Maybe I spoke too soon about Power Rangers making better use of its child characters than Zyuranger. Normally, PR repurposes child characters from the source footage to be a rangers’ cousin, someone in a class they teach, or it has something to do with charity. So it’s a bit perplexing when a kid just shows up out of nowhere and the teens are all hanging out with them like they're all friends. Case in point: Willy in I, Eye Guy.
The ranger teens are hanging out in Billy’s garage with
Willy, an improbably brilliant child who is presenting his new invention at the
science fair that day. He’s created a pair of virtual reality glasses that simulate the feeling of a roller coaster, but due to Bulk and Skull’s antics at
the fair, Willy’s invention is disqualified. Feeling sad, he wanders off to the lake, where Rita’s new
monster made entirely out of eyeballs traps him in his main eye, which appears
to be a dimension where he’s put through astronaut training… or something. The rangers fight Eye Guy to get Willy
out, with Billy feeling the most responsible for the plight due to his and
Willy’s special bond. They have a special handshake after all.
And there’s your first problem with the episode: who the
hell is Willy? It’s never stated
if it’s Billy’s brother, friend, neighbor, or if he’s on the science fair
committee and he’s just helping one of the students out. A little setup goes a long way,
and a throwaway line like the kind they had in Big Sisters about Maria would
have solved the problem. At least Willy is an improvement over Maria, goofy costume and dubbed voice
not withstanding.
In addition, the story is fine overall, in spite of some
over-the-top stuff from Bulk and Skull where their clothes are disintegrated by
a student’s ray gun. Yeah,
ok. Early Mighty Morphin’ is a
straight-up cartoon, but personally, this was just too much to take in (though Bulk and
Skull dressed in drag is never not funny).
Silly as the scene was, we got to see Billy stand up to Bulk and Skull a
little, which was nice to see. Character development? Couldn't be...
On the action-oriented side of things, we have a terrible putty
fight (one of many) that suffers from horrendous editing due to the “no hits to
the head” rule that the production team was only informed about after filming a
large number of episodes. The
awkward cuts, the sound effects from off-screen where the rangers are punching
the putties in the face, and the tight close-ups make for a very poor bit of
action. The morphed scenes though?
Pretty awesome.
I love Eye Guy's design: it's weird, yet creative. On an unintentionally eerie note, the
little girl from Finster’s flashback only seen getting sucked in by Eye Guy's main eye (brought to us by the Japanese footage)
never gets brought up again. So is she... dead? That’s creepy stuff for PR,
and it helps makes the monster a little more sinister. But the episode itself couldn’t
be more campy; Eye Guy delivers countless eye-related puns and the sight
of Willy spinning around on that giant centrifuge was
pretty hilarious. That poor child actor.
So while this certainly wasn’t a great episode due to
Willy’s randomness and the cartoonish shenanigans at the science fair, it was
still enjoyable. Even though by this point I’m growing a bit tired of watching that
exact same Zord summoning sequence and transformation, I still watch it every time
because that music is just so damn good (I agree with you there, Linkara!). Also, good on the production team for showing Willy rolling out of the
monster’s dust at the end rather than just having him be fine at the end with
no explanation. Overall, the show is still not there yet in terms of finding its groove, but it is interesting to
watch the show slowly get closer and closer.
Mighty Morphin' Score: 6/10
Power Rangers Score: 4/10
Mighty Morphin' Score: 6/10
Power Rangers Score: 4/10
