YOPR: 52. Two Heads are Better than One
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.
52. Two Heads Are Better Than One
One-sentence synopsis: Power Rangers gets kinky.
Why it matters: “This is a harmless story about the buddy system,” you might say. And, sure, I agree. But it’s also horny AF, and I have evidence that the double entendre throughout is 100% intentional and not just the conjuring of a corrupted adult mind. Crucial to the defeat of this episode’s monster of the day – one whom Finster accurately and hilariously describes as having “one head here and another down there” – is defeated by its favorite fruit, the pamango. This is a fictional fruit. I always thought this was peculiar – why did the writers feel compelled to invent a fake fruit? The answer: they probably didn’t invent it. The pamango is the titular fruit in “Do It with the Pamango,” an erotic Italian comedy released in 1980. A pamango, per a synopsis of the film, is “an aphrodisiac fruit” that’s used on an unsuspecting husband and results in a series of infidelity among multiple parties. Good luck convincing me its use here was a coincidence.
Episode MVP: The lesson of the day. Quips aside, teaching kids – and especially girls – to keep a buddy close in public settings, and demonstrating the value of self-defense tactics, is so valuable. MMPR more often than not does a great job highlighting real-life issues and demonstrating a concern for them on a broad, approachable level. This particular lesson, though, is very narrow and, frankly, depressing: sometimes people will try to do demonstrably bad things to you, and you might not be able to handle it alone no matter how hard you try. One could argue that it’s off-putting for such a powerful lesson to be curtained by so much innuendo throughout, and it’d be hard to contest that. The optics aren’t ideal, but it’s nonetheless memorable.
A good quote: “Two moms are better than one.” – A badass Angel Grove MILF
Rating: 3/5 imaginary parrots
