Welcome back to Teeny Bopper TV Breakdown! Today we recap Breaker High, episode 6: “Tomb with a View.”
Breaker High is heading to Egypt, so Tamira, Denise and Ashley are teaming up on a school project about the country, focusing on jewelry. Ashley is fully prepared with an entire blueprint of the Cairo bazaar, with all the jewelry stalls highlighted and everything - Denise is half derisive and half impressed when she says, “Only you could find a way to get a course credit for a shopping spree!”
Cassidy and Max are also partners on the project; they’ll be touring the Valley of the Kings. That leaves Alex, Jimmy and Sean who, instead of sightseeing at the Giza pyramids and checking out the Sphinx, plan to find some Cairo locals to get a taste of the real Egypt.
We fade in on Cassidy listening to a tour guide in a tomb in the Valley of the Kings, who is talking about how the underground paths wind in a labyrinth for miles, so it’s very easy to lose your way, and legend has it that a curse will befall anyone who dares disturb the tomb, so the group needs to stay together. Of course, Max is at the back of the pack, and he and Cassidy hang back to bicker, so they lose sight of everyone and they are now doing exactly what the tour guide warned against.
Sean, Jimmy and Alex make their way into a tent of some kind and wind up chatting with a young Egyptian boy who challenges them to a high-stakes game of cards. Alex is unsure, given that they just met, but Sean is totally in. Instead of backing up their friend, Alex and Jimmy decide to embrace being tourists and go see the Nile - I can’t blame them but am also a little nervous for Sean in this moment.
Back on the ship, Ashley, Tamira and Denise are considering their next steps. Ashley had a great morning of hands-on research trying on earrings and sniffing leather to make sure it was real and wants to continue (one of the jewelers has a shipment of amber due in any minute), but Denise wants to go to the museum for a more academic, historical spin. The theme of this episode seems to be splitting up and presumably the reasons why they shouldn’t.
Sean has been playing cards with the Egyptian kids for so long that he’s in the same spot when Jimmy and Alex get back from their tourist day. Seems the kids played a bit of a long game - while Sean seemed to do well at first, by the time Jimmy and Alex show up he’s bet away everything but his boxers and has lost 32 hands in a row.
Max and Cassidy are officially walking in circles in the tomb. They hear a giant crash, and maybe there’s something to this ancient curse thing after all.
Back on the ship that night, a despondent Sean decides to go for a walk on deck, even though he’s only wearing a towel. Just his luck, it gets caught when he slams the door, and judging from the shrieks we hear, some girls in the hallway got an unexpected flash; seems gratuitousness started early for baby Ryan Gosling. Jimmy wants to be noble and win Sean his items back - we’ll see how this goes.
Max and Cassidy are still alone in the tomb. Cassidy had signed them up for a night tour of the pyramids, so no one on the ship is expecting them back until after midnight anyway. They start bickering again, and eventually Cassidy reaches a tipping point and asks, “What’s up with your whole misunderstood loner routine?” She’s used to being the new kid, too, as her dad was in the navy so she moved around a lot, and wound up adopting the “fake it till you make it” attitude to get by. Max doesn’t respond to Cassidy’s vulnerability well, though, calling her shallow, but when Cassidy is clearly hurt by his words he apologizes. This apparently means it’s time to go from zero to 100 - Cassidy says, “If we don’t make it out of this tomb, I have something I want to say: I want you to know I think you’re the hottest guy on the boat,” and Max actually has game and says, “Here’s something I want to say to you,” before kissing her. Teenage hormones everywhere! Now to see if the flirtation Max and Tamira have had going on is affected…
Jimmy shows back up at the card game tent ready to win back Sean’s things, looking more like he’s in South America than Egypt, and belches loudly to get everyone’s attention. He tosses a Gameboy onto the kids’ table, which for 1997 is a pretty big deal, and even throws in Mortal Kombat and Donkey Kong cartridges. Jimmy wants to be the one to pick the game…and apparently it’s Go Fish. It seems that was the right move, as he takes the boys for almost everything they’ve got, but settles for Sean’s stuff and a falafel wrap.
Max and Cassidy are rescued! Turns out the noises they heard were just the night security guard walking around.
The next day on the ship, Tamira and Denise are starting to put together the visual portion of their presentation with information from the museum, but Ashley adds additional context from her conversations with the woman she spoke with at the jewelry stall in the bazaar whose family had been in the business for generations. This is a valuable lesson to the girls that there are multiple ways to learn, including experientially, not just from a textbook.
Cassidy rejoins her friends, and as she tells the tale of having to spend the night in the tomb, Tamira can only respond with, “You were with Max all night in the dark?!” Ashley can’t believe there could be anything romantic about being in a dingy, creepy hole; Cassidy almost shares what happened, but catches Max’s eye and stops herself. Why does she feel the need to keep the kiss a secret? Let’s see if we find out.
So don’t change that channel! We’ll be right back on Teeny Bopper TV Breakdown.
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