Power Rangers Dino Charge #1.5 “Breaking Black” Review

Summary: A mostly run-of-the-mill episode is a competent, even if unremarkable spotlight on the Black Ranger.

Recap

Chase has trouble staying focused for his duties at the museum. An old friend of his, a fortune-teller named Moana, asks Chase to guard her shop. However, Spellbinder, an alien sent by Sledge, steals a pendant while Chase is distracted and casts a spell on him. Unable to correctly focus as the spell slowly takes him over, the rest of the team has to try to take out Spellbinder on their own, but are unable to get past his impenetrable cloak. Chase succumbs to the spell, but Shelby is able to break it by getting Chase on top of a makeshift skateboard, which they remember helps Chase focus, and it breaks the spell. With all five Rangers together again, they are able to use the new Dino Spike combined weapon and defeat Spellbinder. Sledge grows him, and Chase calls on his Para Zord, combining it with the Megazord to create the Para-Raptor Megazord. The Rangers defeat Spellbinder for good, and Chase has a new appreciation for staying focused (and realizes he can do it by staying on a skateboard.) Sledge comes in possession of the pendant.

Review

It wouldn’t have been easy following up an episode as good as “Return of the Caveman,” so “Breaking Black” gets a little bit of leeway for not being a complete revelation. There’s really nothing wrong with this episode, consistent and solid by Dino Charge‘s standards thus far. Really, the only thing that keeps it from being great is that Chase’s backstory is pretty much exactly what you see on the tin.

That’s not a bad thing in and of itself, of course. Chase’s story is simple: he did a heroic thing, and got his Energem in return. Unlike Koda’s more tragic caveman setting, Chase gets about the simplest and most straightforward route to making him a Power Rangers — which Koda even sarcastically laments — and that means there’s only so much to talk about in that regard. The most interesting aspect of his backstory is that the person responsible for making him a Power Ranger is a fortune teller, and it’s quite sweet that Chase maintains a friendship and respect for Moana. It’s another part of Dino Charge that harkens back to 80s era cult films, where the troubled teen/kid shows off his inner strength and gets a mystical gift or words of wisdom from a soothsayer-type in return. Dino Charge has an old-fashioned sensibility to it, even in the midst of all the fast-paced fight sequences, and that’s becoming a big part of its charm thus far.

James Davies also has a lot of charm as Chase, as he should. Unlike the lackluster comedic material Azim Rizk had to grapple with last season, which typically made Jake out to be a creep or a jerk more often than anything, Chase pretty much is about as cool and suave as he thinks. The difference in Dino Charge is how realistically everyone around him reacts; women (like Shelby) don’t like his advances, not because he’s a goof, but because he’s a little too cool, in a way that rings false and often condescending. And of course, the way Chase brushes off any of those failures without getting flummoxed makes him come out even cooler much of the time. Unlike Jake’s near-tantrums — and as much as I enjoyed Rizk in that role, sometimes even he couldn’t save them — Chase is pretty much just going with the flow, and hasn’t been shown to keep after any one person once he gets rejection. It’s a careful line to draw when writing a womanizer kind of character that’s painted as a hero, but thus far Chase has leaned exclusively on the “endearing” end of the spectrum, rather than the creepy. And it helps when he gets bits like the unendingly cool “Command this” shot.

Of course, that’s not really what this episode deals with. What we get is a morality tale about staying focused, which is simple enough that it could have worked with just about any Ranger, but admittedly makes the most sense for Chase. The structure is a little bit strange, subverting more typical Power Rangers “evil spell” tropes by making this spell a slow burn. It’s an odd decision that doesn’t particularly enhance the episode; at first, it appears that the spell is just meant to throw the victim off-kilter and make him unable to focus, which would play directly into what Chase is learning. This is rather creative, actually, comparing distraction to an actual evil force threatening to consume your brain. Lack of attentiveness sure feels like an evil spell when you’re trying to sit down and write a review, but instead end up obsessively checking Facebook and cleaning the house instead, by what feels like no will of your own. And Chase is only able to regain his focus while skateboarding, his own version of meditation or crafting a mind palace that plenty have to do to concentrate.

Then the episode has the spell completely take Chase over and turns him expectedly evil, with the lesson stemming from “that would have never happened if I paid attention.” There’s nothing wrong with that, of course, but it’s a bit disappointing that Dino Charge took the easiest possible route with this kind of story when it’s managed to accomplish a bit more subtlety than prior seasons. It does allow for Shelby to cleverly undo the spell by kicking a makeshift skateboard at Chase, though, which is a genuinely cool moment.

The rest of the episode is fairly run-of-the-mill. The Dino Spike is a unique weapon combination, replacing the usual cannon form with…well…a big spike (which delightfully rhymes with “Final Strike”), and that’s very cool. Again, Dino Charge is really excelling at keeping with the usual Power Rangers mechanics but tweaking them slightly. Nothing is enough of a departure to feel weird or off, but few things are wholly formulaic either, making pretty much everything feel fresh and surprising.

The same could be said for the Megazord, which continues to get new combinations without the burden of introducing tons of different Zords early on. Compare to its dinosaur-themed predecessor, Dino Thunder, which started the troubling trend of throwing out copious new auxillary Zords in its fifth episode. Dino Charge has had a new Zord or  combination since episode 2, but thus far we’ve only used the core five Zords. Much as that might suck for toy sales, the three-Zord combination for the Megazord makes the show far less cluttered, while still letting the Zord battles be unexpected.

“Breaking Black” isn’t a step above in terms of Power Rangers, but it’s not really a step down, either. It’s solid but very standard, probably only memorable because of the puntasticness of the episode title. We even get a bit of potential future set-up, with Sledge in possession of the magic pendant. So while hardly a waste, it will be fun to see what Dino Charge can do once it’s past the introductions and backstory exposition and free to fire on all cylinders.

Odds and Ends

• Let’s be honest, the “darkest corner of New Zealand” they refer to would probably still be a lush Eden-esque mountainous landscape, just with, like, an extra rain cloud.
• Did anyone else get flashbacks to “The Ninja Encounter” from Mighty Morphin, what with a soon-to-be-Ranger proving his worth by doing a bunch of parkour to stop a runaway baby carriage?
• “Chase has the attention span of a flea.” – See, Shelby says that, but I honestly could have seen this episode with her in Chase’s exact place. Chase is willfully inattentive, while Shelby is legitimately flaky and somewhat ditzy.
• Brennan Mejia’s ADR is some of the most fun Red Ranger voiceovering in a while. He just sounds like he’s having so much dark fun when Tyler is in the suit.
• “Let’s barbecue this chicken!”