Time For Full Exposure

The Honami story! Well, at least the way it began. I always thought it was kind of interesting the way Timeranger, continuing GoGoFive's kinda "realistic" and grounded approach, introduced the idea of the press picking up on our heroes and starting to cover them. And I think the point would have been that our covert heroes would be having their actions documented, and the way that might interfere with the timeline. I always got the impression that it was going to be a serious look at how our toku heroes, in this day and age, can't be as covert as they're always depicted because of the media...

I kinda feel like that was the original intention behind the Honami story, and my theory is that Kuuga was going to do something similar, so some Toei exec was like "Find a way to differeniate what you're doing" to Timeranger, so we got the idiot's love triangle between Honami, Domon and Time Yellow, with her occupation never again being relevant. (If Kamen Rider and Super Sentai were aired on different days from one another, as they used to be, that would be a different case; they'd be completely independent and maybe allowed to explore similar themes and premises. But since Kamen Rider and Sentai were paired up to air right after one another beginning in 2000, I think it put a lot of pressure on what Sentai could or couldn't do and Toei tried too hard to differentiate the two. Thus so many years of "Sentai is the funny one, Rider is important stuff.") Because Honami didn't seem like such a moron at first, and her involvement was more serious than they started to handle her.

(The writers could have made it work, but didn't. They made Honami too stupid, they made the "dilemma" caused by Dumb Honami and Dumber Domon too stupid and they went a little too far by giving us Domon, Jr. This romantic storyline, based in characters' stupidity and played as comedy doesn't really work, and it certainly doesn't work when it's taken so far with a child who is probably going to wreck the timeline more than anything the idiot Londarz did.)

So, this episode is just a tabloid photographer looking to advance himself by getting pictures of the Rangers; his goal is to get them maskless and he succeeds, threatening the safety of the Rangers. However, Katie gets through to him and he changes his mind. This episode hits all of the right notes, with a good guest actor, a good performance by Deborah Phillips (capturing the urgency and desperation of potentially being unmasked), a focus on a real work-life and a focus on the dangers involved, without any of the typical need to add unnecessary goofery or sugar-coating.

Katie's super-strength takes a crazy turn in this episode, as she stops a plummeting elevator by grabbing onto the cable with her bare hands. Eat your heart out, Jessica Jones, always wasting your super strength on just busting doors in.