The third episode of the series is the first real adventure of the week story, where nothing in the status quo really changes, but despite having no consequence on the series as a whole it still manages to be pretty entertaining.
The story centres around Zoey, who's trying to convince the mayor of Coral Harbor not to destroy part of the local forest to build a new road. The mayor tells Zoey that the traffic in the city is a nightmare, so the road is needed to help get rid of congestion. Zoey, however, has an idea that might be able to solve the problem without needing to destroy the woodlands. Morph-X powered bikes.
The major agrees to give Zoey a week to prove that a bike scheme could work, otherwise the forest will be destroyed. Zoey sets out to try to convince the residents of the city that her new bikes are a better way to get around, but no one really seems too interested. Except for the villains, who think that they might be able to steal the Morph-X from the bikes for their own uses.
The team get into a fight with Blaze and one of his monsters, Needletron, and managed to destroy the monster, but Blaze escapes with one of its arms, giving him the ability to siphon Morph-X without the monster. He tries to do this in another location, but the Rangers are able to track him down and destroy the arm, stopping him from getting any Morph-X. With no way to morph Blaze grabs one of the bikes and tries to make an escape. The Rangers jump on bikes of their own and pursue, leading to a chase across the city.
The Rangers manage to chase Blaze down to a warehouse where Roxy and a group of Tronics are stealing more Morph-X. The team fight the evil avatars, but Scrozzle unleashes a giant Needletron on the city, forcing the team to split up. Ravi is dispatched in his Gorilla Zord to fight the giant monster whilst Devon and Zoey continue the fight. When the giant monster starts to drain power from Ravi's Zord Devon goes to assist him.
Zoey faces off against Roxy alone, but manages to get the upper hand, using one of the Morph-X canisters from a bike to cause an explosion that incapacitates the villain. Meanwhile, Devon and his Zord are able to arrive in time to help Ravi, and the two of them destroy the giant monster, saving the city.
The next day Zoey returns to the construction site, ready to plead with the mayor for more time, only to discover that the road has been cancelled because the bikes are a huge hit. It turns out that the Rangers were seen chasing Blaze on the bikes, and thanks to news footage the entire city thinks the bikes are awesome. Zoey has managed to save the forest, and the mayor orders 5,000 bikes for the city.
This episode doesn't do a huge amount, it doesn't move the story forward in any real way, but it does give one of the Rangers the spotlight for the episode; and it's really cool that it's Zoey who gets the chance to shine first.
It's almost a cliche that the Power Rangers are such good people that they champion good causes at every turn; it was almost comical that the Mighty Morphin team took part in so many park clean-ups, awareness campaigns, and charity events that they'd barely of had time to do their school work, let alone be super heroes. We don't have a huge sense of who each Ranger on this team is yet though, so it's not clear if this is something that is specific to Zoey, or if the whole team are going to be into doing good deeds like this every week.
What this episode does show, however, is that Zoey wasn't just talking crap in the previous episodes about having ideas to make the world better, and being desperate to prove that she can do things. This is a young woman who's only a Ranger by chance, and was working at Grid Battleforce laundry a few weeks ago. This is her first real chance to prove that she can walk the walk as well as talk the talk, and she goes at it with zeal.
We also get some small character moments with Nate, who's showing that he's more than just the team's tech guy, and actually gets to go out off the base and do stuff. We learn a little more about his past too, and get a bit of an insight into his family situation and him always wanting a brother.
As with last episode, this week's villain is incredibly forgettable. I'm not sure if this is how the monsters are going to go for Beast Morphers in general, or if we've just had a few dud ones to begin with. Either way, its a good thing for the show that they've got Blaze and Roxy there too to pick up the villain slack. The evil Rangers once again prove to be one of the highlights, and the fight between the two yellow Rangers in the warehouse is the stand out moment for sure.
If this episode proves to be the baseline for the monster of the week style episodes then it's not too bad, and is certainly a lot better than we had in Power Rangers Ninja Steel. However, I do hope that we get better monsters than we've had here, and that the show doesn't come to rely on the evil Rangers to carry it through. But overall, this is a pretty good episode.
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