Welcome back to Teeny Bopper TV Breakdown! This installment accidentally took a little longer than anticipated, but we’re back, and today we recap Breaker High, episode 42, “Chile Dog.”
We start out with everyone on the deck, and with Max’s guidance, Alex is practicing fishing with his grandpa’s old rod from an upper level, where he accidentally snags both Jimmy’s steak and Nigel’s toupee. Sean and Tamira are getting along better than I expect until Tamira mentions being excited to get closer to Pablo Neruda and Sean says, “We’ve only been broken up for a couple weeks and you’re already getting closer to some new guy?” not realizing that Neruda is a famous poet who has already passed away. He denies being jealous, but everyone else sees right through him.
Chile does not get off to the best start for everyone, unfortunately. Alex and Ashley go souvenir shopping but Alex can’t afford the fishing flies he wants, and then both of Ashley’s credit cards get declined. Jimmy is befuddled when a restaurant owner has no idea how to make chili of the meat/tomatoes/maybe beans variety, as he assumed this is the country where it originated - he hasn’t been this disappointed since Turkey. The cafe is one where Neruda wrote some of his poetry, and elsewhere in it a Chilean boy also named Pablo starts reciting lines along with Tamira - we can tell immediately Sean is not happy, especially when Pablo offers to take Tamira on a “local Neruda landmarks” tour and she accepts, leaving him alone.
Back on the ship, Ashley has brought up the possibility of her getting a job to Cassidy and Denise, and the latter two girls can’t stop laughing. But when Ashley explains she wants to buy the flies to bring a smile back to Alex’s face, they change their tune as they recognize the sweetness of the gesture. Naive Ashley wonders how bad a temporary job could be, but when Nigel has her pulling gizzards out of whole chickens, she looks absolutely disgusted, and it only gets worse when the ship’s janitor has her plunging toilets and she finds herself giving other students massages while dressed as a nurse.
Pablo walks Tamira back to the ship as she carries a single flower. He recites more poetry and kisses her, leaving her mesmerized as he “heads off to write while he’s still inspired.” Unfortunately for him, Sean then spots him using the same Pablo Neruda pick-up line with another girl back at the cafe, where he went to collect Jimmy so they could get back to the boat before curfew.
The next morning, Ashley is working in the coffeehouse and realizes it’s not nearly as easy as Tamira makes it look - and she’s not very nice about it to the student patrons, either. Speaking of Tamira, she’s still daydreaming about being Pablo’s muse when Sean grabs Jimmy by the ear and tells him he needs to be the one to tell Tamira about what they saw, given that she’d likely just think Sean was making the whole thing up. Jimmy tries but starts speaking in Spanish, so Sean has to step in. And sure enough, it plays out exactly how he thinks it will: Tamira accuses him of being jealous, unable to stomach her being with someone else, and desperate enough to stoop to sabotage. She reminds him that when they broke up they vowed to be friends, and she says a friend wouldn’t do what Sean is doing - maybe a friend wouldn’t do what she’s made up in her own mind, but a friend WOULD tell her what he’s actually trying to, so, fine, let her find out the hard way. And to top it all off, Ashley is fired from the coffeehouse, in front of Alex, no less.
The next scene, Tamira is walking with Pablo, and it’s clear she told him about what Sean said as he remarks, “Is it possible your friend has feelings for you? Jealousy may have clouded his vision - last night, I was at home, dreaming of you,” and a whole lot of other nonsense that Tamira buys hook, line and sinker. Ugh, what a liar. She tells him she has one more day in Chile, but he says he can’t see her because he’ll be in the Andes, attempting to heal his heart from missing her. Tamira does then have to remind him of her name, which maybe, just maybe, might prompt some alarm bells? As she hugs him, he has the gall to put his hand into the “call me” sign toward someone else - oooh, I can’t stand him.
Back on the ship, Denise comes into Ashley’s cabin and starts playing with the pagent queen’s tiara. Ashley snaps at her to put it down, asking if she knows how much it’s worth - and that seems to give her an idea.
The next day, Denise and Tamira go back to the cafe, where Denise asks Tamira not to get overly sentimental about Pablo (which of course the other girl does immediately), only to then spot the man in question with another young lady across the room. How he could be so dumb as to go to “their spot” when he knows she’s still around and he said he’d be elsewhere, I have no idea. She sees him repeating the same moves he pulled on her (poetry, flower, kiss and all) and is devastated.
Ashley finds Alex and gives him the fishing flies, telling him she sold her tiara to do so. Ironically enough, though, Alex knew she’d been eyeing a display case for the headpiece, so sold his fishing rod to buy the box for her, and now neither of them can use their presents - until to make more money to buy their items back, they dress as famous Chilean animals, a penguin and a chinchilla, to act as marketplace greeters.
Sean finds Tamira in the cafeteria and offers his apologies after hearing what happened with Pablo. Tamira doesn’t believe him, thinking he came to gloat instead. But just because he may not be crazy about her falling for someone else doesn’t mean he wants to see her get hurt. Finally, Tamira acknowledges that some of her anger is at herself - she feels so stupid for letting Pablo take advantage of her like that. And it seems that’s all it takes for their conversations to start getting back to normal.
Don’t change that channel! We’ll be right back on Teeny Bopper TV Breakdown.
