Gorganus summons Slaygar, a monster he insists will both conquer Earth and eliminate the Sentinels "for eternity." It's a toxic waste monster that's supposed to look like a living glob of sludge. In actuality, he's an oddly-squarish hunk of slightly melted-looking rubber with a permanently agape mouth. He arrives in the same old desert on Earth and sets about creating mayhem by... shooting some kind of terribly-animated green beam out of his mouth that turns a rock formation into gas. Which, hey, I guess is more impressive than setting a single telephone pole on fire.
Amazing how the beam instantly materializes in a perfectly straight line just in front of his mouth. And shoots in a different direction than he's facing.
In the hallway at their high school, Swinton and Drew are talking. Swinton insists Drew almost never acknowledges they know each other while school is in session, which based on a cursory viewing of previous episodes is both something the show desperately wants us to believe and a blatant lie. Drew asks for an answer on a piece of homework, but just as Swinton begins to reply, he goes silent and his face contorts into an unspeakable mockery of an expression. He's caught sight of a girl smiling at him from across the hallway, and it's driven him totally bonkers!
The girl, Kathy, comes over to talk to Swinton, but he's unable to form a sentence in her presence and she quickly departs. When Drew asks what just happened, Swinton claims he was trying to ask Kathy out - much to Drew's amusement. He explains he freezes up around women - except for Drew and Laurie, apparently - and Drew suggests he should just "let the dialogue flow."
Then Gordon shows up and the pair make the boneheaded mistake of letting him know what's going on. Laurie comes along too - loudly asking, in the middle of the hallway, if the world needs saving - just in time for Gordon to offer Swinton dating advice. Except he wants to charge him $50 for the privilege. When Swinton pays up, Gordon suggests he should show her his gold credit card to impress her. Because yes, he is apparently so far up his own ass he thinks everyone has one. Laurie suggests just taking Kathy out to do whatever she's into, while Drew counters he should write her a poem. For further advice, Drew arranges for Swinton to meet her at her pool house later. After Swinton leaves, the other two decide they'll be there too.
That afternoon at the pool house, Laurie and Gordon express their wish that they could just tell him what to do and say in the heat of the moment. This, of course, prompts Swinton to "rig an RF mic and a non-detectable earpiece" to solve his problem. This is followed by a scene of the monster gesticulating in the desert, coming upon the very telephone pole Ninjabot set on fire in the debut episode, and attacking it with his toxic beam. Bizarrely, this just causes the pole to... smoke slightly. I guess I should take back what I said about Slaygar being a more impressive monster.
JUST KNOCK IT OVER ALREADY!
I feel the need to point out that it's presumably been some time since the monster was sent to Earth, since we went from the teens being in school and looking as if they were prepping for the next class to them being at the pool house after school. Apparently Nimbar finds Slaygar just as non-threatening as the audience, because he's yet to do jack shit about it. That or he was too busy watching his daytime soaps to bother checking the monster monitors.
Cut to the coffee house, where the teens are ready to enact their clever microphone plan. This is set up in one of the stupidest ways possible. Swinton is sitting in a booth against the wall, and the other three are sitting together at their usual table - which is, at most, about ten feet away from the booth, with no other tables between them. And they're not exactly being inconspicuous, either - they've got the microphone mounted on top of a makeshift tower made up of a backpack, binder, two textbooks, a napkin dispenser, and a pepper shaker, and they're all huddled around it, bending over to talk into it. They test the mic and Swinton responds that he can hear them perfectly, which, let's be honest, he probably could without the earpiece.
Kathy walks in and sits with Swinton, and a really bad, drawn-out gag ensues where the teens give him conflicting advice and Swinton mixes it up and mashes it together in embarrassing ways, sometimes responding out loud to things only he is supposed to be able to hear.
Through his "non-detectable earpiece."
Back on Moleculon, Gorganus and Lechner watch footage of Slaygar's triumph over the telephone pole. Gorganus declares that soon the stench of Slaygar's fumes will permeate the entire atmosphere. So wait. Was that his entire plan? Make Earth smell bad? Because I must regretfully inform him that air freshener had already been invented by 1994, and the practice of pinching your nose dates back to antiquity.
Just then, the teens notice the smell in the coffee house, and Nimbar finally decides to get off his ass (assuming he has one) and summon them. This, of course, forces Swinton to ditch Kathy in the middle of an impeccably-timed discussion about environmentalism. For some reason, he picks up the microphone - and the pepper shaker it's mounted on - and takes it with him to Nimbar's lair.
