Recap: Power Rangers Beast Morphers, Episode 13 – Tuba Triumph
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The Rangers are enjoying a day at the park. While the others are tossing around a football, Ravi is sketching as he watches a little boy, Joey, playing his tuba. When Zoey comes by to invite him to join them, Ravi hides his sketchbook and says he’s brushing up on the GB manual.
Just then, a group of bullies come and pour soda in the little boy’s tuba. The boy places his tuba in the garbage can and Ravi decides to approach him.
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Joey says he’s always wanted to quit playing the tuba anyway since it’s stupid. But Ravi says his grandfather used to play tuba in a jazz bad and he was really cool. Joey recognizes Ravi from the Riptide gym and asks if he can teach him some karate moves. Ravi tells Joey to meet him later.
Roxy pops in and turns the tuba into a Robotron so it can collect the last of the Rangers’ special power data. The Rangers morph and Roxy decides to join in the fun.
Ravi is able to get a good shot at them and Roxy and the Robotron retreat. Scrozzle offers to upgrade Tubatron’s sonic boom.
Later at Riptide, Joey arrives and is excited to get started. He believes once he’s well-versed in karate, no one will bully him ever again. Ravi wants to make sure Joey knows karate should only be used for self-defense. Joey says he gets it.
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They begin training. After a couple of sessions, Joey is doing well, but has trouble mastering the tornado kick. Ravi says sometimes it’s good to take a break and do something else you enjoy. Joey says that used to be tuba. He regrets throwing his tuba away.
Ravi says they can train again tomorrow.
Over in the Cyber Dimension, Scrozzle has finished Tubatron’s upgrades. Roxy suggests Tubatron test it out on Blaze and he gets blasted into a brick wall.
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Back at GBHQ, Ravi is cleaning some of his grandfather’s old instruments. Ben and Betty ask to borrow a few to try out for themselves.
Commander Shaw walks in and Ravi explains he was hoping to give the tuba to a friend. His mother says it’s alright. But Ravi mustn’t get distracted by silly things, especially when the Robotron returns.
At Riptide, Ravi is working with Joey again. After their session, Joey sees Ravi’s sketches of him and Roxy. Joey says he’s really good, but Ravi says he’s not ready for other people to see his work yet. Plus, Ravi doesn’t want his drawings to become a distraction.
Ravi doesn’t know Joey has taken one of the sketches.
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Ravi then presents Joey with his grandfather’s tuba. Joey is afraid he will be teased again. But Ravi says you must stand up and be true to yourself. Don’t worry about what other people think.
Joey thanks Ravi and says he’s the best.
Over at the park, Joey decides to give the new old tuba a try. It triggers the Robotron detectors and the Rangers hurry to the park to find it’s just Joey.
But suddenly, Tubatron does appear and blows the Rangers away. The Rangers morph.
Devon uses his cheetah power to attack Tubatron and the data chip records the information. But another sonic wave from Tubatron knocks the Rangers on their backs. Nate suggests if they can produce a counter sound wave, it could cancel the attack out.
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Joey overhears and decides to jump right in the middle of the two sides. He plays his tuba just as Tubatron blasts a sonic wave. Somehow, Joey’s tuba sound is able to push Tubatron back.
The Rangers take the opportunity to blast the horn right off of Tubatron. The data chip also gets knocked off and Roxy picks it up before returning to the Cyber Dimension. Scrozzle breaks the news to her that the data chip is fried and is of no use.
Roxy orders Scrozzle to send a Gigadrone. Nate has an idea and asks to record Joey’s tuba sound.
Devon, Ravi and Zoey are able to take care of Tubatron. They hop into their zords just as the Gigadrone arrives. Nate uploads the tuba audio file into their system. Ravi is able to use Gorilla Mode to play the tuba sound, countering the Gigadrone’s own sonic attack. Devon and Zoey use the opening to attack the Gigadrone. They combine into the Megazord to finish off the Gigadrone for good.
Later at Riptide, Joey tells Ravi about his experience with the Rangers.
