Mighty Morphin Power Rangers S:01 E:52

Episode Title: Two Heads are Better than One
Original Airdate: April 29, 1994

Rita and her gang have come up with some pretty weird monsters over the course of this first Power Rangers season. Some of the creatures have at least been based off of some pretty ferocious real world animals. Every now and then, though we get one that seems to have come out of some insane acid trip. Case in point: a two-headed parrot. That’s what we get this week in Two Heads are Better than One.

We begin with Jason and Tommy leading a women’s self-defense class at the youth center/juice bar. All the cougars, er moms, in the class are very appreciative, and a bit flirty with the two buff teens. Even Trini and Kimberly get into the action by demonstrating some techniques and proving that the buddy system is very important when walking at night. You see, two heads are better than one. Well, when Rita overhears this from her castle up in space, she instructs Finster to create some sort of two-headed monster for her. The result, a two-headed parrot. It should be mentioned, also, that the extra head is located in the bird’s lower torso area, with its beak sticking out dangerously close to the crotch region…but let’s not linger on that.

The monstrous bird is unleashed on Angel Grove while Jason and Tommy practice in the park. They battle the creature, which also has missile like feathers that it can fire at our heroes. They fend the beast off for awhile, but end up needing to go to the command center to get a briefing from Zordon with the others. It is there that Billy determines they may be able to distract the bird with some fruit…specifically a pamango. While Tommy goes off to find the rare fruit, the others formulate their plan. That is cut short, though when the bird attacks again, with a bunch of putties in tow. The other four rangers head off to deal with the bird, while Tommy has to deal with a bunch of putties on his own. He handles them, but they do succeed in swiping the pamango fruit. Tommy ends up having to borrow a pamango from Ernie, who has one for the exotic fruit drinks he’s been concocting lately.

Fruit in hand, Tommy shows up to help the other rangers and then tosses the fruit to the bird. The two heads then argue over which one gets to eat it. Of course, Rita makes the bird grow to giant size, so the zords are summoned. It ends up taking the Mega Zord, the Dragon Zord, and Titanis to defeat the bird once and for all.

Even with a really weird monster, this is a pretty entertaining episode which is more in line with the fun, slightly goofy episodes we saw earlier in the season. Tommy is definitely the character that takes center stage this time, and it’s nice to see that. It’s been a bit slow getting him back into action since his return. Even in this episode, Zordon still reminds him that he is not yet at full power. He ends up holding his own, though, especially in his battle against the putties. Some of my favorite scenes throughout the series have been the ones where we get to see Jason David Frank (aka Tommy) show off his considerable martial arts skills. That’s definitely what we get in this episode.

Speaking of Tommy, one other thing we get in this episode is a little bit of a return to the romantic subplot between Tommy and Kimberly. The way Tommy convinces Ernie to give him a pomango is by telling him that he bought a pet parrot for Kimberly, and that the bird is a picky eater. “Isn’t that romantic,” Ernie replies. On the flip side, it is Kimberly who shows the most concern when they see Tommy being attacked by putties on the command center’s viewing globe. The romance between these two is going grow as the show continues, which broke the hearts of many 90’s boys who crushed on the pink ranger.

As for the monster, it’s just a bit too weird. The big rubber costume doesn’t allow for a great range of movement by the poor actor inside, so the fight scenes aren’t all that spectacular. Honestly, the better fight scenes in this episode involve putties. There’s also no animation to the heads of the character. Neither head actually moves its mouth when the creature speaks. Plus, as mentioned earlier, the placement of the extra head borders on inappropriate. Still, the episode does manage to rise above having a less than stellar monster.

Well, we’d better hope that Finster is able to create a better monster for next time, especially since it’s another bird. We say goodbye to parrots, and end up with a woodpecker instead in our next episode, Fowl Play.