Power Rangers at times has Girl Power episodes to show that the female rangers actually are important. However, a lot of the time they are met with certain criticisms. I'll be comparing two episodes- RPM's "Dome Dolls" and Megaforce's "United We Stand"
OK, so Dome Dolls. The premise of the episode is quite simple- a Venjix Attack Bot is sent to attack the city and release chemicals designed to render the population unconscious. The attack bot in a foolish move accidentally drops the chemical that would have incapacitated the women, leaving two rangers available to fight the enemy while Dr K comes up with the antidote.
There are several issues that people have had with this episode. Firstly, there was the problem with Vasquez being so negative and scared. Her character up to that point was not a strong one, which was always taken by the fandom to be an interesting nod to her equivalent in Aliens (all the military personnel being named after characters in that movie) because she is the polar opposite. The criticism was that for an episode that was all about showcasing the strength of the women in the RPM universe, it was showing one who was incredibly weak.
This has been disputed by Tellegen, who defended this by arguing that they needed a character to bring doubt that they will be able to overcome. This is a reasonable argument to make, and I can see where he was coming from by claiming this- courage through adversity and getting over personal hurdles is a good tool to use. Vasquez did manage to overcome her fear and be a crucial part of their plan.
Second is that the two rangers could only manage to just hold off the Venjix Attack Bot until the men turned up to help them win. This argument is a bit of a double edged sword. The RPM powers were absurdly weak, demorphing constantly (almost as much as WF...) and being drained a lot by the rangers simply using their special attacks. If they could take the Attack Bot under such circumstances then it would have made the running story of "the enemies are getting harder to defeat" a bit unbelievable. That said, two episodes earlier ("Heroes Among Us") Gem took down an Attack Bot all by himself so there's only so much steam in that argument.
Third is a small point but worth mentioning anyway- Kilobyte's attitude towards Tenaya 7. He calls her 'sweetheart' and asks her to do some sweeping. It is incredibly odd that Venjix would program a general who is chauvinist, it doesn't seem to serve any purpose. That said, it worked well to quickly set up the rivalry between Kilobyte and Tenaya 7 because they had little time to do so. This problem has been handwaved away by the fandom because the villains don't have traits that are considered to be good- why not sexism?
The last problem is one that is common to a lot of girl power episodes- the male rangers are incapacitated for the females to shine. Why is this necessary? The plot is very good, don't get me wrong, but there seems to be an attitude that the only way the female rangers can look powerful is when the male rangers are either weakened (spells- see below, injury or being knocked out like in this episode). It seems a little insulting that the female rangers can only be the dominant ones when... they're the only ones there. Scott defeating the Attack Bot was a bad move, but one that was necessary due to having to use some Sentai footage in the episode.
With that said, there were some nice touches in this episode. Gem beating Gemma and Scott back to the garage for their morning run is a great example of this- it had great banter and showed that she was fitter and had better endurance than their team mates. Very importantly, the TRUE slash pairing of the show- Dillon/Scott- showed itself with them holding hands while snoozing. Most importantly, all the important actions to further the plot and get things closer to victory were done by the women- from Dr K finding the antidote, Gemma and Summer facing off a large number of enemies together to Vasquez doing her part with the weather manipulation. That says something, right?
OK, time for "United We Stand". The story for this one is so typically Power Rangers it's wonderful- an alien bee casts a spell on Gia and Emma to make them fight all the time. Likewise, her spell on the male rangers force them to be her slaves and do her bidding. The two girls must get over the spell in order to take down the monster.
The first complaint is that it's one that makes the male rangers weak in order to make the females good. As already mentioned, it's not a way to really say "hey, the girls are as powerful as the guys!" when their focus episode doesn't have them being badass while the guys run interference. One thing that'll be cool- how about a female ranger take down a fully grown monster by herself for once? It's been done by males a handful of times in the show's history and is a hallmark of being a total badass. That'll be something to drive a point home.
The bee's first scene in the villain's base was just blegh. It was full of cliche "boys are silly and dumb" banter which is just tiring. As usual there's one general who is all "females are useless!" which like in "Dome Dolls" can kinda be excused with the whole "they're villains" thing, but it is a little tiring. However, making her a dominatrix made things quite... interesting.
There is of course the problem of Gia and Emma being attacked by a terminal case of the stupids. Several times the monster said something like "I cast a spell on them" and "that spell is working!" and they didn't twig that they were under a spell. It took their team mates and Gosei saying far too late that they were under a spell for them to realise the bloody obvious. Seriously, what's going on there? When you're showcasing that a character is awesome, you shouldn't make them look stupid, it becomes incredibly self defeating.
Just a few last thoughts. Samurai didn't treat the female rangers very well (I'm planning to write something about that) and Megaforce is fixing this a little. However, I'd argue that the very concept of "girl power" episodes is one that is frustrating in itself. Surely the female rangers should be able to kick ass and be portrayed as powerful in any episode, not in episodes where they make a point of it. No matter who is trusted to wear the not-spandex, they have the skills and power to take out the enemy, and their gender shouldn't matter in the slightest.
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