Nimbar explains the situation to the teens, stating that the entire planet will be contaminated in less than two hours. So, seriously, why did you not call them earlier? Anyway, in today's token plot contrivance, Slaygar's toxic fumes are somehow destabilizing the Power Portals, and only one of the Galactic Sentinels can be sent through to fight him. Drew, Gordon, and Swinton all volunteer, and Laurie suggests they draw straws. Nimbar immediately reaches out with his arm-thing clutching four small sticks of some sort, which he apparently was keeping inside his gelatinous mass this whole time. Swinton draws the short straw.
Nimbar advises him that Slaygar has only one weak point - behind its ear. Setting down the microphone, Swinton steps onto his Transo-Disc, transforms into a Galactic Sentinel, and teleports to the desert to face the monster. As soon as he turns around, Slaygar fires some poorly-animated goo at him, landing a direct hit and causing the hero to cough and crouch down.
The production seriously couldn't afford a package of Gak or something?
Back in the lair, Nimbar says they'll try sending one Sentinel through at a time to help Swinton. Just as Laurie's getting ready to go, Gordon declares they need to help Swinton by talking to him through the microphone. Once again, he and Drew end up giving Swinton conflicting advice. Swinton summons his weapon and shoots energy blasts at the monster to seemingly no effect. Meanwhile, Laurie is unable to join the battle because the Transo-Disc can't lock onto the Power Portal's location at this dramatically convenient moment. Nimbar tells the non-transformed teens to stop talking to Swinton, as he needs to be able to judge the flow of battle on his own. Just then, the Power Portal collapses, stranding them in the lair and Swinton on the battlefield. The force of the sudden collapse also shakes the lair and causes the microphone to fall and break.
Back in the desert, Swinton summons his weapon - yes, the one he was already holding - and shoots some more in the general area of the monster's ears, but certainly not "behind" them, and complains that it's not working. After a fruitless bit of melee combat, Swinton puts down his weapon and appears to surrender. He starts clapping, and then begins to whistle loudly. In response, Slaygar grabs his gut as if in pain. This prompts Swinton to summon his weapon back to his hand - it flies up from the ground into his grip - and repeatedly blast Slaygar in the stomach. The monster collapses and Gorganus pulls him out of the battle.
After teleporting back to the lair - apparently the Power Portal was repaired off-screen - Swinton explains his methodology. After his initial attacks failed, he deduced Slaygar's ears weren't in a normal place. So he made a lot of noise to find out where they were, and then blasted him there. Just ignore the prominent, clearly-molded ears on the monster's head. For all we know they're actually extra buttholes. Nimbar congratulates Swinton for having the wisdom to be himself, and the moral of the story is shoved down our throats.
Then Swinton looks at his watch and remarks that he forgot about his date. His date? Are we now meant to believe he actually had a date with Kathy, and that's why she came over to him in the coffee house earlier? The entire point of this subplot was to GET him a date with her. How did he manage to? That seems kind of important! Sure enough, later on in the coffee house we see Kathy still there waiting for him.
Personally, I'd be too distracted by that upholstery to read anything.
She asks where he's been, and when he explains he was saving the planet from an environmental crisis he can't tell her about, she naturally doesn't believe him. She asks him to stop trying to impress her and be himself, just in case we didn't get the moral last time we were hit over the head with it. Luckily, it turns out they're both big fans of advanced computer chess. They decide to make a date of it by leaving the coffee house and each other's presence so they can both go home and play against each other online. Ah, the wonders of the modern world. Gordon tries to get Swinton to pay the rest of his "dating tips" balance, but he instead rips his previous payment right out of Gordon's hands, correctly stating he got a date by ignoring the advice instead of using it.
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I appreciate what this episode tried to do, introducing an element of strategy to the battle and actually following through on it instead of just dropping it like "The Note." Granted, it doesn't make a great deal of sense - how exactly do you shoot BEHIND one's stomach-ear, anyway? - but at least they tried. The civilian plot is acceptable and has a decent moral, but the humor is forced and mostly falls flat. The action remains boring and poorly-choreographed, consisting mostly of melee weapons being used as laser guns. Overall, it's not unwatchable, but it's never as entertaining as "How Time Flies."
Incidentally, I've noticed a few people online declaring this show to be an intentional parody of Power Rangers and its various ripoffs. Obviously I can't read the writers' minds to be sure of their intent, but I really don't get that sense at all. Most of the humor on this show is unintentional, and the stuff they do on purpose really isn't a lampooning of the subgenre's tropes so much as typical sitcom stuff. The title is obviously knowingly ridiculous, but other than that, this definitely seems like a straight attempt at aping PR.
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