Power Rangers Ninja Steel First Impressions

Its that time of year again folks, a new Power Rangers season just started. Despite the bumps in its execution, I enjoyed Dino Charge/Supercharge enough for both halves to get a pass from me. Why did I start out by mentioning Dino Charge? Well, its because I legitimately don't know how to feel about Ninja Steel at the moment. Is that a good or bad thing? Well read on and find out how I felt about the first five episodes.

Ok first, we gotta talk about the theme song. Its generic, extremely generic. You could remove the words Ninja Steel from the lyrics, put it in front of any PR season, and it would still fit. Other than that, its just there and doesn't really have any oomph to it. There also isn't anything memorable about outside of the opening riff.

Episode 1 of Ninja Steel was perfectly fine well, except for one thing: They kept repeating what happened to Brody's dad. They reminded us what happened to his father 4 times in a 30 minute episode. The first time they reminded us, it wasn't even two minutes after the prologue. It felt like they needed something to fill out the run-time. Other than that, it introduced Brody, Preston, and pink will enough. It also set up the show decently however, there is another problem with that which I'll talk about when I mention episode two's problems since its a two part premier.

Episode 2 was alright and was a nice intro for Calvin and Haley. Its the second half of the premier and it being a two parter is kind of a problem for me. Given Nick's scheduling, I don't think they have the time for two part premiers any more. With that being said, the tail-end of the episode is a problem for me as well. They noticed that the gold power star was already missing when Calvin and Hayley got their power stars. That could've been a nice mystery but they killed the mystery two minutes later by revealing that one of the villains somehow got their hands on it off-screen. That is a big deal, you don't do something like that off-screen that soon after you've pointed out the object is missing.

The main plot for episode 3 was ok. Basically it was just to teach Brody about teamwork though I have to ask what the point was of introducing his wrist watch and using it to find out monster weaknesses when they were just gonna ditch it three episodes in. The subplot for the episode however was just stupid. This idiotic jock named Victor Vincent is upset about the rangers being more popular than him so he decides to fight a monster. The subplot is only there to explain why Brody can't use his wrist watch, because he lost it and Vincent found it.

Episode 4 was ok. It was a decent episode for Preston. Its probably the best episode out of these five. Even Victor and Monty didn't annoy me. Episode 5 however, is probably the worst so far. Calvin's lesson is fine on its own but his fear of driving really should've been introduced in an episode where a new zord was supposed to premier. The Rumble Tusk zord effectively comes out of nowhere because the focus was promoting the bike. With that being said, its the subplot for Victor and Monty this episode that really gets on my nerves. Its all one big, unfunny fart joke.

These first few episodes are ok so far with a few missteps. My biggest problem so far is without a doubt Victor and Monty. I think the franchise is a dipping a little too much into the nerd/jock cliches for those two though at least Victor isn't exactly a bully. It feels like the show is trying to make them the new Bulk and Skull. Its really not working for me. I'm not gonna lie, if I had to go out of my way to watch this, I'd have likely dropped it for the time being. It hasn't given me the urge to keep watching. As it stands right now, I'm going to continue watching simply because all I have to do is turn my tv on.