REVIEW: Dino Supercharge 10 "Gone Fishin'"
After last week’s episode, I was a bit worried about the future of the show. As you may remember, Power Rangers Dino Charge was quite a pleasant surprise after four years under Jonathan Tzachor, and thus far Dino Supercharge hasn’t quite been living up to the bar set by its vanilla counterpart. So this week has been a welcome change, as we get the return of certain elements of the show, certain characters, and certain plot lines. It’s not perfect, but is “Gone Fishin’” at least a step toward a return to form? Let’s find out!
This episode kind of brings into focus how huge the Power Rangers fighting force is now. Considering that we have all four of what I’ll refer to as the Auxiliary Rangers (a common fan-nickname I guess), we basically get two storylines that merge into one, populated by at least 5 characters in each. It’s kind of wild that four Rangers could be on the beach with Riley’s brother, Matt, taking a load off and fishing, while what would normally be considered an entire team of Rangers are following a pod from space with potential information on the Silver Energem. I kind of like how Shelby, Koda, Riley and Chase take a break to let the others shine pretty brightly this episode. Speaking of shining brightly, the reason for the Silver Energem not being found is because the Silver Ranger has already bonded to it and is currently not on Earth. This is a bit...odd, because it technically means that Heckyl has in a sense already lost. The Rangers have all the Energems, and it’s very difficult to get any of them except through trickery. It’ll be interesting to see how that shakes out.
Of course, the return of the Aqua Ranger means the return of James’ awkwardly savage faces. I would love to be a fly on the wall during discussions between the director and the actor, because what on Kendrix’s green Mirinoi is this guy doing? It’s not just a one-off thing; does he actually intend to be going for hilariously over-acted, or does he think he’s conveying indignance or determination like the other Rangers? Whatever, James is a terrible father anyway, since he peaces out at the end of the episode again. In any case, the active duty Rangers have an interesting fight with little enough random terrible banter getting in the way, and it was nice to see Kendall in the fight. I wish I’d started a Kendall fight count, because it seems like they’re actually letting her out of the base nowadays.
When it comes to the off-duty Rangers, it’s interesting, because Riley’s tendency to be overly competitive seems to have been brought back for more story analysis. I know it’s been said that it came out of nowhere, but I think it fits for his analytical personality and his clashes with Chase and Puzzler last season. On the one hand, I do like that his relationship with his brother is damaged somewhat as a result. Here they are, meeting up again for the first time in a little while, and Riley’s constantly yammering about who caught the biggest fish or who managed to cast their line the most accurately. But on the other hand, I don’t think Matt’s response of being a prissy jerk about it is particularly realistic. I think his response is a bit unwarranted, even if he is tired of Riley’s determination to turn everything into a competition.
The show does a good job of tying the two stories together by having the Silver Ranger’s zord, the Titano Zord, submerged beneath the lake where the Rangers happen to be fishing and hanging out. It’s a little coincidental, but in fairness the Rangers do live in a world somewhat dictated by fate. Matt being saved from Hookbeard (the MoTW) by falling into the zord, or later on being rescued in the nick of time makes sense for this world. At this point, once the Rangers have secured the Titano Zord, it’s kind of a foregone conclusion how this episode ends. You’ll notice I haven’t said much about the monster this week; his design is nice, but he doesn’t really do anything except shoot lightning and get destroyed by toys. That tends to be the case with regard to a new acquisition. It gives the Rangers the chance to show off their awesome new weapon, so kids can buy it. After all, it wouldn’t be a fearsome cool new thing if they still struggled after getting their power-up, so I won’t count it against the episode, but it doesn’t make it any less boring to watch. I would have liked all 9 Rangers in the Titano Zord cockpit at the same time, but Riley going with his brother closes a potential plot hole, so there’s that.
Speaking of cockpits, it would really be great if they didn’t keep chirping about how cool the new cockpit is when it looks identical to all their other cockpits. It seems like every time they’re in a new zord with the exact same cockpit, someone has to say something about the new cockpit. I just...can’t keep typing cockpit over and over like this. Something’s got to give. I guess it's pretty cool how all of the different Dino Chargers give the Titano Zord special abilities.
The hook of the storyline (pun fully intended) is probably in the villain interactions among themselves. The thing that was missing last week is here now. Fury and Singe’s rivalry escalates rather quickly in this episode, with Singe getting mysterious intel from his shadowy liege and Heckyl questioning it, all the way up to it turning into a blood feud where Heckyl orders Fury to destroy Singe the next time he sees him. It’s been a bit since we had a good general vs. general fight, and I’d love to see these two go head to head. I’m glad we’re also getting progress on the Singe story with his unknown liege lord. I’ve seen some guesses as to who is pulling his strings, and, well, color me intrigued.
I think “Gone Fishin’” is a step in the right direction. I’ll give credit where credit is due; the episode is legitimately better than the one before, though this would have been a much better midpoint for the season (especially since it actually is the midpoint). The return of old faves, the debut of new toys, Blue Rangers of varying shades. Now all we need is something borrowed, and it’s a wedding. Next week...looks ridiculous, to say the least, and it features quite possibly the worst name of a MoTW ever (this from the franchise that gave us Big Mouth Monster) but hey, what can we do except live in hope?
