Time For The Last Race

Toshiki Inoue's ho-hum episode of Timeranger, in which he tries to make Ayase "cool." Plot is the same, with the latest monster -- Dash -- being an ex-buddy racer of Ayase/Lucas'. (Dash dresses and talks just like Mr. Furious.) Lucas testified against him and got him put away after the monster's carelessness led to a huge vague accident. The one thing that the Time Force episode has in its favor is that Lucas' whole racing stuff sounds more like Fast & the Furious-style X-Treme Hardcore Mountain Dew Rock 'n Roll Street Racing -- which would be "cooler" for a "cool" character -- instead of Ayase's old-fashioned, lame-o Speed Racer NASCAR stuff. So, I imagine the police putting Lucas' racing skills to use for assignments, and that he'd go undercover on the street-racing scene of 3000.

This episode features a bit of deja-vu in that Lucas takes a driver's exam where bad guy action causes him to tank the test and take the examiner on a crazy ride. This was in the original Timeranger, but Time Force also lifted it for a previous episode, which is weird. I guess maybe they were like "Yeah, we're not adapting that stupid racer-buddy-of-Blue's episode. Wait, we're an episode short? Aw, shit."

And I have to say, Nadira is SO DAMN OBNOXIOUS in this episode. She gets a lot of screen-time, being driven around on shopping sprees by Dash, and she's constantly giggling and squealing in a high pitch. She never lets up. I know, on some level, she's supposed to be getting on Dash's nerves, but that doesn't mean she has to get on our nerves. It's such irritating overkill that when she pops up for one scene in the next episode and lets out her usual high-pitched chuckle, it's just, like...too soon, show.