Bender sang about it on the then-final episode of Futurama, but man, did I never think I’d get me a dose of it quite like I got when I cracked open the news files this morning and saw this headline:

Jury Recommends Death Sentence For Power Ranger

Gobsmacked, I surfed over to dictionary.com and discovered that, indeed, one of the definitions of irony is described thusly:

5.     an outcome of events contrary to what was, or might have been, expected.

Yeah.  See, as much as I wished the Power Rangers would finally shut up and go away forever into the deep dark depths of permanent cancellation, I never really wanted any of them to, you know, DIE.

Skyler Deleon, formerly Roger in one whole episode of one of several Power Rangers series (which makes that headline an entire steaming pantload–Skyler Deleon was never actually a Power Ranger, and was, like I said, around for one whole episode, but you can’t beat the shock value of saying Power Ranger Put to Death!) was recently convicted in a TRIPLE MURDER CASE in which he not only killed three people, but also tied two of them to their own yacht’s anchor and threw them OVERBOARD.  The article is somewhat unclear but it would seem that that’s how he KILLED THEM, not how he merely disposed of the bodies that he simply poisoned or something.

So I’m looking at old Skyler with my jaw slightly agape in an expression that just screams what I can’t quite get my mouth to say, namely:  “Holy shit did you just forcibly DROWN a couple people?”.  It’s not that I’m trying to, you know, JUDGE him or anything but that just really, really strikes me as kinda, well…callous.

Naturally, Skyler’s lawyer is fighting for his client’s life–that’s sort of what he’s hired to do–and he’s busted out with a pretty jaw-dropping story of his own about the AIDS-riddled father who abused young Skyler, but we’ve all seen plenty of cases where “Daddy beat me when I was little” cuts zero ice with the jury.  This may have something to do with its seemingly frequent use, another sad commentary.

And the worst part about this is that the whole THING is just sad.  Three people are dead.  A Power Ranger’s off to the pokey for life, and it may not be that long before life is up for him.  We’ll find out next Wednesday, or so the article goes…and regardless of the result, it’ll be a sad, strange commentary on one life, and possibly even society in general.

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