How About That Thing?

The green ranger was probably a lot of people’s favorite power ranger back in the day. For me, he was the best thing that could happen to a kid on the recess ground. Seriously, I remember back when I used to watch The Nostalgia Critic, he talked about how he got made fun of for being named Doug at the same time that the cartoon Doug was airing, and I think to myself, “Dude, how did I ever manage to avoid getting nicknamed Tommy Pickles?” I guess there are worse Rugrats to be named after. God help anyone who was named Chucky back then.

Instead, I REALLY lucked out, and got associated with the green power ranger. And it ended up being the ultimate W for kid-me.

No joke, I genuinely felt like somebody had tayler-made this character specifically for me. While I didn’t go by Tommy, and never plan to in the future, I’m pretty sure I wouldn’t have minded. Tommy was the green ranger, and green was my favorite color. He was in to karate, and I was also into karate. He had a magic dagger that summoned a giant dragon robot, and I had a toy dagger amongst my various toys that quickly became my own magic dagger for a time. The list goes on. It sounds silly here and now, I know, but as a kid, the green ranger wasn’t just cool, but it was mindblowing.

One of the regrets I have in life was I never got to meet Jason David Frank in real life. I’m sure he heard stories like that all the time on the convention circuit, but still, the dude was my hero for a time as a kid.

That’s why when they made an episode of power rangers where he’d lose his powers, it was actually kind of devastating. Maybe not like sending you running out of the room crying devastating, but it definitely had an impact on me personally.

The episode in question is the epic two-parter, “The Green Candle”. Named for the thing that would end the green ranger once and for all. IE, this thing.

This thing right here, when lit, would begin to suck the green ranger’s powers away until he was left powerless. It was the ultimate failsafe, should Rita lose the green ranger to the side of good forever. So why did it take Rita, like, twenty fucking episodes to bring it out. 

I can understand her not doing it the VERY next episode, since that was the one where Squat and Baboo hurr durred their way through making a monster while she slept one off. Even then, though, why wait so long? You couldn’t beat the rangers when there was five of them, so what the hell made you think you could when there were six? Not to mention the dragonzord was compatible with the other zords, and they could make new combinations so powerful that the fight was pretty much over the moment they were assembled.

I don’t know, maybe she misplaced it amongst her various other magical chochkies. After all, she left Cyclopter (basically the evil Megazord) and the bottom half of her palace on Earth, and didn’t remember them until way later in the series. Something tells me she’s not the most organized villain in the universe.

But anyway, Goldar kidnaps Tommy, and makes him watch as he lights the green candle. Of course, if Tommy should change his mind about being a goody-good, and repledge himself to evil, then we’ll just forget all about this… No? Okay then, fuck you too.

As the green candle burns, the monster of the day is introduced.

The guy standing front and center is simply known as Cyclops. Squat makes a comment about how he apparently makes him look handsome by comparison… But I don’t see it. And Cyclops probably doesn’t, either. Seriously, I’d make jokes about depth perception, but everything from Greek mythology to Xiaolin Showdown beat me to all the good ones. Plus, a guy like me making fun of someone for only having one eye would be the pot calling the kettle black, so… Yeah, moving on.

Cyclops’s ultimate power is that he’s a shapeshifter. Which basically means he turns into the dragonzord. And… Well, this where my only real gripe comes into play. if I were the one writing this show, I’ have the rangers genuinely convinced Tommy turned on them for about two thirds of the monster fight. Yes, the audience already knows he’s a shapeshifter, and that the dragonzord rampaging through the city is a fake… But the other five rangers don’t. And with Tommy kidnapped, there’s no way he can show up and prove his innocence. There’s a genuine opportunity for drama here…

Unfortunately, the people who wrote this show apparently went with plan B, and had Zordon spoil it for everybody by revealing right out the gate that this dragonzord is a fake. Yeah, much like the split second decision regarding Evil Master Betty’s iron claws in Kung Pow: Enter the Fist, should’ve gone with A.

Don’t worry, though, season 2 will do a better job with the shapeshifter concept when Primatar hits the scene. But for now, let’s go back to Cyclops.

Cyclops isn’t especially great, or memorable, but in the grand scheme of things, it’s fine. After all, the green candle is the REAL star of the show. You don’t want an especially badass monster like Lizzenater, or Spitflower to highjack the episode. I also appreciate that they didn’t just make this another fight with giant Goldar and/or giant Scorpina again, though I wouldn’t have blamed them if they did.

Part 1 ends with Cyclops losing the fight, and running away. Meanwhile, the green candle still burns.

Part 2 begins with a plan. By using the scientific power of bullshit, they can lock on to the teleportation waves or whatever the putty patrol left behind when they last teleported, and lock on to the dimensional space where the green candle is located. The rangers travel to the park where the putty patrollers were in part 1, and start setting up the device to open the portal… And then these guys show up.

