Bearly Legal - Scare Bear

"Bearly Legal" (known in the US as "Scare Bear") is the second episode of season 2 of Mighty Moshin' Emo Rangers. This episode focused on Vicken, and appears to be a parody of the Power Rangers episode "For Whom The Bell Trolls."
==Plot==
The Evil Empress gets irritated by the realization that Vicken is really into teddy bears. She decides to make Mr. Fluffy, Vicken's favorite, come to life. However, she does so in a way that turns him into a homicidal sexual degenerate. Mr. Fluffy soon raids several charity centers around Chelmsford and London, and amasses himself an army of animated teddy bears to destroy Chelmsford with. The Rangers nearly die several times while trying to fight off the Teddy Apocalypse. 
Getting frustrated with the Rangers' continued interference, Mr. Fluffy has several of the teddy bears sacrifice their life force to turn some scrap metal in town into a giant robot. After a quick battle, the Mega Emo Fight Bot destroys Fluffy's robot, presumably killing him too. 
Vicken tells Stef that she plans to donate the remaining bears to African villages. Her reasoning is that "there won't be any cities for them to destroy if they should come to life again."
==Development==
As with all of season 2, there were significant delays in the release of this episode, leading to the episodes not getting officially released until 3 years after they were initially proposed. The moral of this story appears to be that one must be willing to give up a few of their childhood fascinations from time to time in order to do what's right. The moral is subverted, of course, when Vicken decides to simply make sure the bears get sent somewhere in which they won't have any cities left to destroy.
==Reception==
Very little comment has been made of this episode. And while not nearly as popular as the episode immediately preceding it; "Scare Bear" did manage to garner about 88,000 views on YouTube on the official Emo Rangers channel over the course of seven years from time of publication. No Nielsen statistics are available for how watched it was on MTV.
==Controversy==
A possible reason for the episode being dubbed "Scare Bear" in the US when it was dubbed "Bearly Legal" in the UK had to do with "Bearly Legal" being misinterpreted by quality control as a promotion of teen porn. An inappropriate comment by Mr. Fluffy about "Vicken's ass" in one throwaway line didn't help matters any. It is more likely a reference to the dubious nature of how Vicken acquired so many bears from a charity organization - and how she intends to be rid of them later.
The US MTV got in trouble a year later for its first season remake of Skins, given that the content bordered on child pornography and irritated many advertisers. Renaming the title of this Emo Rangers episode for US audiences was seen as a way to avoid mistaken association with anything that could be seen as promoting pedophilia. The joke in the title "Bearly Legal" was not considered "too off-color" for UK audiences, but was deemed such for US audiences. 
"Scare Bear" also made it a comedic knock on Care Bears, as Mr. Fluffy's gang were almost the polar opposite of what the Care Bears stood for. As if this name change weren't enough to convince audiences that the show was not about endorsing underage sex, given the Rangers having frequently alluded to teen sex prior to this, four episodes later would feature an explicitly pedophilic monster that the Rangers would have to kill. That episode's title wouldn't even be published on the YouTube channel - out of fear of getting pulled due to how defensive YouTube is of its advertisers.
==Filming locations==
In addition to the usual locations for Emo Road, one of the scenes that stands out most is one where the Teddy Minions are terrorizing Chelmsford. The Cash Concepts business on Moulsham Street, which has gone out of business since then, can clearly be seen in the background. How this location survived being ravaged by Colonel Crusher in 2005 is never explained in this episode, as it is only a very small distance from the intersection with Parkway where Crusher can be seen walking by.
==See also==
* Vicken
* Mr. Fluffy
* "For Whom the Bell Trolls," a Power Rangers episode with a very similar plot.
* "Uncle Kuddles and Fiddles the Kid" - another episode that sparked controversy.
==External links==
* "Bearly Legal / Scare Bear" on YouTube
Category: Episodes