Time For Short-Circuited

It's funny that this episode turns an episode that was about Domon/Time Yellow into an episode about Trip/Green. Well, actually this is a Trip + Circuit focus episode. Yeah. Exactly my reaction, too. This episode is mostly action-driven; Trip's down in the dumps and feeling isolated because his clairvoyant ability is alienating his teammates, but it's up to him to save the day once Circuit is kidnapped, learning to use his powers responsibly. Not a bad idea for an episode, but not explored to its fullest potential, and most of the dilemmas of Trip using his powers "badly" are played for laughs, when they needed to come up with something a little more serious.

The best part of this episode is that it again shows that Nadira is more of a threat than Lila. Sure, her primary concern is money and shopping, but we've seen her involved in coming up with more of the villain plans -- in this episode, she's the once who targets Circuit so he can no longer call upon the robots from the future. We've seen Nadira capable of cruelty (attempted murder!) and in this episode she really beats the crap out of Green. I think Kate Sheldon's pretty good in the role, it's just sad she gets stuck with so much of the "princess" part of the character, that whiny, spoiled act. She reaches a point where she delivers everything in a loud tantrum and it gets irritating, when variation would be nice. Because when she drops that and gets pissed, she works. There obviously comes a point when the production tells her and Wells "Don't be too scary for the little kiddies!"

Although I don't like Lila, Asami Kuru was able to switch it up -- she had the annoying, spoiled side, where she said every line in a kind of irritating sing-song, but when she'd get pissed, she'd try to use a kind of bully punk, rough voice. Timeranger didn't use her well.