REVIEW: Dino Supercharge 9 "Besties 4Eva!"
Power Rangers is back with “Besties 4Eva!” While I question the naming decision for the episode (it seems a bit like it’s trying too hard to be down with the fresh lingo on the street, brah) it’s unfortunately the least questionable aspect of the "thrilling" return of Dino Supercharge. It wasn’t a huge fail, but it didn’t reach out and grab me like one would expect a mid-season premiere to do, at least somewhat. I was peripherally aware that the Pink Ranger would be taking center stage this week, so maybe my hopes were a bit higher than they should have been.
A Shelby focus episode automatically gets a three-letter-grade bump, so by that rubric this was a fantastic A+ episode. Without the Watkins curve, however, the episode doesn’t score high on the merits. Part of this is because it’s not really a Shelby focus episode, even though our girl holds the super-special focus-episode sword and stands centrally to declare commanding lines of dialogue directly at the monster. No, this episode focuses on Erin, Shelby’s tall-tale-telling bestie since childhood. From the beginning I think I wasn’t going to like this episode a whole lot, because don’t we all have that one friend who likes to spruce up their stories with a little something extra or take credit for something they didn’t do? (Note: if you don’t, you might just be that friend.) It feels like it hits a bit too close to home, especially when Keeper later tells Shelby it’s basically all her fault for letting herself get steamrolled. Also, if you're a fan of, let's say...any of the Rangers who aren't Shelby or Chase, you'll probably find this episode a bit disappointing. On the other hand, Kendall actually morphs, so there's that.
Shelby’s mounting annoyance throughout the episode at Erin casually taking credit for practically everything Shelby has ever done is funny enough, although I could probably write a rather Tumblr-worthy spiel on the sociopolitical context of that particular dynamic. Things take a turn for the dangerous when Erin claims to be the Pink Ranger to a couple of reporters as well. Not to get all psychoanalyst on a kids’ show, but I can’t help but find Erin’s “charming quirk” to be a bit concerning. There’s a difference between being overly self-congratulatory and being an emotionally troubled compulsive liar. One would think that upon being asked “Are you a Power Ranger” it would be much easier to tell the truth. It’s at least understandable that Erin might want to make herself seem more interesting as a person when meeting Shelby’s new friends, just for the sake of establishing herself and getting them to like her. Given that they work in a dinosaur museum, it makes sense to establish a rapport on that basis, hence her claiming credit for the Triceratops song. But there is almost nothing at stake for her personally when she’s approached by the reporters and claims to be the Pink Ranger. It makes her seem like less of a jerk and a user, but more like she needs to be evaluated medically.
Running parallel to the Erin story is the Halfbake story, which isn’t actually a typo as it’s better than the counterpart. Odd that one can find equivalence between the MoTW and Erin, because he’s rather out of his league himself in the eyes of his peers. While Erin lies to gain the esteem of her fellow man to portray herself as something that she’s not, Halfbake is incapable of gaining any esteem from Heckyl and Wrench and wants desperately to be something he’s not. That’s right, the lamewad robot with Tristan Taylor’s original voice thinks that Halfbake is a joke. His plot this episode consists of trying to make Heckyl a yummy dessert and trying/failing to get an Energem from the Rangers. I’m not sure if it’s just the hiatus, but it feels as if the Energem story is completely superfluous at this point. Almost all of them have been found, and it seems like Heckyl has zero chance of finding the remaining one(?), so he basically has to get one from the Rangers themselves, somehow. Let’s just say Halfbake hardly seems like the man for the job.
Interestingly, the episode as written gives us the conclusion that Halfbake would have lived longer if he had played to his strengths as a chef instead of trying to be a warrior. It has the dual effect of making us feel bad for poor pathetic Halfbake and undercutting the Dino X Charger that Kendall created this week, which are both no-nos. They've had quite the succession of random toys in the form of new chargers, but it's okay as long as it doesn't get to Megaforce level; gotta pay the bills somehow. Otherwise, they might end up with a location matching scene where the Rangers are in a sewer before they're suddenly in a nighttime scene with trees by a bridge.
Looking back, I guess the theme of this episode was “be yourself, or else you’ll alienate your friends and get blown up by the Power Rangers.” In fairness, I get what they were going for, given that Erin’s lies directly lead to her being captured as the Pink Ranger. Erin lied to everyone else about who she was, and Halfbake lied to himself about the same thing. Both lies were either fatal or near-fatal. But this message too was undercut by the fact that the Rangers don’t really teach it in either circumstance. Erin just changes, and survives, while Halfbake persists and dies. I’ve always been a fan of the plot where a Ranger’s goodness shows another character the good example they need, and I was disappointed to see it missing here.
In sum, I think the biggest sin Dino Supercharge is committing currently is that it doesn’t seem to be building toward anything. “Besties 4Eva!” was a serviceable episode, but it was just an episode. I don’t sense an inexorable clash on the horizon. Most of the seasonal questions have been answered. Tyler has found his father, almost all of the Energems have been recovered, the ships are not really all that significant, and there’s no progress on the Singe/Fury/Shadowy Liege Lord front as none of the aforementioned characters appear in this episode. This episode was largely an Erin focus also featuring Shelby, which is laughable since Erin isn’t a character on this show. Yes, Keeper dispensed some words of dubious wisdom to Shelby, and maybe she learned a minor lesson, but the real growth came in Erin’s story when she learned a valuable lesson in how to save her own skin. Shelby’s reactions, while cute, didn’t drive the episode along, didn’t teach us anything about Shelby we didn’t know already, and didn’t give us any further movement toward the finale. I don’t know if it’s fair to pin that last one entirely on this episode, because it was probably much more stark as the first episode after a long hiatus. So let’s see what happens going forward.
