YOPR: 42. A Pig Surprise
On April 19, MIGHTY MORPHIN POWER RANGERS: ONCE AND ALWAYS premieres on Netflix. I’m writing about all 60 episodes of MMPR’s first season in the lead-up to that premiere.
If you’d like to follow along on this rewatch, entirety of MMPR’s first season is available for free (with ads) on YouTube.
One-sentence synopsis: Let’s get hammy.
Why it matters: Remember Pudgy Pig, kids? What about his fight footage that first aired in September? Power Rangers and its predecessor make a habit of recycling footage to fill up an episode’s runtime – things like repeating morph sequences and Megazord formations can easily constitute up to a minute of any given episode throughout Mighty Morphin Power Rangers – but this episode ratchets things up to a whole other level by reusing parts of the fight footage that was first used in Pudgy Pig’s debut episode, “Food Fight.” Though that itself isn’t precedent-setting – eagle-eyed viewers by this point have probably noticed some of the Goldar and Scorpina fights have also been recycled – but it was pretty brazen of production to do the same thing with a monster of the day. It’s easy to lob criticism at the choice, but I tend to go the other way with it: you’ve spent 41 episodes training your audience to know that they’ll often see footage that looks familiar from story to story – it’s genius to go whole hog with it the way that happens here.
Episove MVP: The Pudgy Pig costume. It’s wild that that particular suit was already in as rough shape as it was between the filming of Zyuranger and MMPR, but it kinda makes the whole bit at the core of this episode work even more. Norman, the real-life oinker who gets transformed into a version of Pudgy Pig, is a lovable little guy who just wants one thing: to be loved back, rough beginnings be damned. We’re introduced to him as an instrument of evil, but there’s a backstory somewhere to which we’re not privy. Where did Rita find him? Was he stolen from a farm on KO-35? Raised as a piglet in her never-mentioned barn behind the Moon Palace? Transformed from a slice of bacon sitting on Ernie’s counter? We’ll never know, and that’s OK.
A good quote:
“He’s adorable, what’s his name?” – teenage girl
“Bulk.” – Skull
Rating: 5/5 pet adoptions