Mighty Morphin #1.22 – The Trouble with Shellshock

Are you emotionally drained after the last few episodes? Good news: This one is back to basics!

The title seems to suggest that the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles will be appearing in this episode. Alas, this is not the case. You’ll have to wait a few seasons for that.

Instead, we begin with a one-on-one basketball game between Jason and Zack while the rest of the Rangers (Tommy included) cheer them on. Zack talks a big game, announcing his next move as his:

“Double-whamma, slamma-jamma, hip-hop-it-cause-ya-can’t-stop-it, big-disgrace-cause-it’s-in-your-face long shot.”

Squatt appears by a nearby tree for no reason and lets the audience know about a new monster he and Baboo are creating before teleporting back to the moon.

On said moon, Rita is napping while her subordinates tiptoe around, trying to avoid waking her. Baboo is evidently the brains of this operation (no surprise there), because Squatt asks him outright what kind of monster they’ll be making.

Said monster turns out to be…a turtle with a traffic light stuck to its head.

Squatt rightfully asks what on earth they’re going to do with such a creature, but Baboo hushes him and tells him to wait and see. Squatt points out that they need to give him weapons, and pulls a bunch of random shit out of his pockets and throws it next to the clay figure on the monster-matic.

Squatt asks what the monster’s name is, because he’s concerned with the important stuff, and Baboo suggests the equally-awful “Greta” and “Peetoosh.” Because he’s the far more skilled turtle-namer, Squatt instead recommends “Shellshock,” and Baboo agrees.

Rita stirs briefly when she hears the monster-matic running, but figures it’s not worth her time and falls back asleep. Shellshock bursts to life from the machine, complete with a southern accent and no stoplight on top of his head.

Then, like a second later, he does have a stoplight. There was probably something going on in the original Sentai footage.

Back at the basketball court, Jason and Tommy are tagging in for each other against Zack, which is wildly unfair, but Zack seems to be keeping up, regardless. After all the drama of the last five episodes, it’s nice to see Tommy bonding with the rest of the group. His dynamic with them isn’t quite as natural yet, but it’ll come with time.

Putties swarm the Rangers to try and knock them off-guard, but they immediately jump into action. Tommy’s fighting is still full of his signature “hi-ya!”s, but it’s not as bad in a group setting. They manage to incorporate the basketball into their fight, which is clever, and then Zack decides to go for a dunk for absolutely no reason.

Blown away by the sheer might of Zack’s dunk power, the Putties vanish, to Squatt and Baboo’s horror. Not sure why they’re so shocked, since their actual plan involves a monster, not Putties, but I’ll go with it. Their parts this episode are really dumb (for example: Baboo says, “Tell me that didn’t really happen!” and Squatt replies, “Okay, I’ll tell you!”), especially given how strong the last arc was, but hey, it’s Power Rangers.

Because I feel like it’s my job to report on Billy’s fighting prowess after that four-paragraph-long analysis a while back, here’s an update: He’s still not great (all he really did this time was duck out of the way so Zack could hit a Putty in the face with the basketball), but he didn’t get thrown on his rear end at any point in this fight, so as far as I’m concerned, we’re making progress.

A hot dog cart wheels up to this random basketball court in the middle of nowhere, and Billy and Trini excitedly run up to grab some food for the gang.

Bulk and Skull make their entrance as Tommy heads out for karate practice, which is the show’s way of getting rid of him for a while to make sure the Sentai footage matches up. The bullies try to claim the court for themselves, but Jason points out that it’s theirs to share and that the basketball belongs to them.

The bullies continue to mock the teens, though “mock” is honestly a generous word given their best line is, “And his mommy said that we can’t play with it.” Kimberly tells them to go back to the circus they came from, and when the others laugh at the insult, Bulk snatches Kimberly in his arm and yanks her toward him.

Jason and Zack appropriately freak out, yelling at Bulk to let her go. He throws her at Skull, but being Kimberly freaking Hart, she turns the situation on its head by swinging Skull around and around.

The boys follow suit with Bulk and Kimberly throws Skull straight at him, sending them staggering into the hot dog stand.

Skull takes a giant bite out of a hot dog — an unwise choice, as the vendor demands they pay for the food. When they reveal they don’t have any money, he drags them away, saying it’ll take weeks for them to pay off what they owe.

Squatt and Baboo bring Shellshock down nearby and give him his instructions. He uses a beam from his traffic light to blow up the basketball, alerting the teens to his presence. Jason wastes absolutely no time and announces it’s morphing time.

Shellshock hits Trini with his “go beam,” a blast from his green light that makes her start running, unable to stop. This first shot is obviously American footage (they’re on the same set, and the bodies match the American actors) to get rid of Trini the same way they did Tommy.

The Rangers then front flip straight into proper Sentai footage, where apparently there’s now a giant tower in the middle of Angel Grove.

