REVIEW: Dino Super Charge 2 "Forgive and Forget"
Um...what can I say? There always has to be one “worst episode,” and to be honest going into this I was a bit worried. I think I intended to make a really good effort to overcompensate, because historically Riley's focus episodes—though not the character of Riley himself—have been middling to uneven. I think Michael Taber is good in the role, but there were a few things here that I didn't really think played well. I think it's time to take a look at “Forgive and Forget” and see what needs to be forgiven or even forgotten.
With an opening like that, one might expect nonstop complaining. There are definitely good points in this episode. Heckyl's interactions with the Rangers are absolutely on point in this episode. It's obvious that Ryan Carter is having a ball playing this character. And interestingly enough, his plan to make everyone forget everything by poisoning the water supply almost works. Within an episode of taking charge, he gets led into the Rangers’ base. I also love that he knows the Rangers well enough in his short time around to be able to successfully manipulate them into trusting him. What makes it even more interesting is that he’s essentially working against himself to defeat the Rangers. One thing that I have noticed is that the Energem issue seems to be more personal for Snide, as if he’s got another reason why he wants the Energems beyond just power. Heckyl and Snide are once again the MVPs of the episode.
Another positive was the humor. The resolution of the tension of Heckyl finding the base was hilarity as the monsters accidentally wiped their own memories. The Rangers bumbling around without their memories was pretty funny too, although the introduction to that plot was a nail-biter when they just managed to realize what was happening seconds before the poison kicked in. I’m guessing that there are a bunch of people for whom the manservice was fanservice, so I’ll put that in the positives column too. Even Heckyl’s pretense at losing his memory was funny, not to mention really strongly done when we get confirmation that he was just pretending. Dino Charge could never be said to lack in the humor department, and Dino Super Charge seems to be continuing the grand tradition.
Really, interactions between almost all of the characters are pretty solid. The biggest issue is probably the civilian plot. The acting this season...I’ll just say it, there has been better stuff, though not so much recently. But really, this guy Burt is a bit of a stand-out this season in that he doesn’t seem to be able to deliver the lines convincingly. Part of it is probably the accent issue, and part is possibly that he’s just not a particularly good actor. I found that his shtick wears thin pretty quickly (take a shot every time he calls Riley a brainiac) though Riley’s reactions to him make it so that I didn’t want to just fast forward through the scenes. Speaking of fast-forwarding, though, I felt the resolution is more than a bit rushed. Unlike with Tyler and Ivan, Riley and Burt have history of being a victim and a bully respectively, and it’s odd that they’d just become friends at the end once Riley saves him. Even if Burt had a quick turnaround, Riley has history of despising this guy.
Maybe part of the issue is that the episode has to divide its attention between a bully-redeeming message and a “cheaters never win” message. It’s quite interesting to see Riley happily planning to cheat to defeat Burt by using his Energem, given that coloring outside of the lines is how he defeated Puzzler. In that case his friends’ lives were at stake, but here there’s less of a reason for him to cheat other than that he wants to win. I’m not sure what that says about Riley; could it be that he’s so logical that he tends to be more comfortable discarding arbitrary determinations that stop him from meeting his goals, even if they’re based in morality? I don’t think it’s that simple, but he is probably the Ranger who seems the least bothered by that sort of thing. But whatever the reason, we get a sort of cobbled-together mishmash that makes it hard to pay too much attention to what’s going on. For the first time, I was a little bored while watching the episode, which makes me sad to admit.
I’d also like to talk about monster reuse. It’s not a huge problem for me, but it is weird that both of the monsters we’ve seen thus far in Dino Super Charge are reanimated monsters from Dino Charge. I guess once you include a reanimator as a plot point, it’s dumb if you don’t use it on the monsters who seemed to have the best chances of winning. I have to wonder if there was some sort of implication regarding Stingrage in Kyoryuger, because the point where he’s poisoning the water supply looks like he’s urinating in the water, which might be a thing parents would want to equate with being an evil space alien to get kids not to do it. But going back to monster reuse, I think one thing that saves it is that the gimmick was altered both times. In the premiere, Iceage freezes all of the Rangers in solid blocks of ice, and now here, Stingrage’s venom is changed into a memory wiper. On the Ranger side, I think the Rangers were used effectively. I’m guessing that KyoryuViolet wasn’t in this episode, but they managed to allow Kendall some Purple Time by having her administer the airborne antidote from the Plesio Zord.
Maybe yet another issue is toy-commercial-related. We get both the Dino Armor Ex Red Ranger form and Dino Super Drive in this episode. The sword Tyler uses is pretty cool in Super Drive mode, but that almost pours salt in the wound that it’ll only be used in the cockpit. The armor is also really cool; it’s reminiscent of the Super Dino Mode in Dino Thunder, except metallic and more like actual armor than bony saurian plating. But they have to really sell it through shilling dialogue, because obviously from the outside nothing on the Megazord has changed. I feel as if there has to be a solution to cockpit-only forms that makes everyone happy, but for whatever reason it seems like they’re here to stay.
Overall, I really hope this isn’t becoming a pattern for Riley episodes. I’m not particularly certain why it seems like the writing for Riley’s episodes seems a bit weaker, but for whatever reason this one just didn’t work for me. If I had to guess, I'd say that part of the reason—or even the whole reason—for my dislike of these episodes is that Riley's episodes have a weird slant to them. For the most part, thematically, the season has had a very strong emphasis on working as a team, which is reflected in the villains' division, first in Dino Charge with Sledge, Poisandra, and Fury and later in Dino Super Charge with the Heckyl/Snide dichotomy. I don't think that Riley's episodes have fit into this mold all that well, instead being a bit preachier and more uneven than the others. His best episode thus far has been The Tooth Hurts, which he shared with Chase (and launched a thousand fanfics). Really, all we can hope for is that the next episode is better, and with the way the series has gone, I think we can all file this one under “forgive” and move on toward “A Date with Danger” (sans Astronema, sadly).
