Episode Details

Mandy spent her son's Mighty Morphin years with one nagging question: why are the Power Rangers wearing their helmets in every single fight? She never asked anyone. This week Omari Miller, actor, singer, and possibly the most caffeinated man in Los Angeles, answers it before she finishes asking. The Power Rangers are a Japanese show with American teenagers taped over the top. Super Sentai has been dressing five people in matching spandex since 1975. Haim Saban saw it on TV during a business trip to Japan, licensed the fight footage, filmed the unmasked scenes back home, and cut his budget to a fraction of anything Marvel had proposed. Stan Lee, by the way, had proposed it first. He had a robot.So, that's the business story. The stranger story is everything Omari has absorbed in the years since he stumbled into this world. Yellow was a boy's color in Japan for decades. A season can run eighty episodes and then spin off a movie because that is simply how Toei keeps you. One show tanked in the ratings and broke toy sales records anyway. A villain grabs two arguing men because he assumes they're a couple, and the joke just… never… lands on them. Mandy learns that the Blue Ranger telling dad jokes on a ladder has a real acting career, that the dinosaur robots are a guy in a suit stomping through miniatures, and that somewhere in this franchise there is a rock-singing villain named Candelilla. Then she and Omari decide to write the musical. Press play.
Guest SpotlightOmari Miller is a Los Angeles–based actor, singer, and performer, and a regular in Mandy's long-running cabaret Miscast: Right Singer, Wrong Song, most recently on the bill for Miscast 46 at The Pico.
Reference Links
The Franchises

• Super Sentai
• Tokusatsu
• Power Rangers
• Kamen Rider
• Toei Company

The Episode Mandy Watched

• Zyuden Sentai Kyoryuger (2013)
• Power Rangers Dino Charge (the American adaptation)
• Yamato Kinjo (Kyoryu Blue, later in Kamen Rider Geats)
• Kamen Rider Geats

Series Mentioned

• Himitsu Sentai Gorenger (1975)
• J.A.K.Q. Dengekitai (1977)
• Battle Fever J
• Denshi Sentai Denziman
• Taiyo Sentai Sun Vulcan
• Choudenshi Bioman
• Kyoryu Sentai Zyuranger (source of Mighty Morphin)