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Ben and Betty arrive and stand in the middle of the gym to begin playing their instruments. The bullies from earlier come and make fun of the Burke Sibs. The head bully grabs Ben’s saxophone and blows. The soap that Betty squeezed in earlier to clean the sax gets blown right out and onto the other two bullies.
The head bully threatens to beat Ben and Betty. But Joey steps in and does a tornado kick to knock the bully’s hat off his head. The bullies run off, scared.
Ben and Betty thank Joey for defending them.
Ravi comes over to tell Joey how proud he is of him. But Joey has a surprise for Ravi.
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Joey framed Ravi’s sketch from earlier and presents it to Ravi as a thank you gift. But also as a reminder for Ravi’s wise words from earlier as well: “Life’s about being yourself. No matter what other people think.”
Ravi is very touched by Joey’s gesture and thanks him. Joey hugs him.
Episode Thoughts
This was an episode where the story was strong enough that it helped make up for the action sequences that, again, were well-done, but maybe too lackluster and lacking true excitement.
The plot of the episode is a toku staple, perhaps more so on Sentai. The whole big brother story is definitely a familiar plot, and most of the time involving the Blue Ranger too.
I thought it was very well done here. Very good writing and a great performance from Jazz Baduwalia. Ravi and young Joey (played by Lukas Maher) made a great, sincere connection that can definitely be inspiring for the young ones watching the show. And the big ones too, honestly.
The other aspect of the story was Ravi keeping his sketches a secret from everyone. I think my only nitpick of the episode was it not doing a little more to show Mama Shaw might not have approved of Ravi and his drawings. Maybe in the past, Mama Shaw stopped Ravi from pursuing his passion for drawing and made him focus solely on Grid Battleforce. Which is why Ravi, from the beginning, has always been a by the book kind of guy. Always following the rules.
I think that is a very strong backstory for Ravi and really adds a lot to his character. The episode as a whole was a great Ravi-focus episode. And being a Ravi-focus, it would’ve been nice to have Smash involved as well.
The episode really was focused on the character moments rather than even the continuing plot or action sequences. Many of the episodes so far this season have been less than memorable. But I think this was one of the few that wasn’t action-heavy, but was still exciting and interesting and fun to watch. Maybe my new favorite episode?
Since last few episodes focused heavily on additional ranger (Nate and Steel), it was nice to see one of the main team (Ravi) gets spotlight.
I like the guest for this episode, where the actor who portrayed Joey (the tuba kid), Lukas Maher, did a pretty convincing performance. I really loved how they incorporated him in battle with Tubatron (MOTW)!
Talk about risky move, where he could have died.
The interaction between Ravi and Joey was great and I really like Ravi speech at the end, which was quite touching. The hug at the end was perfect way to the end the episode.
Nice to see Ethan Buckwell, who was Young Aiden in Ninja Steel, as bully this time. I like his comeuppance at the end, which was perfect. I hope Ethan gets to play one of ranger as adult, in future season of Power Rangers (10+ years later).
I like the use of Ben and Betty as well, where they actually contributed the plot, especially toward the end.
The only minor nitpick I had with this episode is that I kind of wished they erased/deleted “HOERU” (bark/howl in Japanese) writing on Tubatron. IIRC, Hasbro made most/if not all of MOTW suits from the scratch, since suits that were used in Go-busters (2012), which was 6~7 years ago, were heavily damaged and not a good condition to use. Since Hasbro most likely made new suit, why not erase it instead? They could have also digitally edited that out for megazord fight (Sentai footage) as well.
Overall, this was one of the finest episodes not only for post-hiatus, but probably one of the best episodes of the season. This is probably the best Ravi focus episode so far; slightly better than dentist for sure.
It shows how much potential Hasbro has to offer for franchise and they have been doing good job so far.
Yes lots of great things about this episode.
Very interesting about Hasbro having to make the costumes from scratch. That explains having so much original footage to get the full worth from having to make new costumes
I thought this was going to be a Devon episode, since the bad guys still need his cheetah powers. They got the powers, but the chip was destroyed, that was really unexpected for me.
So yeah, it was another good episode.
That’s a good point. Should be interesting if they will still continue that plot.