Yeah, apparently, when Bulk and Skull aren’t flunking out of high school, serving detention till they’re fifty, and getting slapped around by the cosmos, they hang out at the park and make monkey noises. I am so not kidding about that, either. I’m pretty sure my memory tricked me into thinking they were playing around on some monkey bars, which would make about fifteen percent more sense. I mean dudes their age playing on monkey bars, making monkey noises would still be stupid, but at least it’d make some degree of sense. But unless my shit eye sight betrays me, I’m pretty sure they were just running around the park, making monkey noises. That’s… Confusing.

The funniest thing about this moment, though, has almost nothing to do with the scene itself. Watching this moment right here for the first time in, like, thirty years, it actually reminded me of how I and a couple of my friends from summer school one year used to act. We used to piss off the teachers by making monkey noises just like this as a sort of secret handshake. If you knew, you knew-ooh-ooh-ah-ah-AH!

The two of them stop making monkey noises, spot the rangers, and decide to take valuable time out of their schedule of being stupid in public to pick a fight. And it goes about as well as you expect.

With Bulk and Skull out of the picture, the rangers open the portal.

Yeah, moments like this are when I remember the special effects being a lot better. Like, even for the time. But hey, now we know where Tattooed Teenage Alien Fighters From Beverly Hills got THEIR portal effect.

Unfortunately, Cyclops returns in the form of dragonzord to reek havoc.

“But how can that be?” asks Tommy. ”All the zords are on standby.”

Ugh, really, dude? And I just got done singing your praises and everything. I mean maybe in part 1, you can ask something like that, but you’ve already seen this fucking Cyclops trick already!

Battle ensues, and Jason has to cut his fight with Goldar short in order to form his fifth of the Megazord. The monster is destroyed… But in a twist I didn’t think they’d actually pull, the green candle runs out of wax. The candle is extinguished, and the green ranger loses his powers. The monster may have been destroyed, but the bad guys basically won.

The only way to stop the power from going back to Rita is to give possession of the green power coin to someone else. Because… Uh… Look, dude, we’re going to level with you: we might have written ourselves into a corner on this one. Hell, in the original Zyuranger series, the green ranger DIES when the candle finishes, and we can’t have that in an American kids show. I mean yeah, the monster dies every week, but fuck ’em, they’re monsters!

“So why does Masked Rider still have to use his sword like a laser gun then?”

Ugh, really? We haven’t even written that show yet!

 I don’t know, how about this. At the last possible second, the green ranger gives his power coin to the red ranger, which negates the contract between the green ranger and the candle, and his powers transfer over to the red ranger. Because shut up and tune in next week to watch Hachasaurus.

Even if they did find a way to bullshit the good guys still screwing Rita over (giggidy), it still feels like a pyrrhic victory. Yeah, they beat the monster of the day, but they still lost a power ranger. Rita still throws a temper tantrum over not getting the green power back, and insists she has the worst headache ever, but if you stop and think about it, it’s not a total loss. She still managed to reduce the number from six to five, after all. I say take victory where you can find it.

A few episodes later, they’d eventually find a way to kinda restore Tommy’s green ranger power, but it was always faulty, and Zordon would always warn him that his powers could crap out at any given time. Which, admittedly, added to the suspense of any given green ranger battle, because you never knew if it’d actually happen or not.

However, the very first time this episode aired, nobody really had that knowledge that he was going to come back later, but weaker. I, and most likely others, genuinely thought he was gone for good. We barely had time to enjoy having him around, and play with the green ranger action figure, or anything. Suddenly, and without warning, he’s no longer there. Kind of blows the mind when you’re used to the show’s formula.

And I think that’s why the green candle ended up leaving such an impression on me. Not only was it a cool looking candle, but it was the first time I’d ever really seen the bad guy win in the end. I mean sure, the bad guys won battles in the short term. The majority of Green With Evil was the bad guys kicking ass and putting the rangers in a corner they’d never been in before. But the good guys would eventually find a way to come back and win. Not here, though.

Years later, the green candle would inspire me to write a short story with a similar gimic. Instead of a green candle, though, it was blood-red, and when the wax melted away, the guy who made the contract would have to forfeit his soul and go to hell. And there was no “just give the power source to someone else” bullshit clause in the end of that short story, either. It was a pretty dark story… Or at least as dark as a fourteen-year-old with little experience writing any horror stories that weren’t direct rip offs of Resident Evil could write, anyway. And The Green Candle of all things was a pretty heavy influence on that story. Upon retrospect, I wish I’d kept it. Knowing what I know now about how to write something GOOD, I could probably make it into something.

Regardless, that’s been my experience with this specific episode. And this fills my monthly Power Rangers quota. See you in May.