Welcome back to Teeny Bopper TV Breakdown! Today we recap Breaker High, episode 5: “Kenya Dig It.”
As you might have guessed, Breaker High is on its way to Kenya, so the class is having two guest speakers come to prep them (turns out the woman advertising the fire-walking outing last episode is the onboard teacher, which I should have guessed). As luck would have it, they are two good-looking men, so Ashley and Cassidy are paying attention. These two brothers, Kip and Marcus (actual brothers, not slang), are going to be the group’s guides at a game reserve that weekend. Marcus will be leading a photo safari, and Kip will be offering a close-up look into Masai warrior culture. The latter notes, “Some of you boys look like athletes; maybe you’d like to see if you’ve got what it takes.” Denise immediately takes notice of his phrasing and interjects, “Excuse me, are you trying to suggest that women can’t be warriors?” Luckily, his response is, “Not at all! Feel free to join us,” and Denise says she’ll be there.
Ashley seems to have regressed a bit from last episode - she somehow thinks the men who went to school in Nairobi might recognize her from the TV airing of the Miss Southern Teen Pageant. Tamira, too - like the tangent she went on to Max in the first episode, she goes on about how much she loves lions so she really hopes they see one on the safari. Even Alex starts bragging to Kip about how he’s already a warrior since his high school sports team was the Gladiators, but his story about throwing seven touchdowns in one game on an unseasonably cold day pales in comparison to Kip’s wrestling a wild boar with his bare hands on his eighth birthday.
After the theme song, we find Sean and Jimmy discussing the outings. Jimmy’s gung-ho about the Masai warrior option, while Sean wants to go on the safari. “But the safari’s going to be all girls!” Jimmy says. Sean raises his eyebrows and it seems like Jimmy gets it, but then when Sean continues setting a scene about sleeping in tents at night and the audience all knows what that’s meant to be the “perfect setting” for, Jimmy ends that sentence with “shadow puppets.” Apparently he does a really good Beavis, Butthead, Urkel, even Yo-Yo Ma.
Meanwhile, Ashley and Cassidy are still admiring Kip and Marcus, and Alex’s green-eyed monster starts to make its appearance. “What’s so great about those guys?” he asks. “Sure, they’re highly educated, and warriors, and can wrestle wild animals with their bare hands, but I bet their JV football coach never nicknamed them Sparkplug!” Cassidy clocks out loud that he’s jealous, and Ashley eggs him on with “Well, sparkplug, you could start my engine anytime if you were a warrior.” Princeton boyfriend Tyler who?!
We are off the ship and on the game reserve! The safari participants are all in their best animal print, cargo shirts, khakis and wide-brimmed hats. Sean pulls the same money-making scheme attempt in the fireworks episode by telling Marcus (after watching him toss luggage into a pickup truck) that he should join the NBA and design a shoe, and Sean will only take a 65% cut, but he’s shot down immediately when Marcus says, “Nice try. I’ve seen Jerry Maguire.” And of course, Ashley and Cassidy continue flirting with him.
In the village, Kip shows his group a weapon that kind of looks like a javelin broomstick and advises them to be careful aiming, but Alex literally laughs in his face and says, “I don’t need advice on how to throw, okay? I was an all-state quarterback.” Wow, rude. He tosses one and brags about the distance it got; I am very glad Kip immediately shoots him down with “When it comes to survival, distance isn’t as important as accuracy. The targets are over there [in the total opposite direction].” Denise goes next, and Alex makes a terrible comment again, saying, “Shouldn’t she be shooting from the ladies’ tee?” The guy who last episode talked about helping his sisters through heartbreak really did not seem like one to be saying things like that. Point for Denise, though, because she rolls her eyes, hits a bullseye from right next to Alex, and immediately rubs it in his face.
