The Final Episode #88: VR Troopers (1994 - 1996)

 

One of the most popular damn things in the 1990s was Virtual Reality. You had it in movies like The Lawnmower Man or Virtuosity or The Thirteenth Floor. I like Lawnmower Man. It's silly and cheesy but still a lot of fun to watch. It was in our cartoons, like The Real Adventures of Jonny Quest. Also why the hell does he not put H in Johnny?  Who the hell has ever spelt it Jonny? Jonny Quest is a dope. Uh. Where was I oh yeah Virtual Reality. They even had it in an episode of Sailor Moon. I'm surprised I haven't mentioned Sailor Moon more in my silly ass blog. You wanna know how popular Virtual Reality was in the 1990s, it even got to our old people, Angela Lansbury of Murder She Wrote was involved in a Virtual Reality plot. No this is not a joke. Virtual Reality was some hot shit in the 1990s.

It even got here to Newfoundland. We had this place you could bring tons of kids too for birthday parties and other events called Totally Tubular. Yes only in the 1990s could a place called that ever exist. Ever. Sadly the one and only time I went there the VR stuff was not working. I still don't know what VR is like or anything, even though you could buy the stuff now for a lot less money than you could in 1992. It just felt cooler in 1992. I really don't know why I mentioned this but it's my blog and I felt like I had to mention Totally Tubular at least once.

Another ridiculously popular thing from the 1990s (One of the things that are still being done these days) was Power Rangers. You know what happens when things are popular and can also be cheaply made. Yep, we get cash ins, or ripoffs, or whatever the hell you wanna call them. You got so many Power Rangers cash-ins, that Power Rangers came it's own genre. You had Superhuman Samurai Syber Squad (which is my vote for the best and worst title to any television show ever.), Tattooed Teenage Alien Fighters from Beverly Hills (or maybe this one gets the worst name), Big Bad Beetleborgs (which I probably should have talked about during Halloween) and today's show VR Troopers. VR Troopers was also made by Saban Productions, You gotta respect them for realizing that they could cash in on their own property!

So VR Troopers was like Power Rangers a show about a bunch of young people from America who become older Japanese people when the fight scenes occur. You see they still did the old stock footage from the Japanese show in this show. I'm sure all of those shows did that. I don't know if Tattooed Teenage Alien Fighters from Beverly Hills did but the others for sure did. They fight a guy named Grimlord and I had a big thing written discussing how great Tim Curry was but just realized that was Superhuman Samurai Syber Squad that he was in. I will have to save my "Tim Curry just might be the greatest actor who ever lived" bit for that show. Anyway the show came to an end because they ran out of stock footage from the Japanese shows. I don't want to give them any ideas but they could have easily reused the footage and most of us youngsters wouldnt have known the difference. It was apparently just as popular as Power Rangers at the time.

So I gotta admit that the Theme Song is one of those themes like Dennis the Menace from DIC that's very very incredibly lazy yet so fucking catchy. It's mostly some people going WE ARE VR!!! I just had to mention it. It's very 1990s. Anyway, VR Troopers starts with the younger version of one of the characters and his dad giving him a dog. The dog is a part of the cast too but still, anyway they mention some shit about how your friends will need your help from time to time. Not a bad message but uh, kinda muddled. Anyway it then goes to two of the VR troopers. The dudes. I'll call them Otto and Joe because I don't know their actual names and I don't care enough to find out. They are looking through the trash to build a robot to help this shows version of Zordon, who apparently is a chill black man with some nice jewelry. I guess they didn't have the budget to give him a Zordon-y look. 

The bad guy clearly sent one of his henchmen to see what the VR Troopers are up too and he REALLY wants this trash monster. So he gets turned into his actual bad guy self (he's apparently a rich guy in human form.) He talks to a black guy and a lady in ridiculous outfits. I mean it is a Power Rangers like show after all. The black guy called "Doommaster" wants to go after the robot. We then go to the VR Troopers headquarters and the dog Jeb from the beginning can now talk. He talks like southern gentlemen who sometimes bleeds into a weird Paul Lynde impression. Jeb is my favorite character. He's a blood hound by the way. I love those goofy looking puppers! So they have built Galileo after the famous science guy. Anyway something isn't working so they decide to bring him to Poindexter, who is clearly a chad that gets all the ladies.

Poindexter shows them one of his wacky new gadgets. It's to clean your face, brush your teeth and do your ears at the same time. Wild. anyway it wackily backfires on him because really it had too. He fixes Galileo but they end up fighting Doommaster and his henchmen and they actually get Galileo. Poindexter reminds them of the homing device so they start looking for Galileo. Grimlord tries to get some information from Galileo but he doesn't know the password! You are all like OH SHIT WILL HE FIND THE PASSWORD and yes, he does. in the same scene. Just randomly screams EINSTEIN and blam! He can download all of Galileo's knowledge of the VR Troopers. Did they even put in all the knowledge about them yet or what? Grimlord is kinda just presuming shit right now.

The VR Troopers find where Galileo but Grimlord has sent several people to go around fucking up shit. So Otto the cool blonde guy goes to fight them while Joe and Kaitlyn have to save Galileo. They do so by blowing the fuck out of the computer that was trying to get Galileo's knowledge.....by some weird lazer robot mind meld or something. They stop the mindmeld and Otto stops the bad guys. They save Galileo and he's all fixed. Jeb and Galileo do some silly comedy and then we go to the last scene where Otto is on a Motorcycle and is thinking about friendship and cool things like that. Yeah there's a message of helping your friends which is good but can they really call Galileo one of their friends? Dudes a cheap shitty robot made from trash. I think they could have put in a better message because apparently we needed television to tell us everything about the world. 

FINAL VERDICT: This episode was silly, goofy, dumb, filled with goofy wonderful costumes. I would say Power Rangers was still cooler because it had ROBOT DINOSAURS, but VR Troopers was a lot of fun and I actually enjoyed this more than the Final Episode of the original Power Rangers series.