REVIEW: Dino Charge 14 "True Black"
Power Rangers has admittedly been in a bit of a slump lately. It’s not by any means an insurmountable slump, but we’ve had a bit of unevenness with some of the recent episodes. I’m willing to let that slide, mainly because Dino Charge has been a great season with a lot of good will built up in the bank. And while I don’t think that this week’s episode was poor--certainly none of them have been outright poor, and even the lowest of the bunch is still entertaining rather than infuriating; this was quite a bit better than that--I think there were some things that could have been ironed out. That’s the nature of the beast, though, so let’s get to that analysis.
So there’s not actually a lot of bad here. The worst sin this episode commits is one that’s been kind of a Power Rangers staple: wobbling around character traits so that there’s a single episode intra-Ranger conflict. Last episode, Tyler and Ivan were sort of uncharacteristically antagonistic, though that story’s biggest problem was how rushed the introduction and resolution to that were. Here, we get Chase being an insensitive jerk who doesn’t realize he’s hitting sore spots for Shelby as he mocks her love of boy-band N-Zed Boys, even as he’s inadvertently prevented her from seeing them in concert. In their defense, being an NZ boy himself he'd know a thing or two about these guys, and his perspective would likely be different from her own. One's own culture is usually not as cool or remarkable as that of a foreign person. And as someone who reviews a children’s live-action cartoon, I know a thing or two about having interests that aren’t shared by the people around you.
The thing is, Chase has been portrayed as clueless sometimes and a bit lackadaisical, but not really mean-spirited as he was here. And given the eventual resolution to this plot being that “he needed to apologize to get in resonance with the Dino Armor,” it’s a little pat to have that be the way to tie things up. On the other hand, it allows them to give a good message about admitting when you mess up and making things right, but on the third hand of the three-handed beast, it gives the unintentional impression that a potentially selfish apology is better than no apology, a sentiment I don’t share. I can’t help but think that they should have used his existing character flaw--lacking focus--to drive the conflict between Shelby and him. If they had just gone with his spacey nature leading him to hold Shelby up at work it would have been truer to the character, especially if he’d made flimsy excuses to justify it before eventually coming clean.
On to the good: I like the design of Dino Armor X. It looks strong and toyetic without going full Battlizer, and for some reason I like the orange-and-gold color scheme. I even like that it’s given a reason for why it only works with Chase, even if that reason isn’t really explored. And I like that we got to see that it only works with him by having Koda and Riley try it. Not only is it a refreshing change to have someone else at least try to use the power-up instead of just moping around waiting for Chase to recover from his cranial-rectal inversion, but it gives some actual tension to the battle and gives the Rangers some ingenuity. Even Keeper’s use in delivering the maybe-a-bit-bent moral lesson worked and added to the theory of ghost-Keeper. I pretty much agreed with everything the story did involving the armor.
I appreciate how we get more of Ivan being a temporal fish out of water. We have the return of his chivalry in prioritizing helping the woman at the cafe, his skills in swordsmanship with Riley, and his glee at getting only a dollar as a tip later. If they told him that a dollar was a hundred pennies, well, in his time that was certainly a more significant amount than just essentially a unit of money. Speaking of Ivan, seeing him working together with Tyler was pretty great, since they seem to be running with this idea of them as besties now. Even in the beginning of the episode, during their training session, Ivan has esteem for Tyler’s skill. I’m a huge fan of later focus episodes in a season being pairing focus episodes where they put two Rangers together in a situation to explore more how they relate to one another. This is a Shelby-Chase episode, as last episode was Tyler-Ivan and the episode before seemed like a Shelby-Ivan. We’ve already gotten a Riley-Chase episode, so hopefully we’ll get something with Koda soon, perhaps as well as Kendall?
I also have to give props to the design and use of Golddigger. For one, he’s got an actual name name instead of just a descriptive title. His gimmicks are fun and his stone attack is impressive enough to make a credible threat for the episode, when he manages to trap Ivan, Tyler and Shelby underground in a decreasing air pocket. He loses a few points with me for being a constant source of puns and jokes, whether he’s making them or other people are making them about him. He is probably the most Neo-Saban-y monster in Dino Charge yet in that regard; at one point in the fight it feels like every single line was something relating to money or treasure. A little goes a long way, but too much of a good thing can spoil the broth. How many lame proverbs did I just cram into that one sentence? If that seemed tortured, just imagine listening to the banter during the fight scene. It’s less of a problem than it seems, though, because English naturally has a wealth of idioms pertaining to money (see what I did there).
The only complaint I have is a minor one, easily hand-waved. The issue is, are the Rangers immortal, or merely unaging? I’d say the former; the Energems didn’t protect the dinosaurs from getting vaped by meteors. So it seems to me like something can still actively kill you, meaning this episode’s conflict is legit. It definitely works for me that the Rangers are in physical peril, especially since the Energems seem to remain bonded with the Ranger for life. It would have zapped any tension in this episode and any to come if they had just been nonchalant about being buried alive, because then there's no danger and no need for courage.
The villains in general are pretty well-used in this episode. We get Wrench actually being a competent fighter and relatively good field commander, we get Poisandra and Curio being funny and the mention of Glitz World, and Sledge isn’t bad either. I’m not going to go into the zord fight, because it’s essentially exactly that: a zord fight. I do like the perfect camaraderie of the Rangers being held in contrast against the constant infighting and sniping in the villains. The fact that even Ivan is a part of the bonus attempt to get Shelby concert tickets feels organic and the scene works for me to show how good of friends these guys all are.
I’ll give “True Black” a rating of truly...true, with some false steps. There were only a few things that got on my nerves. I won’t say that Power Rangers has exited the slump yet, but this is the right direction to be going in. Some of the character stuff was a bit iffy, though. I only hope that Sledge does more on Earth later in the season, because he seemed like a credible threat when we saw him. I’m also wondering what’s going on with Fury. I think he’s going to pop up near the end, back to being a rageaholic, and throw a big monkey wrench into everyone’s plans. Or at least, that's what I'd like to see. Whatever we get, I'm sure I can trust the writers--and our strong showrunner--to get the job done right.
