“This sho’ ain’t the Love Boat.” – Tanya Sloan
Thanks for bothering to read my articles. Here’s some more bullshit straight from the bullshitter’s keyboard. We’re going to be talking about Tanya Sloan, AKA Zeo Ranger II: Yellow. My pal Raging Bull requested it, so here it is, bro.
This is the next article in a written series here on morphinlegacy.com that deconstructs an individual character from Power Rangers, and I guess Super Sentai, if I’m allowed to. If you haven’t read my previous (and series debut) article on Jason Scott called LIONHEART, don’t read it because I’m told it’s too silly to be able to comprehend. Or was that my article on Power Rangers Samurai? The point is that I’m silly, and if that is unacceptable then stop reading, or turn off, or go play soccer somewhere, because silliness sometimes abounds. Let’s get back on track.
Tanya Sloan came to us at the end of season three of MMPR, when youth-ified Aisha, pursuing her shard of the Zeo crystal whilst Delphine’s Alien Rangers attempt to rehydrate after tearing up copious amounts of ass, decided that she cared more about animals than the rest of the planet. Aisha forsakes her friends and family back in Angel Grove for a strange African village with a woman who seems like she would get rejected from the local council of wise elders for talking to trees. Aisha is told she is ‘the chosen one’ (mainly because this lady and her great aunt share the same name) to help end some obscure sickness that’s wiping out the most dangerous animals out there.
Apparently, Zordon knew one of the Rangers would fuck off (another hardcore ‘WUT’ moment for shit he doesn’t seem to tell anyone until it is revealed), and apparently the timeline shifts so that there are absolutely no paradoxes or strange temporal mishaps along the way; in the show LOST, this is referred to as course correction, but others call it deus ex machina. Little Tanya gets sent back to the command center with the final piece of the Zeo crystal and suddenly turns into a woman upon its reconstruction. She is cool with it, despite losing at least ten years of her life, and Adam promises to help her ‘every step of the way’. That sly dog.
It gets more insane as Zeo goes on. Basically, she comes from an unknown time period in what appears to be one of the poorest parts of Tunisia; she is then temporally displaced exposed to the most technologically advanced room on planet Earth (Cape Canaveral will surpass them when their frequency modulators are all run by robots) and is, again, just fine with it. She remains cool and collected when the command center is trashed, they fall several stories under the surface of the Earth, and whilst getting the lowdown on how Rita and Zedd were once the biggest badasses on the side of evil and are now running like scared bitches from the Machine Empire.
Billy decides he doesn’t want to be the Yellow Ranger (another hidden footnote not explored by Zordon until he mentioned it; I’m starting to think this guy is more of a liar than a forgetter-of-thingies), so he gives his crystal to Tanya despite the fact he didn’t have a crystal (as far as I remember; correct me in the comments if I’m wrong). This may have been the result of a missing story point involving Aisha’s crystal being passed to Billy being forgotten and ended with an intern getting fired, and yet Tanya is at first reluctant to step up and become a Ranger. Before Billy starts talking some bullshit about being more valuable at the command center (really hoping to de-throne Zordon and take over as Master Of Interdimensionality), Tanya basically says she’s an extra and she will step down to honor their collective seniority.
Billy makes a bunch of lies that don’t concern the fact that the Yellow Zeo suit has a skirt, and Tanya accepts the nomination for Yellow Ranger. Focus comes off of her, as by this point all the 5-10 year olds in the audience probably accepted what transpired, and the Zeo Rangers get their first fight. Things go well through the end of the episode, with Kat’s family deciding to let the total stranger stay at their home for as long as she wants, tying up the last loose end in the worst attempt at anything until Bill Clinton got that blowjob.
What a life! Not only does this kid get pulled out of what appears to be a poverty-stricken, underdeveloped part of Africa, but she’s lucky enough to be taken in by Earth’s mightiest heroes, and even become one herself through forfeit, despite having no known skills; there’s no way this kid is the village idiot, or comes from some kind of leper village that’s responsible for infecting local wildlife!
I would say it wound up being fine, but we never heard from Aisha again. Tanya kicked mechanized butts up and down the Zeo season, but she was mostly ignored, as is the fate of most other early Yellows. When it came to Zeo Ranger content, there were a lot of episodes about how Tommy is everything, Adam has an active social life, and how awesome all of the Gold Rangers are.
However, the Tanya-centric episode ‘A Song Sung Yellow’ showed some very interesting behavior that proved to be game-changing. In the episode, we find out that Tanya is a talented singer and even made a music video with Adam’s help (who is apparently artistic); she puts on a show at Ernie’s and is approached by a guy in a suit who says he’s with a record company and wants to make her a star. Nobody is skeptical except for Bulk and Skull; Tanya isn’t completely sure what she wants to do, but she DOES know she’s considering leaving everybody to go to Hollywood.
