In Defense Of Saban

When I was little, Saban's "Power Rangers" was a byword for dumb and irresponsible TV. The parents, the schools, and the evening news were all in a lather about its lack of merit and its dangerous impact on the minds of children. I took them at their word, since I somehow missed most TV shows geared toward the 7-12 age range (anything between Rainbow Brite and Buffy the Vampire Slayer), and didn't actually see my first episode of Power Rangers (or the Ninja Turtles for that matter) until around 2017. Well, the byword was wrong. Power Rangers is fantastic. It's fun. 

Power Rangers is a show that looks like it was made by children, but in the very best sense - like a kid's imagination come to life. I mean, if I was going to be evil, I would definitely want to do it with such over-the-top style as Rita Repulsa, with a magic staff that turns anything Godzilla-sized. 

But Power Rangers isn't Saban's only unreasonably maligned property. If the comment history of the internet is to be believed, "Ninja Turtles: The Next Mutation" is much more reviled by many of its own viewers than Power Rangers was even by our parents. Next Mutation wasn't a flawless show, by any measure. It was cheesy and weird. It was sometimes funny in an "oh no, groan" sort of way. But it was a lot better than it's often remembered. 

To take the biggest objection head-on, Venus De Milo is not a bad character, despite how hard it is for me to get past those unfortunate, ever-to-be-lamented shell breasts. She has depth. She even seems to have as much (and almost the same sort) of humour as Master Splinter did in The Secret of The Ooze. And while her initial purpose as someone for the boys to fight over may be a little cringeworthy, it seemed like they all got over it pretty quickly, and she moved on to being a standard "girl-misfit-in-the-land-of-boys." As a card-carrying girl misfit myself, I could relate a little bit to her predicament, and to how annoying the others found her at times. Maybe the real problem was bringing in her character so soon, in that it took away any chance of seeing the brothers in action together with their own dynamic before introducing her.  It makes me wonder if they didn't sufficiently develop the Turtles' characters (within this version) ahead of time - like maybe they couldn't carry their own weight without somebody new to look at. That being said, there were still good character notes. I loved Donatello's quasi-alliance with Dr Quease, and Mikey's call-in pirate-radio van was complete genius.

And after all that - consider Vam Mi and her two little henchkids. 

It was hard to buy into them at first. Those kids are just so weird. But "a revived ten-thousand year old vampire with only four days to find the heart that was taken out of her chest, before she turns to ashes forever" is a great storyline. It could have been written as a completely serious 90s vampire movie. Add to this the fact that Venus has that heart in a jar, mistaken for an herbal remedy, and the heart falls from the jar and scrambles around on the floor like something out of Evil Dead 2... I have never laughed so hard at anything in the Ninja Turtles, except for that one time Mikey thanked the "narrator."

EDIT - In further justification of the show's potential, Michele Ivey of Cowabunga Corner (14/11/21) recently shared a few pages of the original Episode One script, including some deleted scenes that were pretty charming - and did a lot more character work than "I don't even know you anymore!!!" Scenes were lost to shorten the story, which made the first several episodes not as strong as they could have otherwise been.