Power Rangers Jungle Fury: Pushed to the Edge

Welcome back to the Jungle my friends. Last time, one of RJ’s old mentors, Master Swoop, took Theo under his wing, teaching him how to levitate himself and gifting him a spiffy new war fan and the ability to summon Master Swoop’s Bat Spirit to aide the Rangers in battle. Meanwhile, Carnisoar summoned two Yin Yang Birds, a Crow Beast named Bai Lai and a Crane Beast named Carden, to battle our heroes. The Rangers managed to defeat Bai Lai, but Carden survived and vowed revenge. And now, on with the show.

Our episode opens with Dai Shi continuing to suffer through old Carny’s brutal training regiment, which, from my point of view, feels a lot less like actual training and more like Carny just kicking the shit out of Dai Shi because he’s a sadistic jackass. It would seem Camille agrees with me as she can clearly see her master is hurt and stands between him and the crotchety bird man and even questions the point of old Carny’s so-called training while she’s at it. Carny is naturally furious that one of Dai Shi’s underlings would be capable of such insubordination and even Dai Shi tells Camille she’s out of line. As Camille storms off in a huff, Carden arrives and demands another crack at the Rangers so he may avenge his fallen comrade, a request that Carnisoar is all too pleased to grant.

Still in a bad mood, Camille walks the city streets, civilians running in terror at the very sight of her. Ordinarily this would amuse her, but Camille just isn’t feeling it today and uses her chameleon shape shifting powers to assume a more contemporary human disguise. She also coughs up Flit, who, if you don’t remember, lives in Camille’s stomach, and tells the little guy to buzz off since she wants to be alone. Flit obeys, but not before telling Camille that she eats like a super model, and the little dude is starving in there.

We next see Camille wandering into Jungle Karma Pizza. You know, this could all be a coincidence, but I can’t help but notice that right after Flit told her to eat something so he could feed on the half digested remains, Camille's very next stop is the local pizzeria. Grossness of Flit’s eating situation aside, I think this is actually the show’s subtle way of telling us that, while she thinks of Flit as a pest, in her own way, Camille does care about the little fella. Anywho, after Camille scares the hell out of Fran, Lily walks over and, not recognizing her as Camille, offers her a free sample because she can tell Camille is having a bad day. Camille is obviously nervous that any second she’ll be recognized and isn’t interested in a conversation, but when Lily shows her genuine kindness, Camille finds herself opening up a bit, though keeps things vague for obvious reasons. She tells Lily that someone she cares about let her down and her boss thinks she’s useless. Lily comforts Camille and tells her that she probably needs to find a new boss, a suggestion that seems to give Camille an idea. Camille disappears and before Lily can figure out what’s going on, the alarm goes off and once again, the Rangers leave Fran alone to run the restaurant. The count is up to seven now guys, and the day of reckoning looms ever closer.

Back at Dai Shi’s castle, Camille is seen stealing another one of the overlord bracelets, the same means by which Dai Shi found Carnisoar’s resting place.

Back in the City, Carden is back with a Rinshi battalion and engages the Rangers in battle. Lily fights Carden one on one, the the Crane Beast proves to be more than a match for her. Fortunately, some lighting fast cheetah strikes manage to subdue the beast which means it’s Megazord time again! Like last time, the Rangers call upon the bat spirit and cut the big birdie down to size.

Meanwhile, Camille has found the resting place of Jellica, the Jellyfish Overlord of the Sea and intends to resurrect her with one of the remaining life talons. See, Camille has taken Lily’s advice to heart. Camille has not liked Carnisoar since day one and feels he’s doing more harm than good. Maybe if she can get the Sea Overlord to replace him, things will be better. Anywho, Jellica is resurrected and seems grateful to Camille for bringing her back to the living world as Camille kneels before her and begs for her help.

Back at Dai Shi’s castle, while Dai Shi and Carny are in the middle of another training session, Jellica makes her grand entrance. Naturally, Old Carny isn’t too pleased to see Jellica, especially once he learns that Camille brought her back specifically to replace him. Dai Shi isn’t pleased that Camille went rogue either, but Camille assures her master that she’s acting in his best interest. However, Jellica shocks everyone by saying she has no intention of becoming Dai Shi’s new master and instead proclaims that Camille will be her new student. Camille initially refuses, but agrees once Jellica uses her tentacles to torture Dai Shi. And now, first order of business, let their enemies know that there’s a new boss bitch in town, and her name is Jellica.

True to her word, Jellica makes her grand debut in Ocean Bluff harbor, darkening the sky and rising out of the sea giant sized like Ursula at the end of The Little Mermaid. The Rangers call upon the Megazord, but Jellica proves way too powerful and the Megazord can’t even manage to touch her. Jellica has the Rangers dead to rights but she doesn’t want to kill them, not yet. She just wants to make sure they know who’s in charge.