During her second performance at Ernie’s, the Machine Empire attacks and forces the rest of the Rangers to respond while Tanya finishes her set. At first, I was skeptical about the reasoning behind this move, initially blaming selfishness on Tanya’s part. However, upon rewatching everyone’s reactions in the scene, it was more an issue of consistency; if Tanya left her show, not only would she blow any attention she might have been getting from the talent agency, but it would lead to somebody present at the show connecting dots between the disappearance of Tanya, who enjoys wearing the color yellow, and the appearance of the Yellow Zeo Ranger responding to the monster attack.
At the end of the episode, Bulk and Skull deduct that the talent agent is a fraud and attempt to warn Tanya. It turns out they’re wrong, as is tradition, and Tanya rejects the agent’s offer to record/sign/whatever (I don’t think it was clear, but more than likely it’s my memory that isn’t clear). Tanya claims that she is weighted down by the responsibilities in Angel Grove to commit to anything else, and proves that she holds her place on the Ranger team higher than any future she might consider for herself, even if it is some level of fame and fortune.
Time after time, Tanya showed competence in combat situations and a standard of physical finesse that’s required of Rangers. This has never been an issue as far as I could see; not even the infamous episode where she and Tommy are forced to sing everything did her place in the team waver. She was offered a chance to be famous and didn’t leave. Where I come from, that says something about a person.
The above-referred asshole’s name is Shawn, and Tanya hung around him far too much. He was a douchebag baseball player/karate amateur whose favorite pastimes included cheating on tests and hanging out in batting cages. He tried coaxing Tanya into cheating on a big test with him, and she tried to convince him not to; he responded with anger and judgment, but eventually agreed not to. Later, he besmirched Adam for no apparent reason on the eve of a martial arts competition with a new, hot girlfriend that Tanya gives ‘the elevator eyes’. It’s apparent that Tanya still wants to change him.
This is the result of a girl-y nature to take bad boys and change them. In my extensive research on the human being, there appears to be an abnormally high anomaly in the ratio of assholes who get laid versus other groups of males who do not. The Tanya/Shawn relationship (hereon referred to as ‘Shawnya’, also my middle name) is a big mistake as far as Tanya is concerned; she wastes so much time with this dickhead that she endangers her ability to mentally stay ‘in the game’ while in combat. It’s an incredibly little thing to fester on anyone’s mind, but the more she’s unable to convince Shawn that he’s an idiot, the more likely she is to question her own integrity within the team dynamic. It then becomes a matter of, “Why can’t I change him? Why can’t I change the outcome of this battle? If Shawn won’t listen to me, why would the other Rangers?”
Thankfully, Shawnya resolved these instances of bullshit with breakups and handshakes with Adam, which was fine. Tanya snipped his ass out of her life because she was fully aware of how he treated her; this now elevates her above every girl I went to high school with, which is around a thousand women. In the end, she was able to suppress her urges (no matter how much of a bad boy Shawn proved to be) and get the job done.
LET’S REVIEW
Not outwardly afraid of much
Probably possesses no real empathy at all
Constant good luck
Extremely intelligent, despite the lack of a formal education
Prone to give up or lose focus
BEST TRAIT
Easy to adapt, change, and make decisions based on reason
ACHILLES HEEL
Tanya is easily nudged away from situations she feels she doesn’t belong in, and is susceptible to being pulled, via trickery or loyalty, into situations that are unbecoming of Ranger standards; this is possibly due to an inevitable feeling of alienation she must be hiding. She is a displaced time traveller in a world that she definitely doesn’t belong in.
FINAL REMARK
Fit for duty, ready for indoctrination into Project Ranger.
SUIT ASSIGNMENT
Pink; Tanya is much more valuable than she is given credit for and deserves to be the frontline female.
VIRGIN?
I would feel awkward talking about the conditions of the village she came from, but if we’re to assume she was just your average African peasant in a non-war ravaged part of the desert….I would say she definitely didn’t get any whilst at Angel Grove. Not even with Shawn; he lost his V privileges more than once in the duration of Zeo on the grounds of being a tool.
Thanks for making it this far into the article. It means a lot. If I was to pass judgment, this is my weakest thus far; sorry if it’s not what you wanted to see, Raging Bull, but them’s the facts as I saw them; all complaints can be directed to cupofwater03, who is the resident Department Of Complaints, Wrongdoings, And Hurt Feelings Resolution Officer. I believe many of you are requesting my PR/Avengers analysis, but just to make sure, let me know in the comments? Hit me up on here, or preferably on the facebook/twitter pages and let me know what you think.
If you want to see more articles like this one, I’m literally available for contact directly. If you have a character from Power Rangers or Super Sentai you want to have broken down and looked at, let me know. If you just want to yell at me, make a recording and I will listen to it with my head down shamefully. If you don’t want any of the above, tell someone that you want me to be fired. Just know that I inspired the character of Max Payne; do you really want to have me fired?
What article do YOU want to see finished first?
“A History Of Conflict In Power Rangers”
“Rangers In The Fight Of Fate vs. Free Will”
“A Study In The Stability Of A Canonical Continuum: The Wibbly-Wobbly Timey-Wimey Stuff of Power Rangers”
“The Power Rangers vs. The Avengers: An Analysis”
Until the next one: be brave/courageous and press on regardless