Shellshock’s accent switches to quasi-New York/Boston here, to the extent that I actually went back to earlier in the episode to be sure that he really was southern before. He was.

He hits a bunch of baseballs at the Rangers, which are…totally normal baseballs. They don’t explode or emit gas or shoot electricity. They’re just baseballs.

Realizing that was the lamest attack in the history of the show, Shellshock activates his red light to freeze all the Rangers where they stand. His head retracts into his shell and is replaced with a cannon, which Jason is somehow able to jump in front of and take the full force of. Unperturbed, he whips out his Blade Blaster and shoots Shellshock right in the face cannon.

Beaten, Squatt and Baboo turn tail and teleport away with Shellshock. On the moon, they moan about their loss until Goldar, sporting yet another new voice, comes to yell at them about creating a monster without Rita’s permission. Oddly, they play it off as “the first time we ever won a battle,” which makes no sense for two reasons: 1) They literally had to flee for their lives at the end of the battle, and 2) They won a ton of battles back during the Green Ranger saga.

Rita finally wakes up and overhears the conversation, congratulating Squatt and Baboo on having created a monster that beat the Power Rangers. Goldar is pissed, pounding his fist against the railing at the sight of them receiving praise.

At the Command Center, Jason reveals that Kimberly, Zack, and Billy haven’t moved since Shellshock froze them in place (presumably why Squatt and Baboo claimed they “won” their battle), leading to this hysterical image.

Zordon says that a rare flower called the Deandra can reverse the effects of the spell, but it’s only found on the Mountain of Hope. Conveniently, he’s already sent Trini to get it — I guess she can control where she’s “going” now?

Rita makes Shellshock grow, and he remarks, “Wait’ll those teenage mutants see what a full-grown turtle can do!” Because his name wasn’t reference enough.

Jason teleports to fight Shellshock while Trini searches for the flower off-screen. He calls the Tyrannosaurus Zord. The episode doesn’t bother changing his usual line of “We need Dinozord power now!” even though he’s the only one fighting, and it cuts him off about a second before he’s done speaking his entering-the-Zord line.

God, this episode is lazy, and it’s made all the more obvious by how good the last five were.

At the Juice Bar, Tommy is doing a ton of super intense, super solo karate practice. I thought this was an organized practice he was worried about being late for?

The show finally decides to show us Trini’s quest for the flower for about two seconds, as she hurries along while wishing she was able to stop moving.

Jason gets knocked around by Shellshock and shouts to Zordon that he needs help, so Zordon sends the spirit of the Saber-Toothed Tiger Zord (he says it’s the Zord itself, but it’s obviously not physically there) to lead Trini to the flower.

Trini sees the flower and shouts, “I call upon the power of the Saber-Toothed Tiger. Bring the flowers to me!” And the flowers just…appear in her hands.

After getting kicked around some more, Jason finally gets the good sense to contact Tommy via communicator to tell him they need his help. Tommy teleports to the battle at once and summons the Dragon Zord with his flute, teaming up with Jason to take down Shellshock.

The aforementioned giant turtle uses a “Not!” joke to great effect because, as we must always remember when watching this show, it was the 90s. He manages to use his beam to freeze both Zords in their tracks, and while Jason is still able to move, his controls are stuck.

Luckily, Trini rushes in with the flowers at that precise moment. After incorrectly addressing Tommy as “Billy” — who edited this episode? — she leaps on top of Shellshock and does a little dance before again calling on the power of her chosen beast to activate the flower and reverse his spell.

Freed from their constraints, the Tyrannosaurus (if there’s anything I’m going to take from this, it’s learning how to spell “tyrannosaurus” without autocorrect) and Dragon Zords make quick work of Shellshock, blasting him with earthquake tremors and finger missiles, respectively.

The Rangers at the Command Center (also released from the spell) celebrate their victory, while Rita screams at Squatt and Baboo for telling her the monster was “invincible.” I don’t think they actually did that, but there were a lot of things shouted during their earlier brag-fest, so I’m honestly not sure.

The episode wraps up back on the basketball court, where Tommy rejoins the group and challenges Zack to another game, with the loser paying for lunch. Zack gets one over on Tommy, and shockingly, Billy steps in next, with the line:

“Care to double your odds?”

Zack is as dubious as the rest of us, not wanting to take Billy up on the offer at first because he “couldn’t even punish a guy as nice as you.” But when Billy confidently suggests the winner buys “lunch for two” (which I thought was the plan the whole time?), Zack agrees.

Billy manages to get the ball from Zack, which is impressive by itself, but he then proceeds to mock the smack talk Zack’s been serving the whole episode by saying:

“It’s time for my funicular, spectacular, voracious, bodacious, autofonic [I checked the subtitles], morphinomic jam.”

Without any explanation regarding Billy’s sudden explosion of athletic talent, the show ends with a high-five between him and the rest of the Rangers.