Bulk sabotage Jason or something?  Especially since he enters the scene a bit later and does fuck all.  At least I did get a chuckle out of Ernie eating a sandwich and being easily distracted while counting Jason's presses.

The morphed fights are nice, and I like King Sphinx's design, but he's about as memorable in this episode as he was in the toy commercials.   When I would watch those ads as a kid I thought he and Goldar were brothers or something, given their similar designs.  But it turns out he's just another disposable villain.  The Megazord fight drags on longer than it should, and while normally I like longer fights, it feels like most of the battle features the Megazord in tank mode, which is pretty limiting.  Fun fact: after viewing Zyuranger I found that this episode is actually supposed to be the introduction of the Megazord, so it makes much more sense in that show's context.  But we've already seen the Megazord in action in the first episode (as well as the Power Crystals), so building up its introduction here just feels like filler.  The cinematography in the later half of the ground battle is wonderful, especially the shot of Jason calling to the Tyrannosaurus with the water brightly glistening behind him... I think I need a poster of that.  It's about as beautiful as early Power Rangers gets.

I don't expect Power Rangers to deliver thought-provoking character drama, but this episode left a lot to be desired.  Jason doubts himself, but it all rings false.  Picture this: after the first time he can't break the record, he tries again and fails because he gets tired.  His own body fails him. That would have been more interesting than Kim's gum popping onto Zack or whatever the hell happened.  Then he could start to doubt himself to Zack about being a leader in battle.  It's resolved when he realizes that his strength as a leader is dependent on his team, and that's what unlocks the Power Crystals. Also, having Kim and Zack get blown back to the Juice Bar was pretty silly, and really shows that the production crew and writers were wearing their tiny budget on their sleeve.

So it's not the greatest episode due mostly to its lack of coherency.  I don't even understand the title; is it a bench-pressing pun? Groan.  But there's also not enough going on to get angry about it either.  The cast tries, but they're let down heavily by the direction, and it's clear now- only four episodes in - that Rita's scenes are mostly composed of recycled footage.  It's just a showboat of mediocrity all around.

Mighty Morphin' Scale: 4/10

Power Rangers Scale: 2/10