We start off in the high-school. Kim and Aisha run up to this message board and Kimberly sees her name on the board - she’s been chosen to become a member of the Angel Girls Club. Aisha is a bit disappointed though, because she can’t find her name there, and she walks away. Kimberly talks to Veronica, the 'lead girl' so to speak, but doesn’t find out the reason. In the Youth Centre, Aisha is working out and Kim comes in, telling her not to worry - Kim will talk some more to Veronica and find out why Aisha didn’t get accepted.
On the moon, Rita’s anniversary is approaching quickly, so Zedd decides to create a hate monster and send him to destroy the Rangers as a present to Rita.
Meanwhile, the guys are helping Ernie clean some graffiti off the walls of the Youth Centre, and Bulk and Skull are going undercover to find this 'graffiti bandit'. Bulk is hiding in some trees, and Skull is hiding under the table of the Angel Girls Club’s meeting. After the meeting is finished, Kim confronts Veronica, who tells her that the Club requires a certain income requirement for its girls to belong. Kim then gets really angry because she realises that’s the reason why Aisha was snubbed. With much foot-stamping (much to the pain of Skull under the table, who is losing a finger every time someone stamps their foot), they both turn around and leave. Poor Skull meanwhile crawls under a table and screams.
Zedd and Rita, with Finster and some carrot tops (don’t ask) make up the Hate Master and send him to Earth. Back at the Youth Centre, Kim tells Aisha that she quit the club because of how they treated Aisha, and Aisha is sorta glad. Then she runs off, remembering that her grandmother was in town and that she wanted to see her. Kim meets up with the guys and they return home. Zedd sends the tengas and Squatt down to get some dirt that the Rangers touched so that the monster can form hate dust - cue fight scene. It’s a pretty good one too. Essentially, the rangers jump around and beat up the tengas.
Meanwhile, Aisha meets up with her grandmother, and they have a touching little heart-to-heart. Her grandmother tells her that she shouldn’t worry about people like Veronica, and then gives her a heart necklace. Aww. Big long fight scene is still going on, and Squatt turns up, collects the dust and leaves. The tengas leave too, but as the Rangers try and demorph, the are teleported into the park, where Squatt gives Hate Master the dust. In between some horrid rapping, the monster shoots out all of these red hate particles that circle the rangers then disappear into them - the teens are then shouting at each other, Adam and Rocky try to pick a fight and they’ll generally nasty to each other.
Rita and Zedd are watching happily, and they decide that, with the rangers out of the way, they can cause some serious damage, and they do this by making Hate Master grow. Zordon calls Aisha, who says goodbye to her grandmother then teleports to the park, wearing the necklace. She manages to talk the rangers out of their hate, and they all morph and call on their zords to battle Hate Master. Unfortunately, Hate Master pulls the same trick as before, and while in their zords, the Rangers absorb the little red dots again, and they decide to forget about the whole thing and go home. However, Aisha is unaffected.
They teleport to the Command Centre, now demorphed, and all yell for various reasons at Zordon, Alpha and Aisha. Then, they throw their communicators on the ground, and Billy teleports them all out of the Command Centre. Alpha then goes into a fit of ‘ayeyiyi-es’ and asks Zordon why Aisha wasn’t affected. They then decide to run a diagnostic on Aisha to find out why she escaped the hate spell, and Zordon tells them that if they don’t hurry, the Rangers may soon turn their powers on each other and destroy themselves.
To be continued...
Oh yeah, I liked this one. ‘Stop the Hate Master part 1’ had everything, from power-mad villains who have nothing better to do than argue amongst each other and a monster of the day who carved right through the intentions of the rangers to a perfect score of ten on the moral-meter and some groovy fight scenes. And of course, it really built of a for a grand climactic showdown in part 2. Yep, this episode is the reason I watch the show.
Now first and foremost, an episode about hate had to have a generous coating of sugar on all the subplots. Heck, the show went straight past ‘generous’ and ended up wading through acres of sugar. First off, we have Aisha getting dumped from the Angel Girls Club and Kim right there by her side. All right, I admit, I found this quite touching. Then, we have a heart-to-heart between Aisha and her grandmother, and Grandma gave Aisha the heart necklace. This was good too. And I really did feel sorry for Aisha when she found out why she got dumped from the club. Kudos to Karan Ashley for a fine performance.
Hate Master was a typically egocentric psychotic monster of the day, but the nastiest monster in this ep was Veronica. Whoa, was she vicious or what? The unnamed actor who played Veronica really did a good job playing the stereotypical nasty b*tch so often portrayed in shows about life in high-school, and she too gave us a fine performance as the girl we all just loved to hate. Okay, so she overacted a little, but this actually made her a more enjoyable character.
Now as for Stephen Cardenas and Rocky, boy, he took overacting to a new level. Particularly when the Hate Master was throwing those hate particles around, but also when he was picking a fight with Adam, he just took it to the extreme and kept on going. And wasn’t it fun seeing the Rangers all go nuts and start tearing into one another? Okay, so interesting is more of the word to describe it, but still, all our favourite third season actors and actresses played their characters to perfection.
And was it just me or did Kim get all the good lines? There was her, "Who asked you, nerd-boy?" while talking to Billy and her, "Um, can you stop whining please because I’m really sick and tired of listening to you?" when talking to Aisha.
Sadly, there was one thing about this one that I wasn’t that fond of, and that was the continued, "you’re a joke", "he’s a joke" and "she’s a joke" lines from the nasty Rangers. It was entertaining the first time, but let’s not turn it into a theme, shall we? But look, despite this, this was a fun episode and I can’t wait to see how Aisha solves the situation next time.
Not for any comical reason, or anything, but I think this award has to go to Zordon for when he said, "then eventually, the Power Rangers will turn their power on each other and destroy themselves." Right about now I was thinking 'uh-oh.'