YOPR: 10. Happy Birthday, Zack
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: An uninvited guest arrives before a surprise party.
Why it matters: To this point in the series, Zack has mostly been the team’s resident cool guy; he’s quick with one-liners, dances like a pro and just generally seems like the best “hang” of five original Power Rangers. He’s the kind of guy who could be everybody’s best friend. The wrinkle here: it’s his birthday, and his best friends are going out of their way to ignore any hint that it’s his birthday out of allegiance to a surprise party they have planned for him. Zack experiences negative emotions about this slight, but what’s striking is how relatively mature he is in his handling of them. He isolates himself for a spell, which isn’t ideal if you’re going through a bad time, but he isn’t demonstrably angry about what he reasonably perceives as his friends not caring to remember his birthday; he’s just clearly bummed out about it. In an alternate universe where Knasty Knight hadn’t shown up to spoil his sulking, it would have been fun to see how he would have processed those emotions. Alas, his feelings were channeled in a quarry against one of the more personality-filled monsters in the show’s early run,
Episode MVP: Walter Jones. For my money, of the original five Power Rangers, Jones is the actor who leaves the most lasting impression, and this spotlight episode really drives that home. Nothing about his performance is overstated or exhaustive; the viewer feels Zack’s pain but isn’t drowning in it. This was one of five early episodes quickly released on VHS – along with “Day of the Dumpster,” “High Five,” “Food Fight” and the next episode in the show, “No Clowning Around” – and it was well-worn in the Moore household. Zack was my favorite of the first five Power Rangers as a kid, and that remains the case in adulthood.
Rating: 5/5 cake-o-matics
Previously on “Yesterday on Power Rangers”
1. Day of the Dumpster
2. High Five
3. Teamwork
4. A Pressing Engagement
5. Different Drum
6. Food Fight
7. Big Sisters
8. I, Eye Guy
9. For Whom the Bell Trolls