In the Jeep on the safari, Sean tries once again to be Marcus’ agent and asks if he ever considered an acting or modeling or recording career. Annoyed, Marcus simply says “No.” Undaunted, Sean tells Jimmy to give Marcus his card, to which Jimmy responds, “Library or Blockbuster?” Oh, Blockbuster, I miss you.
Back with the warrior group, now in the middle of the forest, Alex thinks he’s going to ace the long jump, but slips on some rocks and injures himself. Kip insists that Alex stay off his foot and skip the 10K trek the group is about to head off on and instead immerse himself in other aspects of Masai culture, like beadwork. As we might expect, Alex’s first thought is, “Isn’t that for women?” Ugh. It looks like Denise is about to quip something back, but unfortunately the episode skips.
We jump abruptly to Sean pitching one last idea to Marcus: Virtual Masai, an interactive CD-ROM. Sean asks, “How can you say no to that?” and Marcus says, “In three different languages, but I’ll use one you’ll understand: No.” He takes the Jeep and goes off to set up for a cookout, leaving the group alone for a few hours (I cannot see this being allowed nowadays). Sean and Jimmy find the girls’ tent, asking if they’re up for a pajama party, and are rendered speechless when they find the girls in robes and mud masks and their hair wrapped in towels. But of course, this beauty prep is not for them, but for Kip and Marcus.
Back with the warrior group, everyone but Alex sets off on their trek as Kip warns that they need to stick together as the area is known for lions. As they leave, he hobbles up and puts his backpack on. The women he’s near don’t try to stop him, but it’s obvious this is a bad idea.
We quickly flip back to the tent, where Jimmy now has a mud mask on and is talking about his combination skin. Then back to the forest, where Alex is limping along, seemingly alone, until he comes across a little girl. In the tent again, Tamira is bemoaning how she wants to see a lion up close when the group hears a roar and sees one stalking right outside, of course while Marcus is gone - judging by her shrieks, somehow I don’t think she meant right now. Sean suggests they throw something at it to scare it off, and the first thing Jimmy grabs to do that with is Sean’s wallet? Okay. Ashley sprays some perfume in its direction, but that doesn’t do anything either. And then they try reading aloud to see if that puts it to sleep? Except all they have are toothpaste tube and shampoo bottle labels - yikes.
Back in the forest, Alex’s conscience gets the best of him and he decides to help the girl home instead of trying to catch up to his group. He says, “So much for being a Masai warrior,” but in reality this is maybe the most heroic thing he could be doing.
Reading toiletry ingredients may not have put the lion to sleep, but apparently Ashley’s beauty pageant stories do. And he’s not the only one snoozing - Sean, Jimmy and Tamira are all out like a light, too. Eventually Marcus gets back, and reassures the teens that there’s nothing to fear - this old lion’s name is Mambo, and he’s toothless and harmless.
Alex brings the little girl back to camp, where the rest of his group is now waiting. Turns out her name is Nalangu and she does speak English, even though she kept quiet in the forest - Alex never asked, so she never spoke. She says there was one thing she didn’t understand, though, and then goes into a whole football hypothetical that I can’t even decipher, so go off, kid.
Later the night, around a campfire, Ashley’s excited when Marcus asks her a question, but is quickly deflated when he wants to buy some of her cosmetics because his wife has combination skin. Kip walks around handing out traditional necklaces to the teens in the warrior group who demonstrated exemplary attributes, and Alex is surprised when he is one of them. Kip explains that one of the Masai’s most valued traits is actually gentleness, which Alex had in spades when bringing Nalangu back. Happy endings for everyone!
This is a reminder that we are still firmly in the era of episodic television, where each half-hour can almost stand on its own, as opposed to serialized, where there is more of an overarching arc and more connections are made as the show’s season goes on. I think I like serialized better (though it is also possible I’m just more used to it at this point), but sunk cost fallacy and a genuine enjoyment of most of these characters will keep me sticking with Breaker High.
So don’t change that channel! We’ll be right back on Teeny Bopper TV Breakdown.
