Category: Written Features

Power Rangers Reflections Redux #02 – High Five

Fun historical repost history; this particular entry has been posted on this blog TWICE. First time on July 16, 2010 (formerly #142, which is now a Classic Bite Commentary) and the second time was on February 26, 2012. Third time’s not only a charm, but it’s the only version that’s left standing.

For the most part, there’s not a whole to this write-up that I would change or add to it, as it pretty much sums up my thoughts on the episode rather nicely. There’s a couple edits and slight tweaks to clean the text up a bit or make some points slightly clearer, but nothing too drastic.

This text makes reference to the 2010 reversioning of Mighty Morphin, an experiment where Disney, no longer wanting to produce more Power Rangers but needed to output some sort of product, opted to take the first season of Mighty Morphin and “update” them with new visual effects to give it more of a comic book feel or something like that. The reversioned episodes are often looked down upon by the fandom and something that most folks would rather forget existed. Personally, I didn’t mind the reversioning; there’re some bits I’m not a fan of, but some of the stuff they did I actually liked and thought made sense, and there’s a couple examples of that here.

Anyway, on with the show.

Continue reading “Power Rangers Reflections Redux #02 – High Five”

Power Rangers Reflections Redux #01 – Day Of The Dumpster

Mighty Morphin Power Rangers
Season 1, Episode 01: Day Of The Dumpster
Original Airdate: August 28, 1993

Back in 2007, over at my old blog, I wrote some retrospective commentaries on various Power Rangers episodes from the first couple seasons. I kept up with these for about a couple years before dropping it for no reason other than lack of interest among other things. This is something I’ve tried (in vain) to revive and even added a couple new ones along the way, but between then and now, there have been ten of these Power Rangers Reflections (or Retrospectives – the name alternates) and probably a couple more that have yet to see the light of day.

So naturally, it’s worth trying again, right?

The first post under the new Power Rangers Reflections Redux series is a repost of my PRR post of the very first Power Rangers episode, Day of the Dumpster. This is, for all intents and purposes, a recycling of a text that was originally written and posted back on January 12, 2007 on the old DTM Blog (Post #412 if you’re wondering) and subsequently reposted on this blog a couple times. The text won’t be a straight re-post; some edits have been made to account for some additional thoughts as well as some long-overdue fixing of certain typos that have been left unchecked all these years, even after numerous reposts. So hopefully, this is a sign that things will be different.

One can hope.

Continue reading “Power Rangers Reflections Redux #01 – Day Of The Dumpster”

Power Rangers Reflections Redux #00 – A Re-Introduction

So we’re going to give this another shot, right?
So long story short, I occasionally have a tendency to write some retrospective commentaries on some episodes of Power Rangers with the intention of making this a semi-regular thing. Despite several attempts at doing so, things have a way of not going your way. And so only less than a dozen of these things were posted, with a few more in the archives nearing completion or something.
Ten years later, I want to give this thing another shot. But this time, I came prepared.
Starting in October, I’ll be rebooting my PR Reflections commentary series with a combination of re-edited old posts and entirely new posts covering new episodes (one of them is the pizza episode.) In regards to the recycled posts, they will either be lightly edited to fix a few typos and integrate some minor bits or they will be somewhat drastically reworked to flow a little better. In some cases, there might be entire segments re-written.
And since this will be the second or third time some of this stuff is getting reposted, there’s a need to try and clean up some redundant material in the backlogs. As a result, all the old entries from early on have been or will be scrubbed and replaced with archival material; either old Bite commentaries or unpublished supplementary material. The links on the Documents page will also be removed and reflect the new entries when they are eventually posted. This is being done in an effort to try and clean up some old, redundant posts that are either repeats or obsolete (broken vids, etc.).
As far as the new entries are concerned… well, they’re new entries. Some of them are old writings that were left dormant for years and finally finished while others are new entries from scratch. In regards to choosing which episodes to write up on, I’ve tried to vary the palette a bit and not keep it strictly within the realm of MMPR. In fact, one of them is a multi-parter that I wanted to touch on for a very long time.
For the most part, the heavy duty stuff is pretty much done, as these were done months ago with the intent of having some semblance of material ready to post on a semi-timely basis. On last count, I’ve got about twenty of these in the can and there’s a possibility that more might be whipped together. But even if it doesn’t last longer than twenty, at least it’ll last longer than it has in the past, which is saying quite a bit all things considered.
So that’s the intro, there’s the new tag, and next week, we go back to the beginning… again.

Dennis Stamp (December 6, 1946 – March 13, 2017)

Dennis Stamp passed away yesterday after a long battle with cancer.

A former professional wrestler during the 1970s and 1980s with over 2,000 matches in the AWA and various territories under his belt, journeyman Dennis Stamp would later gain cult fame as a result of a cameo appearance in the 1999 documentary Beyond The Mat, serving as the guest referee for a 1997 match between Bret Hart and Terry Funk in one of the latter’s many retirement matches.

RIP, Dennis Stamp. Your booking in the live event above awaits you.

RIP Mr. Fuji

Legendary wrestling manager and WWE Hall Of Famer Harry “Mr. Fuji” Fujiwara passed away this weekend at the age of 83. The exploits of Mr. Fuji as both a tag-team wrestler (five time tag champion in WWWF) as well as the manager of countless talents such as Demolition, Don Muraco, and Yokozuna were well outside of my exposure to the wrestling product, but even when I was oblivious to the product itself, he was always one of those names that would get brought up by other folks and one of those names that just stuck in my head even if I had no clue who he was. That doesn’t diminish his accomplishments and his legacy, nor does it taint my enjoyment of the various sketches he did with Muraco.

My prayers go out to his friends and loved ones.

Roddy Piper Passes Away At 61

News broke recently that pro wrestling legend and latter-day podcaster Roddy Piper recently passed away. I’ve got nothing really. Not much I could say, except… Godspeed, Hot Rod.

Instead, here are six random yet somewhat inspiring and memorable Piper quotables. Originally had these as separate posts, but it made more sense to bundle these together.

Verne Gagne

Verne Gagne, famed promoter of the American Wrestling Association, passed away last night.

The storied career of Verne Gagne, both as a wrestler and a promoter of the AWA, was of an era before my time. My only exposure to the man and the promotion he ran continually for thirty years were through archival programming released years later; either through re-airing of old AWA episodes on ESPN Classics or through the WWE-produced DVD, The Spectacular Legacy Of The AWA.

I’m not entirely ignorant of the contributions of Mr. Gagne and know that he essentially launched the careers of many of professional wrestling’s greatest names through his rigorous training camps held at his farm in Chanhassen, Minnesota, and discovered some of the shining talents that would go on to join that list of big stars. And I would be remiss not to mention his accomplishments as both an amateur wrestler – laying claim to  four Big Ten Wrestling Championships, two NCAA Wrestling Championships, the 1949 AAU Wrestling Championship and a slot on the 1948 United States Olympic team on his resume – and a professional wrestler, having been a ten-time AWA World Heavyweight Champion and the distinction of having the third longest single World Title reign for seven years and three months, from 1968 to 1975.

Mr. Gagne would later be inducted into the Professional Wrestling Hall Of Fame in 2004, as well as the WWE Hall Of Fame in 2006 and the short-lived WCW Hall of Fame in 1993. His contributions to professional wrestling as a whole will long remembered.

My thoughts and prayers go out to the family, friends, and colleagues of Mr. Gagne.