“The Need For Speed” was a pretty fun episode where we got to focus on Sarah some more and go along with her as she learned another lesson. This episode continues the Galactic Ninjas arc with a little bit of a weaker Ninja that tests the speed of the Ninja Steel Rangers as well as their teamwork. While it was filler it was still a pretty decent episode as we move along this new arc. Let’s take a look back at some of the moments from this episode.
Speedwing: Speedwing with his special Speed Star was rather incredibly fast and was able to topple over the Rangers pretty easily. However, besides that he was pretty incompetent especially when he was spouting out “slow” puns that Brody just could not take! I mean, he lost his Speed Star in the first fight scene of the episode to Sarah who was able to use it for her Hover Board. After that, he really wasn’t that big of a match for the Rangers who took him down with a lot of team work and group attacks. So far he’s most likely the weakest of the Galactic Ninjas because he relied too hard on that Speed Star that ended up being malfunctional to begin with.
Sarah’s Rivalry with Victor: It seems that Victor just loves to press the buttons of his rivals as we’ve seen many times with episodes in the past with Hayley. Now in this episode it was time for him to clash with Sarah. Is this some sort of pattern Victor, must you constantly clash with women? Must be a complex.
Either way, Sarah was pretty pissed off when he so easily beat her record she had just set moments before. You could see the fire it lit inside of her as she immediately went to work on improvements. Her face as the students at Summer Cove held Victor on their shoulders and carried him into the school with confetti pouring was priceless. She was so angry, or pink with envy, that she even broke a pencil. But, it was even more interesting to watch her snap back and forth with him. Something inside of her had to have known that he didn’t play fair and perhaps that was one of the reasons why she decided not to play fair as well.
Sarah Uses Monster Tech: After Sarah finds Speedwing’s Speed Star she takes it back to the base and begins to integrate it into her Hover Board’s technology. In these scenes she clearly knows what she’s doing is wrong, even going so far as to hide it from Mick when he attempts to find out what she’s doing. She uses the rationalization that even though it is monster technology it is still technically, new technology, and not breaking any rules.
But Mick, being the fabulous mentor that he is, warns her that sometimes you can look at one thing so much you can overlook other problems. Clearly, Sarah doesn’t take his advice this time and goes for using the tech anyways. This will lead to her downfall in the next trial of her hover board race.
Brody Just Can’t Stop: Getting a Ninja Star to the head can be rather painful, but it’s even more painful when it makes you run around like a crazy person. Brody went a little crazy and ran around the city jumping over buidlings and ramming into walls! I loved that Preston had to be a badass and go after him in the Dragon Zord!
This part of the episode was pretty funny and sort of reminded me of an MMPR episode where Trini had to keep running! But luckily, as I mentioned earlier the monster was rather incompetent, and the Rangers were able to use Brody’s speed to sneak up behind him and attach the star to him! This led to an awesome 6-Ranger strike from them all which was a beautiful use of footage and just awesome all around!
Sarah Comes Clean: It took a little while for her to do it, even Mick you could see, and I almost thought she wasn’t going to go through with it because it took almost until the very last moments of the episode. Sarah finally comes clean that she didn’t really deserve the trophy or record she was given. But, she never took responsibility for using the monster technology, did you notice that? She always held steadfast to the fact that using the tech was not against the rules. But, isn’t the technology more magical than anything? I mean she wouldn’t use her Ranger powers on her hover board or for her own personal gain, would she? Why? Because that would be cheating! If Brody can’t use his Ninja Comm for test answers then Sarah shouldn’t be able to use monster tech for hover board records. While she took responsibility and was remorseful for it she never admitted that she cheated and that sort of bugged me.
However, I will say that it was great of her to realize that the competition of attempting to better Victor so much had almost taken the fun and sportsmanship out of the record. So, she decided not to try to break the record again. Which was admirable.
Victor and Monty: Victor being as smug as he always is totally annoyed me when he clashed with Sarah. His head is just too big.
Then come to find out that even though he broke Sarah’s hover board record he was using a mannequin for the race and not himself. I mean it is totally predictable that he would cheat. It makes one think, are the other 49 trophies he has even valid?
Well, I was glad to see the trophy snatched away from him and everything set right for both Sarah and the record. What more can I say?
Background Music: Isn’t the background music getting so epic lately? Very MMPR-esque but updated for today. I’m loving it and it’s making the action scenes so much cooler to watch. It’s great for nostalgia while watching Ninja Steel.
While this episode was pretty decent, as I said before, and the action was really good with excellent music in the background I will say the plot didn’t really hold up. Sarah’s lesson, while learned, was barely held up. She still didn’t admit much to cheating she just simply gave the trophy back, but I will admit that is admirable. Mick this time did attempt to teach her a lesson but this time it didn’t seem to work as well on Sarah as his lessons have in episodes past. In fact, he pretty much failed to teach her his lesson. It wasn’t until she failed in her second attempt at the record, caused her friend’s speed to be hijacked and had the monster of the day after them that she realized what she had done. So lot’s of things went awry this episode that just didn’t seem to flow quite right.
Madame Odius’ plan seems to be going along quite nicely as well as she now has two of the Galactic Ninja’s Medallions. But what is she up to? Guess we’ll have to wait to find out!
Until next week when I’ll review the Mid-Season Finale that starts off the Hiatus!