REVIEW: Dino Supercharge 11 "Love at First Fight"
The monsters in love storylines on Power Rangers are old classics. It seems like one of the wackier ideas for a story on Power Rangers: get a monster, whose job it is to destroy humanity, and then make them fall in love, sometimes even with a human. I have to say going into this episode I didn’t really know what to expect, since the monster I saw last week was quite possibly the ugliest garbage nonsense this show has done in a while. I expected to hate this with a fiery passion, and while it wasn’t TEH BEST EVAR, it had its good points.
One can be forgiven for assuming the Vivix don’t have genders, but apparently at least one of them is female--and thirsty for Curio, apparently. Or perhaps not, as it turns out she’s apparently just lonely and trying it out with him for no particular reason. I haven’t seen Kyoryuger, or at least not enough to know what Poisandra’s counterpart Candy was like, but I think it was the right move to have Poisandra be responsible for this hot mess of a random character customization that Beauticruel embodies. Even her name is the dumbest thing of all time. I love that Heckyl shuts down any delusions she has, although of course in real life body policing is no joke. I’m also a fan of his immediate effort to salvage the bizarre situation he’s in in order to accomplish his goals.
I also like the continuing attempts the Rangers are making to get into contact with the Silver Ranger. It makes sense that they would want to find him somehow, and using the information regarding his pod from last week they could at least get a general direction of where to look, though it does seem like it’s slow going. Coincidentally, while Shelby and Kendall work on this together, Chase is in the process of constructing a model rocket for his girlfriend Kaylee (from A Date with Danger) who is apparently training to become an astronaut. It’s a cute gesture, as is their picnic, but Chase’s life as a Power Ranger of course gets in the way. I think that in many ways, Dino Charge has not really had that much tension between the real lives of the Rangers and their duties as Rangers. For the most part, their entire lives are spent on the job. Their friends group consists almost entirely of Rangers. And when they do have interpersonal problems, such as Shelby with her father or Riley with his brother, it usually has nothing to do with being a Ranger. So it’s actually pretty interesting to see the bind Chase gets in when he has to balance Kaylee with superheroics, usually to Kaylee’s detriment. Ah, the pitfalls of the trailing spouse.
As Beauticruel wants to snag a Ranger boyfriend, she uses the incredibly powerful makeup kit Poisandra has to take power from the Rangers and strengthen the other Vivix. This incredibly powerful makeup kit also allows her to switch bodies with a human woman named Brittany and cause Tyler to fall in love with her. While it gives us some of the funniest sequences yet, such as a jealous Shelby fuming over Tyler’s heart-eyes, or anytime Brittany talks in Beauticruel’s voice, it does seem a bit odd that this makeup would be so powerful. Did she have it when she was engaged to Sledge? One would imagine that either she would use it to gain his favor or he would attempt to steal it to hilarious effect. I know this is a question on the order of Itchy and Scratchy’s magic bone xylophone, but it was something I wondered during the episode.
It’s later revealed by Phillip that the Rangers need to put Brittany back in her normal body before they can destroy Beauticruel. I’m...a teensy bit surprised actually. Usually, blowing up whatever monster, artifact or weapon did something bad to the Rangers completely reverses the effects of said thing. Obviously they can’t blow up Brittany’s original body, but the incredibly powerful makeup kit seems like a good place to start. Of course, this wouldn’t be Dino (Super)Charge without a plan that involves Chase looking like a dimwit, so the Rangers decide that in order to force Beauticruel to swap back, Chase will have to sweet-talk her into doing it herself. Not gonna try and steal the incredibly powerful makeup kit, not gonna distract Poisandra, nope. Chase will have to go on a date with fugly-voiced Brittany.
I pretty much saw where this story was going at that point (to a certain extent; more on that in a bit) especially since Chase had been neglecting Kaylee throughout the episode for Ranger duty stuff. Still, it’s a reasonably significant stake to have Kaylee witness Chase waxing poetic about “Brittany,” down to repeating the words he had put on the stand for Kaylee’s model rocket, and run away from him in tears as a result. At the same time, it’s a little contrived that she wants to give him a piece of her mind afterward, conveniently leading to her seeing the Rangers morphing to fight Beauticruel, but I can accept that she’d feel slighted. After all, it’s not as if they just decide to break up; it is motivated by what she saw as his philandering ways. As a result, Power Rangers Dino Supercharge manages to surprise me by having Kaylee find out that Chase is the Black Ranger, even making a funny reference to the triangle-for-two story from Kaylee’s last episode.
In any case, the plan works, Beauticruel is dumb enough to fall for Chase’s backhanded flattery and swaps herself back to looking like random doll parts. In her defense, she is a Vivix, and they’re not particularly brainy. And once again, we get a lame excuse for no Kendall, as she escorts Brittany away to safety while the other Rangers defeat Beauticruel. Yes, it takes longer than that sentence would imply, but there are really only a couple of things that happen worth noting after Kaylee finds out Chase is a Power Ranger. The first is the morph screen goof with two Kodas instead of Koda and Riley. The second is that Chase is cut off from explaining the situation to the rest of the team by the revelation that the Silver Energem might be lost forever. Yes, Tyler uses T-Rex Supercharge, and the Rangers use the Titano Charge Megazord to fight off giant Beauticruel, but there’s no point during this fight where it seems like they’re in over their heads. It’s definitely the right way to end the episode on a cliffhanger; we don’t know the Silver Ranger or the danger he’s facing, so we don’t know what to expect there. We also don’t know how Singe managed to track the Titano Zord last episode. I have a feeling we should be keeping both of these at the forefront of our minds when heading into the last stretch.
“Love at First Fight” felt like it was going to be filler, and the A-story certainly is. Beauticruel is accurately and literally a glorified Vivix in every sense of the term. But the episode surprised me by sneaking in story arc elements here and there, what with the continuity with Kaylee, or the continuing mystery of the spacefaring Silver Ranger. I mentioned (off-site) to a friend that maybe the Silver Ranger and Singe had some sort of connection, whether voluntary or involuntary, and it would be interesting to go in that direction. As stated, I have not seen Kyoryuger, so I don’t know how they handled most of the Rangers. As for this, I liked a lot about it. Not a fan of Phillip being largely an afterthought, but I guess it makes sense for him not to be center stage at the time. I don’t know what “Catching Some Rays” will bring, but the episode titles have been somewhat non-indicative of the episodes themselves as far as tone, so cautious optimism as always.
