Power Rangers Beast Morphers Episode 7 Review: A Friend Indeed

This Power Rangers Beast Morphers review contains spoilers.

Power Rangers Beast Morphers Episode 7

I love Jax so much. I love his voice. I love the way they bring so much emotion to a robot just through ears. I love how much he loves Zoey! Hell, I just love the Beast Bots and it’s all down to this episode.

It’s a simple story for Power Rangers but, as with all good TV, it’s grounded in relatable emotions. The Beast Bots just want to impress their human partners and the Rangers just wish they’d follow orders. It’s a nice little sci-fi twist on problems friends can have, especially when one side of those friends can literally be rebooted.

It’s easy to understand why the Rangers would be frustrated with the Beast Bots, they’re supposed to be helpers but they seem more concerned with trying to be the Rangers friends. It’s not the relationship they really expected and it takes some adjusting. I wish we’d seen a bit more of this “friendship” on the Beast Bots end featured in previous episodes to make this feel more built up to, but it still works well enough.

The Beast Bots personality, without needing to be flat out stated, also says a lot about Nate. Nate wants someone, anyone he can be a friend with. He hasn’t been around people much so why not build a friend? Kind of reminds me of Hartford in Operation Overdrive but more endearing and less weird.

Nate doesn’t really know how friends act so he makes the Beast Bots overly friendly and loyal. One may question why he hasn’t just made a Beast Bot for himself yet but that can be reasoned away as Grid Battleforce only wanting to devote resources to the Rangers and not lab assistants. Obviously this is setup for Nate becoming the Gold Ranger and building a robot sidekick but it’s grounded in learning about a character, so the lack of subtle setup can be forgiven.

The episode’s lesson, that blind obedience may sound nice but it robs people of their humanity, is a good one. Friends in real life aren’t just people you can boss around, they have needs to. In the Beast Bots case it’s simple acknowledgement as people. Sure they can be annoying sometimes but the more the Rangers treat them with respect the more they can tone it down. If this episode can remind people in the real world to always treat their friends as equals? Power Rangers has done good this week.

I have to commend Beast Morphers for wringing so much emotion out of robots with zero facial expressions. A lot of it’s down to the Beast Bot voice actors but let’s not discount the suit actors, they really gave it their all to. It’s also why I’m so impressed by Jax. That robot is legit just a robot and yet so much is done with the eyes, barely moveable arms, and the ears. Love it.

Honestly? I might be okay if we just followed the Beast Bots from now on. I really love them!

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Shamus Kelley is a pop culture/television writer and official Power Rangers expert. Follow him on Twitter! Read more articles by him here!