Recap: Power Rangers Beast Morphers (Season 2), Episode 25 (5) -– Cruisin’ For a Brusin’
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The Beast Bots organize target practice for the Rangers. When they can’t hit the moving target, they whine and complain that it’s too hard and imply Cruise didn’t know what he was doing when he set-up the target. But Cruise is able to hit it with one shot, proving them completely wrong.
Devon thinks Cruise can help them fight against real Robotrons and Tronics, but the others think that is absolutely and completely absurd. Devon disagrees and asks Cruise what he thinks. Cruise says sure as long as it can help the Rangers.
Nate reluctantly designs new wheel blasters for Cruise to use. And just in time too. After a call from Commander Shaw, the Rangers and Cruise head downtown to face the new Digitron that Scrozzle has sent over to suck up all technology.
Before they leave, Nate warns Devon that Cruise is just a machine and does not come close to being on their level with their humanity and intellect. Devon says he believes in Cruise and will have his back.
The Rangers morph and take on Tronics. Devon helps Cruise and encourages him. He is doing pretty well until Digitron shoots at him.
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Cruise drops his Wheel Blasters and Digitron sucks him up and digitizes him.
Back at GBHQ, Devon blames himself. But the others say it’s not his fault. Just then, Devon has an idea. They could combine with their Beast Bots for a new power up.
Nate comes up with keys that can digitize Jax and Smash. Ravi and Zoey give it a try and it works. Nate gives Devon a key that he can use to suck Cruise back up.
Nate shows them the Beast-X Mode Visor which they plug into their morpher to use to activate their new armor.
Digitron pops up in the city and the Rangers hurry over. Devon takes Cruise’s data back and proclaims Cruise his friend before using him as his armor. Ravi and Zoey do the same. And together they are able to finish off Digitron.
Mayor Evox returns to the Crystal Dimension after making sure more countries around the world are building Green New Morph-X Towers. Scrozzle tries to distract him from Digitron’s failure. But rBlaze and rRoxy have already tattled on him.
Anyway, Mayor Evox wants them to kidnap Nate for him.
Back at GBHQ, Cruise returns his Wheel Blasters and says he’ll just have to accept being used as armor instead. Cruise apologizes for being captured and says he let Devon down.
Devon says it was him that mistakenly thought Cruise could help as a fighter. But he will not make that mistake again.
Devon suddenly says Cruise is one of his best friends.
Ben and Betty uses the Tronic they converted into a mopper to clean up the lab since they think cleaning is beneath them.
When the robot mopper is just trying to do its job, the Rangers applaud Cruise when he blows it up.
Episode Thoughts
*broken record alert*
It was very amusing to see the Rangers regard the Beast Bots are their friends considering how poorly they’ve treated them the few times they actually appear.
Basically, they acknowledge them only they need them.
I will annoyingly say again that the Beast Bots have been completely underused and mistreated. The show hasn’t put any effort into developing them as characters when they should have gotten just as much, if not more, character development than Ben and Betty.
I guess them not being face actors means they don’t deserve more screentime. But when it comes to story, it is a bit glaring. Especially when the rest of the plot hasn’t provided enough material to fill episodes. Having the Beast Bots can help fill those holes in general, while also helping to build up the characters of the Rangers who too lack much development. (Aside from Ravi and slightly Devon.)
The villain side of the story just feels like going through the motions as well. rBlaze and rRoxy feel like afterthoughts. And if they had wanted to keep them as villains, they shouldn’t have released the real versions from the avatars during the midseason finale and just kept them locked in the pods until the finale.
Overall, it was an okay episode. The Beast Bots deserve better episodes than this one. And they only got this much screentime this time because the Sentai footage called for it.
Gotta say, this has been the weakest episode of the season.
While the new Beast-X Mode is cool, my biggest complaints are about the baddies. I mean, Robo Blaze y Roxy didn’t do squat to help Scrozzle or the Robotron, so this episode felt kinda hollow. And not to mention there wasn’t any Gigadrone.
But it looks the baddies will go all-out next episode, so I’m looking forward to it.
They seem like they want to do this Scrozzle vs. Blaze/Roxy plotline but they haven’t really spent any time developing it in a meaningful way to be interesting. It’s like, you have no reason to care. And so when they do something against the Rangers, it feels like “Meh.”
It’s nice that Beast Bots trio, who were underused and underdeveloped during last season, got more screen time and development (…well for Cruise) this time.
I kind of wished we get to see more of that in last season, but I digress.
It’s kind of weird that Devon came up with idea of Beast-X Visor, a ranger power-up.
I’m surprised Nate didn’t came up with idea of combining Ranger and Beast Bots earlier in the season, consider the fact Beast Bots are Zord’s cockpit and the fact Steel is “part” human with DNA, so you would think Nate would have cross that in his mind. Then again, given how Best Bots trio were handled in last season, I guess Nate just forgot. lol
Nice to see Cruise was in rollcall and nice action sequence.
I like that episode ended with Cruise blew up Tronic.
Not too much to say about villain plot, other than the fact Evox wants to kidnap Nate’s… again.
I’m curious what he wants this time.
Overall, I found this to be a weakest episode of the season so far.
It’s not horrible, not great, but just OK; which is kind of shame, since this was a ranger power-up episode, where it usually is important episode of season.
Lack of character development and screen time for Beast Bots trio, made it felt short IMO.
At least it had nice teaser regarding Evox’s plan.
True, for a power up episode, I feel like it should have felt “bigger” and more exciting, yeah?
It deserved much more, especially for the Beast Bots.