YOPR: 51. Grumble Bee

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.

51. Grumble Bee

One-sentence synopsis: Grades don’t make the man, the man makes the grades.

Why it matters: It was more or less inevitable that Billy the “wiz kid” would find himself at the center of a plot centered around his intelligence failing him to the point of, for him, high consequence. The opportunity is too easy to pass up, and that’s perfectly fine. Billy’s specific situation might not be relatable to most kids – few are as intellectually demanding to the point of being devastated over receiving a B on a single test – but his disappointment over something that matters so deeply to him is a latch-on point. A quick kid might be caught off guard by a mile time that’s 20 seconds slower than their average. An art-class aficionado might have a bad week at the easel or have trouble picking up a new medium. A beautiful girl might face an internal crisis over an acne breakout. When your identity – and, in high school, thoughts about your future – is wrapped up in a single aspect of your personality, anything that challenges your normal is terrifying. It’s empowering to see Billy overcome this trial through the same means he’s always used – studying and relying on his instincts. It’s an episode about focusing and trusting yourself, as much as anything, and is particularly striking because it’s Billy – who’s most questioned himself among our teens over the course of 50 episodes to date – who gets to demonstrate that lesson. Is it simple? Maybe, but that doesn’t make it any less moving.

Episode MVP: Alpha 5. Zordon’s personal assistant by this point has aided the extended team to the best of his ability, sometimes through careful analysis of a situation (saving Sylvia in “No Clowning Around) and other times through quick thinking informed by past trauma (capturing Tommy during his second invasion of the Command Center in “Green with Evil”). But most often Alpha 5 is a vessel through which the Rangers, and increasingly Billy, are delivered information or devices to improve their odds in a dire situation. Here, he builds what is effectively a glue-bazooka to help Billy defeat the monster of the day. That relationship between that duo, from the show’s premiere, quietly grows into one of the show’s best as the show extends into future seasons, and it’s one of the things I’m most excited to see revisited in Mighty Morphin Power Rangers: Once and Always. Alpha 5 might be the silliest of the silly things in MMPR, and yet he works perfectly.

A good quote: “Pasta la pizza, baby.” – Alpha 5

Rating: 5/5 attempts to make Bulk and Skull better students