Beaten and bruised, Jellica, flanked by Dai Shi and Camille, confronts the Rangers on the ground. After trapping Casey and Theo in some goop, Jellica wraps up Lily with her tentacles and orders Camille to execute the Yellow Ranger. However, remembering how Lily showed her kindness, Camille finds she can’t go through with it. Jellica is naturally pissed and is ready to kill Camille on the spot, but to shock of everyone, Dai Shi intervenes and fights Jellica in his armored Lion form. Dai Shi doesn’t exactly fair much better than the Rangers, so, recognizing Jellica’s strength, he kneels before her and demands to become her student. The crazy part is, this was Jellica’s plan from the beginning. Turns out Jellica, in addition to being a manipulator of almost Xanatosian degrees, also has quite a high opinion of herself. See, she planned on taking on Dai Shi as her student from the beginning, but she didn’t want him to simply ask for it, she wanted him to get on his knees and beg for it. Accepting her new student, Jellica leaves with Dai Shi in tow.

While all that was going on, Lily was trying to free the boys from Jellica’s goop, but not even the Jungle Mace can seem to penetrate it. Camille shows up and shatters the goop, much to the Rangers' confusion. Camille reveals that she was the one who spoke to Lily at the restaurant. Lily helped her with a problem, so now they’re even. Camille derides Lily for being a silly fool who believes that deep down everyone’s a good person before departing.

Back at Jungle Karma, Lily is taking the fact that she got deceived by Camille pretty hard. Theo comes in and tells her that while, yeah, Camille was deceiving her, Lily should never feel bad about reaching out and helping people. And so our episode ends with RJ and the Rangers sharing a pizza and saying they can do anything, even defeat Jellica, so long as they have each other.

There is a LOT to unpack with this episode, so I’ll try and summarize as best I can. Let’s start by talking about Jellica herself, who, in her debut episode, is already leagues ahead of Carnisoar in the awesome villain department. Don’t get me wrong, Carny had a had a solid introduction of his own, what with his whole Ghost of Christmas Past routine, but since then all the big bird has actually done is kick the shit out of his student and have his Yin Yang Birds do all the heavy lifting. Jellica on the other hand wastes zero time letting The Rangers, Dai Shi, Camille, Carnisoar and pretty much anyone else who happens to be in her way know that there is a new badass evil jellyfish girl boss in town and she can and will beat your ass until you cry for mama. She makes the Rangers look like a bunch of chumps and doesn’t even bother to finish them off because it’s more amusing to her to let them live knowing she could crush them whenever she wants, and follows that up by making the big bad of the series grovel at her feet. Now that is how you introduce a villain. Camille revived Jellica because she thought Carnisoar was too brutal, but she may have unintentionally unleashed someone far worse. But speaking of, let’s talk about the real star of this episode, Camille, and I think the best place to start is with something Lily said while Camille was in disguise, that being that she was a great judge of character, a comment Camille mocks her for after the reveal. Here’s the thing though, Lily is a good judge of character, so much so that without realizing it, she was able to sense what I bet most of you have figured out by now, Camille is not evil, she never really was. Oh sure, she serves Dai Shi and opposes the Rangers, but I think it’s clear by this point that this is out of loyalty to her master more than any kind of devotion to his cause. Camille is hopelessly devoted to Dai Shi in sort of a Harley Quinn/Joker kind of way. Does she want to conquer humanity, I personally don’t think so, at least if she does, it’s only because it will please the master whose favor she wishes to gain. However, if we take Dai Shi’s evil goals out of the equation for a moment, we see subtle hints that Camille is not as evil as she professes herself to be. She stood between Carnisoar and Dai Shi because she couldn’t bare to see him come to harm. She cannot bring herself to kill Lily because Lily showed her kindness. Hell, even with Flit, a literal stomach bug, Camille eats a pizza just so the little guy can have a gross partially digested snack. Ooh, and here’s something really interesting. When Jellica declares Camille her student, she refuses, saying that Jarrod is her only master. Jarrod, not Dai Shi. Now don't that raise an eyebrow. We already know that Jarrod’s personality has merged with Dai Shi since the latter took possession of the former’s body, and perhaps it’s his new found humanity that Camille finds so attractive, even if she won’t admit it or perhaps doesn’t realize it. All this to say, I really love how this show has dedicated so much time to the development of one of its primary antagonists. It is the mark of a great power rangers season (as well as great show in general) when you find yourself just as invested in the villains as the heroes. In my opinion, Jungle Fury does this better than any other season of Power Rangers and we’re only going to see more of this as we continue. While this episode was not without its flaws, the Rangers weren’t in it that much and Carden didn’t get nearly enough screen time to justify him surviving the previous episode, overall, Pushed to the Edge is a solid entry in Power Rangers Jungle Fury. Next time, we meet yet another Pai Zhuq Master in One Master Too Many.