Welcome back to Teeny Bopper TV Breakdown, debuting our first official recap post on this lovely #throwbackthursday! What I said in the intro edition about not knowing how many episodes I’d talk about per post? Yeah, it’s going to be one at a time, if only because watching TV takes longer when you’re writing notes, the text version of this post is already long, and so the audio version of this is bearable (and this is all just for a half hour TV show). So today, we’ll be recapping the first episode of Breaker High: “Sun Ahso Rises” (get ready for a lot of episode title puns).
We start out with an overhead shot of a cruise ship, then zoom in to teenagers flirting in the pool and sunning themselves on deck - this is the life. So far everyone on screen is very white; we are in the late ‘90s after all.
Tony, the “student activities counselor” (aka cruise director), is sassy and I love him. To start the show he’s berating a teen named Max for not ranking his preferred off-ship cultural activities for their stop in Japan in time. This interaction plus Max’s sunglasses and his reaction to the girl who comes up to him after Tony leaves are all clearly meant to show that Max is sulking and does not want to be here.
Theme song time! In typical ‘90s fashion, all the actors pose with graphics of their names as an upbeat tune plays. It looks like aside from the people who live in the countries the teens are visiting, there is one Black girl (and one boy of unclear ethnicity) playing an actual, lines-having, words-speaking student of color. I’ll be interested to see how these demographic choices unfold throughout the season.
Fade in to a group of girls excited to visit a spa as their off-ship cultural activity. The red-haired one is ostensibly from Atlanta (though you can tell from her put-upon accent that the actress who plays her is not). A trio of boys joins them, talking about their upcoming excursion on a fishing trip, and here’s baby Ryan Gosling! Can’t say I was expecting his first lines to be about eating sushi and sashimi.
Then they all start teasing each other, and I can’t stop staring at the hair. And the girls making “tsss” noises and touching their index fingers together after a “burn”! The cultural hallmarks of the era are absolutely overwhelming.
We don’t learn any of the names of any of the students in the previous scene, and instead cut straight to Max jamming flowers in a vase to get ready for his excursion to a Japanese tea house, being reprimanded yet again by the same girl as before for not listening to instructions (still don’t know her name; in fact the only student’s name we know at this point is Max’s), and responding to her with a very healthy amount of sarcasm. But then he confesses that he’s only on the ship to keep him away from the “bad crowd” at his old school when he was living with his mom and is still upset about it (I can think of worse school settings than a cruise around the world but okay).
There is a sweet moment when Max makes sure to let the girl know that she’s not included in the group of people on the ship he doesn’t like, but immediately after that we’re supposed to feel bad for him because he doesn’t want anyone to see him arranging flowers, for masculinity reasons or whatever, and 2025 me is not buying that, but I digress. Anyway, of course, Tony then sneaks up on them and snaps a picture, which makes Max leave in a huff.
Next scene, we are finally off the ship and in actual Japan! This is supposed to be the spa excursion, but the very obvious monks are giving the girls burlap robes to change into. Welp, this may not be what they were expecting. At least one of the girls is excited - if Southern girl Ashley’s (hey, we got a name!) stereotype is “materialistic girly girl,” the Black girl’s is “smart but pretty nerd,” confirmed by her Scully-from-X-Files reference and actual excitement to be at a Buddhist monastery (so it’s actually not her who wonders if the retreat house TVs would show Moesha but the blonde Cher from Clueless clone, which I will take as refreshing).
Time to see what the trio of boys are up to. We learn that their names are Sean (Ryan Gosling’s character), Jimmy and Alex (same order as the photo further above, if you’re reading the newsletter/show notes), and Jimmy especially is perhaps not the sharpest tool in the shed (he ate several of the Swiss chocolates from the box meant as a host gift and insults their host’s father, so it’s definitely going to take both Sean and Alex to attempt to keep him in line). They don’t get to go fishing, as something came up, but they do get a party thrown in their honor.
Back on the ship, Max is in his room, sullenly playing his guitar after apparently walking out of the tea ceremony. He gets another talking-to by a man in a captain’s uniform who from previous conversations I think we are meant to assume is his dad, and their relationship is shown to be pretty tense - probably a mix of teenage angst (“parents just don’t understand”) and legitimate “Max is taking some time to adjust to his new living situation.”
The next morning, the girls are woken up early at the monastery and given a list of chores to do. They take comfort in their assumption that the boys are miserable too, when in fact the boys get woken up with breakfast in bed. While the girls dig through the mud, the boys get massages; while the girls snip bonsai trees with no A/C, the boys are in a sauna; while the girls carry vats of water, the boys order more virgin mai tais. The girls are unhappy with the traditional food they’re given, and even less thrilled when told no one will be speaking aloud for the next 24 hours.
On the ship again, the one girl Max talks to asks if he’ll be coming back to the teahouse, and when he indicates he won’t, she gets pretty fiery in response, which I have to say I love and it seems Max does too. Let’s hope he changes his mind about bailing.
Next up, another set of scenes showing the difference between the trios’ experiences: The girls can’t even “talk” with facial expressions, and the boys are in the middle of a game of Twister. The boys then decide to take samurai swords off the wall to play Star Wars as Luke and Darth Vader (apparently Sean is always left to play Leia and complains about it, so they clearly don’t understand how badass she is), and though they rip one of the Japanese paper door panels, the host doesn’t care and just wants to be the one to play Luke in the sword-lightsaber fight??!! The girls aren’t doing as well; they wind up getting in a food fight, angering a monk enough to lecture them and banish them from the monastery (they receive no on-screen consequences other than that, though).
The big moment is here, and Max shows up to the tea ceremony after all! And no masculinity was lost along the way! If this is the kind of lesson learned at the end of each half-hour, I’m ready to see where the rest of the show goes, figuratively and literally. AND, as an culminating bonus, we finally learn the name of the girl who talks to Max: Tamira. Do we sense a spark?
The episode ends a little abruptly, with Sean, Jimmy and Alex crowing about how much fun they had and the trio of girls masking their annoyance, but it’s time to set sail for the ship’s next destination. I don’t know if I have any additional concluding thoughts yet; we’ll have to see how the rest of the episodes play out. So, don’t change that channel! We’ll be right back on Teeny Bopper TV Breakdown.
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