Weed Better Sober Up

"Weed Better Sober Up" is the first episode of season 2 of Mighty Moshin' Emo Rangers, and is the most popular episode to date. The primary focus of this episode is John.
==Plot==
When his body begins rejecting marijuana, John decides to kick his drug addictions and go clean. He goes to the extreme to reform himself, adopting a StraightxEdge lifestyle. His friends are shocked by the news, but Captain Emohead reveals that there's a secret power that can only be unlocked by one dedicated to the lifestyle of StraightxEdge: the Samurai Powers of the StraightxEdge Ranger. 
However, Captain Emohead fails to lock away the Chronic Stoner morpher in due time. The Evil Empress decides to give John a hard time by using her energies to zap the Chronic Stoner morpher and make a bad copy of it. She uses this to enhance an automaton of hers into becoming Johnny, an evil Chronic Stoner Ranger that serves as a base to bring John's old Ranger suit to life. 
John heads off to battle his evil doppelganger and the personification of his past habits in the park. The clone reveals himself to have powers never exhibited by John himself in the past. John is able to hold his own quite well, until Johnny activates a magic seed that causes a weed vine to grow around John and capture him. Captain Emohead encourages John to unlock his new suit's Samurai Mode, so that he can tear the vines off. This also gives John access to his StraightxEdge Samurai Sword, which further enables John to hold his own on the ground against Johnny.
The Empress, annoyed, commands Johnny to pilot an evil knockoff of the old Bong Zord, reformatted as the Chronic Stoner Fight Bot. John responds by summoning his new StraightxEdge Samurai Fight Bot. However, the old Bong Zord still proves to be too powerful, as it was the most powerful Zord in the old fleet. Captain Emohead reformats the other Emo Zords into the Emo Fight Bots, so they can merge with the Samurai. However, this comes at the expense of Fai no longer being able to fuse her Fight Bot with the main ones to create an alternative configuration.
The Mega Emo Fight Bot is formed to battle the Evil Bong Zord. However, Johnny gets the munchies mid-battle and pauses from attacking. The Rangers use this as their grand opportunity to destroy the Bong Zord. Johnny returns in disgrace, fearing the Empress won't give him the drugs she promised him as a reward for defeating the other Rangers. Johnny is never seen nor heard from again after this, though he is rare among villains in that he actually survived the destruction of his giant robot.
After another victory over evil forces, the Rangers return to their homes to celebrate. Stef calls up John on the phone to congratulate him on successfully kicking his old habits. However, she nearly crushes his spirits when she reminds him that StraightxEdge culture also discourages premarital sex.
==Notable cast==
* John Penn as John
* (Uncredited) as Johnny, John's evil clone with the Chronic Stoner suit.
* Ross Fretten as Ross
* Luke Markey as Luke
* Stef Braithwaite as Stef
* Vicki Godby as Vicken
* Fai Burnett as Fai
* Luke Cole as Captain Emohead
* Laura Bradley as Evil Empress
==Development==
===Production delays===
First promoted in 2007, several delays in editing and scheduling / release contracting led to this episode not getting a final release until three years later in the summer of 2010 on YouTube and MTV. 
===Aesthetic changes===
In that time, the costuming department made some dramatic overhauls to how all the Rangers looked. John's appearance as the Chronic Stoner Ranger in particular was simplified, creating a more accessible character for viewers who was easier to tell apart from the others. Ross was given a new, consistent outfit to wear outside of his Ranger uniform that was theme-appropriate. Given the loss of his hair in previous episodes, Luke abandoned spiky hair and mohawk combinations in favor of wearing a baseball cap over his buzz cut that made him vaguely look like Eminem. Stef was given yet another makeover, one that accentuated her beauty and made her less generic. Vicken was given a yellow stripe to her hair that made her easier to identify as her Ranger color also. Fai was given a modified civilian outfit that was made less trashy and more streamlined. The actress would continue to modify her personal sense of style after the series ended, leading to her having a look for herself that is astounding beyond her season 2 appearance when she returned for the 2015 film.
While Emo 5 remained mostly unchanged until 2015, he was completely absent from the next two episodes after this one. In "Rave New World," an explanation regarding the phone bill was given as an excuse for his absence. Captain Emohead was given some drastic makeovers for this season, as considerable effort was put in by Nick Pittom to improve the Command Center's appearance. This, in turn, was consistent with how the base in Power Rangers got a dramatic overhaul in design between season 3 and Zeo.
==Differences from source material==
The episode is a direct parody of the 3-parter "Return of the Green Ranger" from the original Power Rangers TV series. However, for all its similarities, it does get a few things different: 
* Instead of having a Wizard of Deception counterpart, the Empress creates the evil knockoff clone Ranger herself.
* John is never knocked unconscious while battling his doppelganger.
* More logically, it would have been Fai that would have had this happen to her. She is the sixth / auxiliary Ranger to the team, as is Tommy for his group of Rangers.
* The first official battlizer mode for a Power Ranger was Andros from Power Rangers in Space - a Red Ranger. However, John's Samurai Mode chest piece does bear some vague resemblance to Tommy's White Ranger chest piece.
* Unlike in "Return of the Green Ranger," the Green Ranger clone here doesn't turn good at the end. He does, however, much like his Power Ranger counterpart, vanish at episode's end and is never seen nor heard from again.
* This episode's plot is a merger of "Return of the Green Ranger" with moments from "White Light." In Power Rangers, those episodes were several apart from each other. However, Stef's shocked expression at John's reveal does mirror Kimberly's fainting in "White Light, Part 2." Stef and John's relationship is never mentioned again after this episode, implying things didn't work out between them romantically. This could also be seen as a mirror to how Kimberly and Tommy broke up in Power Rangers right before Amy Jo Johnson's departure from that series.
==Reception==
This episode remains by far the most popular in the show's history, garnering over 322,553 unique views on YouTube on the official Emo Rangers channel in seven years' time since it was first released. No Nielsen ratings are available for how well it did in actual MTV viewership, however.
Of all the episodes reviewed by Positively Dreadful's channel, this one was viewed the most favorably.Positively Dreadful. "Mighty Moshin' Emo Rangers Review." November 16th, 2015. The announcer even went as far as to say: "Good going, John! You are an inspiration to goody-two-shoes dogs like us everywhere!"
==See also==
* "Return of the Green Ranger" - the episode of Power Rangers of which this short is a direct parody.
* John
* Johnny
==References==
==External links==
* "Weed Better Sober Up" on YouTube
Category: Episodes