Why did the Power Rangers never have helmet hair, and other musings on the television shows I watched when I was little.

“It’s Morphin’ time!”


I remember that the show was rated Y7 because of the gratuitous cartoon violence. Okay, I’ll concede that The Mighty Morphin’ Power Rangers wasn’t a cartoon, but considering how you never saw blood and the monsters disappeared in a blast of special effects, I think I’m perfectly justified in calling it cartoon violence.

It was the first show I ever really watched. Sure, there was Barney and Sesame Street, but you can’t really count the shows your parents put on before you were able to change the channels on your own. As a small child, I was mesmerized by the bright colors, the attractive actors and the choreography.

Like most people my age who were the show’s target demographic at the time, even now I can still name all the characters. Of the original Rangers, there was Jason (the jock), Kimberly (the cheerleader), Billy (the geeky one), Trini (the Asian one) and Zach (the token black one). Eventually they added Tommy (the mysterious – see hot – one) as well.


The intergalactic floating head Zordon and his robot sidekick Alpha5 were the rather ineffectual watchdogs who gave the Rangers their powers in order to constantly interrupt the daily lives of five ordinary teenagers and use these American kids who could fight like a specially trained team of Japanese ninjas to save the city of Angel Grove from the evil space witch Rita Repulsa and her various alien goons.

It still puzzles me why Rita never expanded her operations beyond Angel Grove; her base was on the moon after all. It at least made sense why Zordon needed the Rangers as his acolytes, he was a floating head in a tube and Alpha was by no means a battle robot. Despite being a mostlypotent being, he really couldn’t be an active participant.

And before I forget, what was up with the Zords? They were the coolest part of the show. I get that the Rangers never called the Megazord right off the bat to step on the monster before Rita threw her wand and made it grow (How did she get her wand back every episode?) as a kind of pacifist never-make-the-first-aggression deal, but seriously, it would have saved them a lot of trouble, even if it did defeat the whole purpose of the show.

If you can get past the corny spandex and rubber suits, the bad acting, the predictable and formulaic plot, the subpar choreography and in some cases on the early episodes, the bad dubbing, it really wasn’t that horrible a show. Maybe the appeal was less about quality than it was about its connection to that childlike wonder and imagination. If those five more-or-less-normal, highly-stereotyped teenagers could be recruited to the intergalactic fight against evil, maybe it could happen to the seven year old watching it.

Looking back though I’m not sure how I could stomach it now. It was always after school special without ever hitting any of the hardcore issues you’d expect to see. Nobody had sex, got pregnant or did drugs. Hell, the Rangers didn’t even have helmet
hair when they de-morphed. In the city of Angel Grove, there were no eating disorders or suicides or homosexuals. In all honesty I think Degrassi stole it from them.

Not that I would ever admit to watching Degrassi, but seriously, how many problems can those kids have and still be compared to real teenagers?