REVIEW: Dino Charge Special "The Ghostest with the Mostest"
Happy Fauxloween! This episode, “The Ghostest with the Mostest,” is the Halloween episode of Dino Charge. Going in, a friend of mine who had already seen the episode said it had a feeling like a classic whodunnit episode of Doctor Who, a sort of sci-fi mystery where neither the audience nor the characters know who the culprit is. In that regard it definitely would have big shoes to fill, because Doctor Who has done some real diamonds when it comes to that sort of thing. Let’s see how Dino Charge tackles the issue: pure poltergeist, or half-heartedly haunted?
So just to get the elephant in the room out of the way: the Pachyzord intro episode is being aired after this one despite the zord itself appearing in this episode. There is a perfectly good explanation for why Nick decided to air this episode out of order despite being a Halloween episode and Halloween actually falling on a Saturday this year. It probably has something to do with specials they’re planning to air, and thus they needed to bump this forward. To me, that’s ridiculous; if that is the issue, they should have planned better for a show with a continuing plotline, but at the least it’s not on Chip and the writers for making a mistake. One of the biggest issues writers have to deal with is having something changed even after the final product is given to the network, so I’ll give them--but not Nick--a pass on this one. Now that that’s done, let us never speak of it again.
As far as I’m aware, Halloween episodes are now pretty much always clip shows. It’s a tradition, and last year I said that ToQger did one pretty good clip show episode and one absolutely awful one. This is actually a great one, mostly because of the framing device. We get a Frankenstein-ian resurrection of Duplicon, plus an evil mind-reading vampire named Memorella. Because Duplicon turns Memorella into a clone of a Ranger, and he and Curio kidnap that same Ranger, the main dramatic question becomes which Ranger is the clone, because unlike the clones from Episode 8 (or was it Episode II?) this Ranger clone, being a mind-reading vampire, can imitate the original pretty closely. Kendall thus has to subject each Ranger to a lie detector test where they have to recount their experiences as Rangers. Keeping the masquerade intact is Chase’s hilariously boneheaded decision to make ghost costumes for all of them, so that even when we see the kidnapped Ranger, bound and gagged, we don’t know who he or she is. Of course, one big clue is the kidnapped Ranger’s resistance to physical damage when a big metal can knocks them right on the head.
On the one hand, I figured the lie detector wouldn’t be what revealed the clue. As stated, Memorella can recall the memories of any of the Rangers, so even though the Rangers don’t know that, the test itself is ineffective on its own. However, it does provide the opportunity for Kendall to obtain the clue, so it works for me. I liked the clip choices, some more than others--Riley’s fart face is a thing of horror, and Dino Charge continues to be the season with the most toilet humor. I also liked that the lie detector test adds tension; Kendall’s question to Shelby is a shippery question that the real Shelby wasn’t ready to answer in front of Tyler. This creates a misdirect that Shelby’s nervousness is worry over getting caught rather than worry that Tyler would know how she feels about him. I can’t shake the image of Chase seeming stoned during his interrogation, but that just adds to the humor. I did find it interesting that Ivan never takes a turn, since the clone is found out before he’s placed on the spot. I should also mention that there's a lot of little nuance in all the actors' expressions during the interrogation, from Shelby's fright to Ivan and Tyler's brotastic cheer that slowly changes to suspicion.
The other thing I really like is the brief moment of Yoshi Sudarso getting to act in a way different from his normal stilted caveman-speak. I’m glad that they gave him this plot, even if it was really short, because I think that Episode 4 has been his only focus episode. So having Koda be the cloned Ranger--revealed because of his use of “Ms. Morgan” rather than “Kendall”--was the right decision in my book. At first, however, I thought it was a bit contrived that the mind-reading monster would make a mistake like that, but I thought about it some more. My headcanon is that she would be more likely to pick up and recall facts and events, but not necessarily habits. So while she knew of Koda’s speech patterns, she wouldn’t know that Koda would call Kendall by her name, or that Kendall would allow it. Thanks to Chase calling her Kendall and being corrected, Memorella has the opportunity to simply rely on that and follow suit rather than looking back through Koda’s memories and determining every time that he called her Kendall without correction. Of course, given that I ship both Tyler/Shelby and Koda/Kendall, I’m a little intrigued that she lets him call her by her first name while being so imperious about it with everyone else. I can chalk that up to different standards for a caveman, though.
As an aside, speaking about love interests...the Cupid Charger. In a Halloween episode that’s about an infiltrator among the Rangers, where one gets kidnapped and tied up, the scariest thing that happens is Kendall creating a device to make someone fall in love with the first person they see. It’s like, this is on par with the mind-control fossil Tommy made before Dino Thunder. This is a plot the villains have carried out more than once. After the premiere, my girlfriend theorized that maybe Kendall was actually a bad guy, gaining the Rangers’ trust to get the Energems in a subtler fashion than Sledge. I disagreed, but holy mackerel is this shady. The Rangers eventually use it on the Viviks to make them dogpile Memorella, giving Ivan enough time to deliver the final strike. Later on it’s used to comedic purposes when Shelby accidentally shoots Chase with it, causing him to fall (further) in love with himself. Of course Chiley shippers have been divided on this; some see it as canon evidence that he’s bi at least (since he found a man attractive) while others note Riley ducking with the others when they realize that Chase might fall in love with them. Still others have explained it away as not wanting to take advantage of a love spell (seriously, Kendall?). I don’t personally have an opinion on the subject, though if I were to take one, it’d probably be the last one.
The monster interactions in this episode are on fire. Curio’s childlike glee over trick-or-treating is so infectious and Duplicon is just as funny here as he was in Episode 8. I like that the bad guys’ plan is such a good one as well, although it’s undone by some childish nonsense. Memorella is kind of a boss herself, using her vampiric mind powers to taunt Sledge, then later taunting Koda and winning pretty handily until getting mobbed. I kind of wish the monster had used her telepathy to see the Rangers’ moves coming during the fight, but it might have been too difficult to concentrate in the heat of battle. I’m given to understand that this monster was considered unadaptable due to various censorship issues, so it’s cool that they used an unconventional method of using her that also takes the character motives into account. Sledge has been shown not to be above mining his defeated monsters for parts; it’s believable that he’d try to Frankenstein the outlaw with the most effective plan. We also get a Fury callback, though I’m still curious as to what happened to him after he was de-spined. I could do without the return of Chatty Monster Syndrome. But it’s a small issue in an otherwise good episode.
Something that I’ve noticed this season is that they’ve done a lot of things that have, on paper, been attempted to varying degrees of success by other PR seasons, either as homages or because it’s a kids’ show that’s been running for 22 years. The Gold Ranger with mistaken identity saga, the evil Ranger squad, the clip show, the whodunnit mystery. However, what has made and continues to make Dino Charge sing is the fact that they make these old ideas with new execution, bringing something to the table that hasn’t been done, or patching up what would have been left as holes in an older version of the tale. Other than the Cupid Charger which will hopefully be locked up in an incinerator, and the...other thing, there was really nothing wrong with this episode, and they actually had new fight footage, so it beat both the ToQger writing ep and the Samurai Halloween special, two episodes that really stuck in my craw. Pure poltergeist status for this one. We’re officially out of the slump.
