Shadow Rangers

Original Air Date: 5-10-1997

Today's episode begins with Justin and Tommy working on a car. The producers feels it's very, very important that you understand that Tommy is now a race car driver, and can't afford to take chances that you won't understand that message, and so feel the need to emphasize whenever possible. Justin manages to get his shoelace stuck in the accelerator, and wrecks Tommy's engine. God, I hate Justin.

Divatox and Porto announce their newest plan in an elaborate presentation that involves microphones, lights, and Elgar prancing around. It's an odd little scene.

Back at the garage, Tommy and Justin are still working together, for some reason, Tommy seems completely unfazed by Justin's destruction of his car's engine, and offers to play some music. As Justin is searching for a CD, he notices that it's missing. Tommy mentions a raft of thefts lately, and claims it's "too weird." Tommy has a surprising low threshold of weirdness. Meanwhile, Porto sets his bomb that somehow involves radioactive paint, and tells the monster of the week to guard it.

Kat, Tanya and Adam immediately run into said monster, who proceeds to perform the spazziest dance in the history of spazzy dancing. It's truly amazing. He then proceeds to beat up the Rangers, especially Adam, so they decide to morph. Unfortunately, the monster of the week somehow steals their powers and uses it to create the titular "Shadow Rangers" who proceed to beat up the Rangers some more. The monster of the week continues to do his bizarre dancing. The Rangers get beat up even more and then get teleported away by the Shadow Rangers.

Justin, being the little Wesley Crusher that he is, somehow manages to build a homing device out of a radio. Just then, Alpha 6 calls in and says, "Yo Ranger Boys, you got trouble at the construction site, and I suggest you get down there pronto!" I honestly question whether or not anyone could have ever thought that giving a robot some sort of streetwise inflection was good idea. They confront the monster, and Justin shows his inner Scrappy by immediately charging in. His power is also stolen, and I am delighted. They beat up Tommy and take Justin away. Tommy decides to head to the Power Chamber. The monster of the week is still prancing around in the weirdest of ways. It's actually become oddly endearing.

Upon his arrival at the Power Chamber, Alpha 6 starts talking and I start thinking of a way to build a time machine and prevent the character from ever existing. Tommy starts asking Dimitria some questions, and it only takes him about ten seconds to become frustrated at her whole "only ask questions" schtick. Alpha 6 tells him, "to get with the program, Slick," and I now want to build a time machine and prevent mankind from ever existing.

Meanwhile, in the mincing monster's cave o' mystery, the monster feels compelled to explain exactly what his plan is, despite the fact that the Rangers are all standing in the back of the room. Back at the Power Chamber, Tommy discovers that the Shadow Rangers are made of light, and suddenly knows exactly how to destroy them, because it wouldn't be Power Rangers if Tommy Oliver didn't somehow save the day single-handedly.

Anyway, Justin turns on that homing device from the first part of the episode, and Tommy is able to locate them, but first he has to defeat the Shadow Rangers, which he does, as, ironically, they cannot actually survive being in a shadow, which is truly stupid, apparently they need to be directly in the sunlight to survive....except for the last scene when they were in that cave. I don't know, Tommy later explains that "the opposite of light is dark, so when I took out their light sources I destroyed them." Sure, why not? Tommy morphs and goes after his friends.

He rescues them, but then Rangers must still find the monster and his bomb, fortunately, as Justin explains that the Ranger helmets have a special light that will track the radioactive paint used by the monster in making his bomb. That's just stupid, and didn't they have some sort of device that instantly located bombs two episodes ago? It turns out that the monster is at the exact same place that they've been fighting at all episode long. The monster proceeds to beat them up once more, mincing all of the while. Tommy has another plan, it involves summoning the Turbo Megazord and casting a huge shadow over the monster, who apparently can also not abide shadows. It also stops the bomb....somehow.

Anyway, Justin and Tommy finally track down all of their stolen goods. Turns out the chimpBulk and chimpSkull took it. Then Lt. Stone turns up and proclaims himself the new owner of the juice bar. The previous manager had "been recalled by his foreign service unit and have to leave immediately." That doesn't sound suspicious at all. Inevitably, Lt. Stone gets covered in pizza and all present laugh at his misfortune. Show Over!