Power Rangers Super Megaforce: The Grass is Always Greener…Or Bluer review

Again I ask, why are we wasting time with episodes like this, Super Megaforce? We are inching closer to the finale and we’re still doing wacky episodes of the day. But regardless, let’s put that aside and look at the episode on its own. Oh, what am I playing at? It’s an awful episode no matter how you look at it. The most aggravating thing is that it has all the elements to be great and it squanders all of them. So in that sense, it’s a microcosm of all the issues Super Megaforce/Megaforce have had.

So the episode is a bodyswap episode. That’s great, Power Rangers has done it several times before. Probably best remembered is the first, with Billy and Kimberly switching in Mighty Morphin Power Rangers. That was a ton of fun and took full advantage of the concept. Like Jake, Kimberly was a popular kid in school and Billy, like Noah, is a nerd.

Let’s put aside Kimberly is a good role model and Jake is a little creep or I’d be here for 3000 words.

Jake and Noah switch and we get a few bits of them acting different but it all seems so rushed and is almost completely forgotten once the action gets rolling. While it’s nice to see Mr. Burley taking note of the switch (that they aren’t even trying to hide) why is he calling out Noah (with Jake’s mind) for not answering questions for one class? If anything he should be praising Jake (with Noah’s mind). Misplaced priorities there, dude.

The best use of the body swap comes right after that with Gia seemingly attracted to Jake now that he has Noah’s smarts. If we are forced to have the Jake/Gia romance? At least having her being attracted to smarts makes it a little more tolerable.

But the episode takes a left turn and becomes more of a teamwork lesson with everyone working together to make a new super mega cannon thing. (TOYS!) It totally abandons the body swap shenanigans. One can infer the first attempt at the new gun didn’t work because Noah is in Jake’s body but it isn’t fully explored. It seemed to be two different episode plots smashed together (yes, I am aware this was two different Gokaiger episodes).

By the end the bodyswap plot is used for a lame gag about how Jake doesn’t want to go out into nature with Emma because… she actually seems to enjoy it and he thinks nature is lame? Where did this come from? I get that Jake is a teenager and says stupid things but for a team that’s been working together for over a year you think they wouldn’t be having these problems by now. Maybe the conflict could have been he said he would go but had a soccer game?

All I will say is that Emma admiring the trees and raving, “Isn’t life beautiful?” is one of the only bright spots of this episode that featured stupid nonsensical action. Dragon Power with bonus Blitz New Powers. Ninja Storm powers for no reason. But I’ve talked about those problems before. Let’s focus on the main complaint of this episode.

I’ve seen Gokaiger, the Sentai that Super Megaforce is adapting. And I know the original episode dealt with the yellow and green rangers swapping bodies. It baffles me Super Megaforce decided to change this to Noah/Jake when swapping Jake/Gia would have led to a much better episode (which could have used more Sentai footage.) Having Jake experience what it’s like to be a girl would be a powerful lesson but I guess Saban doesn’t want to tell interesting stories.

Oh yeah, Orion is working on his space pod! Let’s hope it’s mentioned again cause that’s vaguely intriguing. Didn’t make up for him barely being around this episode. Poor Cameron Jebo. He’s trying his best with what he’s given but they keep writing him out of episodes.

This episode gets the lowest rating possible because it squandered all of it’s potential. You can do better Super Megaforce. Fix this.

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