***As big a Power Rangers fan as I am, I must admit: I’m a little behind on modern PR. Here’s where I attempt to fix that, as I check out episodes of Power Rangers Beast Morphers!***

SERIES: Power Rangers Beast Morphers
EPISODE: S27:E6 – “The Blame Game”
STARRING: Rorrie D. Travis, Jazz Baduwalia, Jacqueline Scislowski, Abraham Rodriguez, Jamie Linehan (Voice)
WRITERS: Becca Barnes, Alwyn Dale, Johnny Hartmann
DIRECTOR: Oliver Driver
PREMIERE DATE: April 4, 2020
SYNOPSIS: Steel takes lessons in discipline a little too far.

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The inciting incident for this episode is when Steel sees a father punish his daughter for littering by telling her to pick up extra pieces of trash. His initial instinct is to say that the father is being mean, but the Rangers quickly explain to him what punishment and discipline are.

The funny thing about this is that the way the incident plays off, Steel is actually right the first time. The father does come off disproportionately harsh about his daughter letting a single piece of trash fall to the ground. I say that as a parent myself. And the funny thing? Steel proceeds to act disproportionately harsh about matters of discipline for the rest of the episode. So if the Rangers had been paying attention from the start, a whole big mess could have been avoided.

Steel goes on to punish workers at Grid Battleforce for very minor infractions by having them sweep the parking lot, clean toilets, etc. Do the Rangers really hold rank over grunt workers like that? Do they actually have the authority to tell someone to clean toilets? If so, why? Or are the workers just intimidated by a robot Power Ranger making demands of them like that?

Betty says that the leaf blower she and Ben are using “sucks.” She might be the first person in the show’s history to say that something sucks. I’d thought that distinction went to Izzy a couple seasons from now. But Betty may have beaten her to the punch.

Incidentally, if Bulk and Skull had done that Morph-X powered leaf blower bit back in Mighty Morphin, it totally would have ended with Bulk’s pants being vacuumed off his body. Oh, how times have changed.

Controlatron takes control of Cole, and subsequently Nate, using what Blaze refers to as a “virus-infected puppet.” That terms sounds like something you’d call someone when you want to insult them. “Dude, you’re just a virus-infected puppet!”

Abraham Rodriguez, who plays Nate, had a tall task in motivating that “I’m a good little puppet” line. Perhaps note quite as hard as his “I copy that” line in “Real Steel.” But still…

Back in “Save Our Shores,” I wondered how the show would handle the co-existence of Blaze and Roxy with their robot counterparts. Apparently the show’s answer to that dichotomy is to simply not feature the good versions of Blaze and Roxy at all. Have we even seen them since?

Email Rob at primaryignition@yahoo.com, or check us out on Twitter.