Shift Into Turbo, Part 1

Original Air Date: 4-19-1997

Everyone's favorite episode of Power Rangers begins with Divatox addressing her troops and pledging to conquer the Earth in order to avenge her defeat in the movie (which I'm still not recapping). It goes on for an oddly long amount of time, scanning the faces of the brave Piranhatrons who will be utterly destroyed in the upcoming weeks. And...credits

After the theme, which I really thought was awesome when I was ten, we see Tanya, Kat and Adam discussing their upcoming graduation from high school, which apparently Tommy won't be attending. Why? Because Tommy is now a kickass race car driver. He drives around the track to an unbelievably bad rock song as two guys tell us how fucking amazing Tommy is at being a racer...and after only one month!

Anyway, back to Divatox addressing the troops. She takes this opportunity to introduce the rest of her merry band. First, Rygog, who she entrusts to "navigate the seas as well as the skies," incidentally, he'll never really do either. She also introduces Porto and takes along Elgar because she doesn't trust him to be out of her sight, which will make a scene later on kind of seem somewhat stupid.

Back at the staging ground for graduation, Kat, Tanya and Adam all hang out with Rocky, who was made lame by his own vainglory in the movie. Rocky's totally stoked to hear what happened in the movie, but Adam insists they wait for Justin, because he's secretly evil and wants to torture Rocky by reminding him that he was easily replaceable with a young child. Tanya and Kat also take this time to ask about Justin, because the writers apparently got the wrong lesson from the Simpsons episode with Poochie.

At that very moment, Justin is taking his placement exam, and as if the producers wished to waste no time in making sure the audience hated the lad with a firey passion, his first dialogue has him cockily handing in his test early and remarking that he doesn't need to look over his answers. The teacher looks over his test and is very impressed. This won't end well.

Divatox heads to a matte painting of Earth.

Bulk and Skull are trying to get back onto the police force, but apparently the only way they can do that is by ticketing fifty cars. Apparently, the Angel Grove Police Department is corrupt as hell. Lamentably, there are no cars, and Bulk and Skull appear to be doomed. Meanwhile, most of the rest of the Rangers have been waiting for Justin to show up so he can tell the story of their adventures in feature film failure. Back to Bulk and Skull, Lt. Stone shows up to give Bulk and Skull one last, last chance to become cops, to successfully guard the Angel Grove Energy Center. Now, granted, I am not a police lieutenant, but that seems like kind of an important place to be guarded by guys who have repeatedly been kicked off of the force. But, hell, it's Angel Grove, and really, at this point, I imagine the Angel Grove PD has basically relinquished their law-giving duties to the Power Rangers.

Okay, are you ready for Divatox's plan for revenge? Since the Rangers stopped her wedding to that demon in the movie, she plans to....disrupt their high school graduation ceremony! How the hell does she even know about that? And how is that equivalent to foiling her plan to take over the universe?

Before we can get answers to those questions, the Rangers sans Tommy finally tell the long awaited story of how they got their Turbo powers, in the form of a musical montage that tries to compress a two-hour movie into two minutes and is basically incomprehensible. Anyway, after a few more comments about how awesome Justin is, the Rangers are summoned to the Power Chamber.

Back at Divatox's space sub, she finally explains how her plan is supposed to work. It kind of sets the scene for the whole season, really. Divatox plans to blow up Angel Grove's power plant, which would then cause a blackout which would then.....stop the Rangers' graduation. Even though the graduation is taking place during the day time, and outdoors. I guess if they're using a microphone it would be kind of a problem, maybe. Meanwhile, Alpha has baked the Rangers a cake. It's as exciting as it sounds.

Anyway, Divatox has entrusted Elgar to plant her explosive at the power plant because she's secretly afraid of success. Elgar immediately draws attention to himself by threatening Bulk and Skull for no good reason. Bulk and Skull bravely stand their ground, so Elgar turns them into chimps. Elgar then successfully plants the explosive, it's the high point of his criminal career. Bulk and Skull are now chimps, and they try unsuccessfully to convince people that they are, in fact, humans trapped in chimp bodies. You'll be seeing that sentence a lot over the next few reviews.

Somehow, the howling of the chimps is audible in the Power Chamber because...well, because otherwise the plot couldn't move forward. Zordon sends Justin to investigate, and is inwardly pleased at the progress of his child soldier initiative. Justin shows up and quickly spots Elgar, who is just kind of milling around at a place where he just planted a bomb. This quickly devolves into a fight where Elgar is beaten up by a twelve-year-old TO BE CONTINUED!