Welcome back to Teeny Bopper TV Breakdown! Today we recap Breaker High, episode 8: “Beware of Geeks Baring Their Gifts.” Full disclosure, I accidentally spoiled the episode summary for myself when I looked up the title to make sure I was spelling it correctly (and because as a self-identified geek I was slightly offended) but it didn’t mention everyone and actually sounded better than I thought we might be getting, so onward we go.
The first line of the episode is from Jimmy, who says, “Sean, check it out, I heard some family’s hosting an all-day rager in Mykonos this weekend,” which means we are in Greece! Sean wants to skip out on the party, though, and head to a clothing-optional beach. Baby Ryan Gosling really is being used for gratuitous nudity in this show, huh.
We cut to the theme song, and afterward, we find Alex reapplying sunscren to Ashley’s back and saying, “So this weekend, I thought you and I could maybe go check out some of the Greek islands. I hear they’re pretty romantic.” Ashley rebuffs him pretty quickly with “Or maybe we could go to the beach party that family is throwing - you, me, some other friends.” Alex sees right through her and says so, and when Ashley starts to say, “Alex, you know I like you, I’m just, you know,” he interrupts with, “No, I don’t know. One minute you act like you want something to happen between us and the next minute you’re hitting the reject button.” Ashley says, “Right now I’m completely and utterly devoted to Tyler,” but then asks Alex to put sunscreen “a little lower and to the left” with a smirk on her face, and he’s had enough. He gives her the sunscreen and says, “The next time you want a cabana boy, call Tyler.”
Alex gets up and walks past Cassidy (lying on a pool float) and Max (lying on the deck next to her), and Cassidy calls out, “Big plans for the weekend, Alex?” Still smarting from his previous interaction, Alex says, “Don’t even take me there. Ashley just played me big time.” He’s not going to let that dim any of his excitement for the beach party though, even when Max has his own doubts about how much fun it’ll be. Cassidy tries to flirt a little with, “I’ll show you how the Greeks really dance,” to which Max says, “Don’t flatter yourself,” and walks away. Cassidy, who does have a right to be upset at that, says to Alex, “His whole rebel thing is so yesterday; I’m so over it,” but Alex, ever the intuitive, asks her, “Who are you trying to convince - me or yourself?” As Alex walks away, Sean and Jimmy come up to Cassidy and invite her to come to the nude beach with them, which is a hard no - to be fair here, I suppose if Cassidy is going to be giving out rejections like “The thought of you two with no bathing suits on makes me want to hurl,” she should probably be able to take it, too.
We come upon Denise, who’s muttering to herself about her timetable for the free day: “If I start at 6:30 am, I should be able to get in four museums, two churches…” Tamira overhears and basically invites herself along, partly because it’s her kind of fun too and partly to do anything to avoid the beach party. She boasts about her sense of direction - why do I feel like this is going to come back to bite them?
Sean and Jimmy next try to get Ashley, and then Denise, to come to the nude beach with them, and I really don’t know why they thought either of those would go well - rejected yet again.
We cut to the basketball “court” and boys working out their emotions via sports. This time, it’s Alex asking Max what the deal with him and Cassidy is. Max says he’s not interested; he knows that type of girl, and she’s all over the place. Alex still thinks Max should have taken Cassidy up on her very obvious offer and invited her to the beach party - in Alex’s words, what does Max have to lose? And it looks like Max is thinking about it.
The next morning, Denise knocks on Tamira’s door all ready to go, and Tamira is not. Tamira apologizes, saying she overslept, but Denise is clearly unhappy. And not only that, but when they get to their first destination, Tamira is gullible enough to believe the men who say they’ll take the girls’ rented mopeds to the “moped-wash” for them. Uh oh; looks like they might be stranded.
And they’re not the only ones in trouble: While Sean and Jimmy are skinny dipping, a dog takes off with their bathing suits. Yes, they wanted a nude beach, but they also wanted the ability to control when they put their clothes back on.
At the party, Alex and Cassidy are commiserating on a bench. Ashley is miserable dancing with an older Greek man; Alex isn’t dancing with her because he doesn’t want to feel like her backup, but Cassidy assures him that every time Ashley pretends to look at the live musicians, she’s checking Alex out instead. Alex needles Cassidy right back, with a “Same way you keep scoping the door to see if Max will show?” Chuckling at their mutual hopelessness, they get up and dance together as friends. Of course, then Max actually does show, and gets the absolute wrong idea when he sees them. Alex tries to explain, but Max won’t let him.
We cut to Denise and Tamira sitting at a bus stop, and Denise is grouching about how they’re not at the tourist stop they’re supposed to be at but rather back at the beach - seems Tamira’s navigation skills are perhaps not quite what she presented them as, considering she was using a bus map for their previous port of Cairo. They do somehow make it back to the party, so at least there’s that.
Sean and Jimmy may have misread the beach signage - what they thought said “Clothing optional” is actually “Jellyfish - no swimming.” Maybe that’s a hint as to why no one else either has their clothes off or is in the water…
Tamira’s attempts to cheer Denise up at the party don’t work, but a Socrates-themed pick-up line from a cute Greek guy sure does! At the opposite end of the spectrum, cute Greek girls FINALLY show up at the beach, but at this point Sean and Jimmy are embarrassed to get out of the water for…reasons (yes, get your mind in the gutter).
Alex is flirting with a Greek girl at the party; Ashley can’t help herself and breaks that conversation up. Alex is understandably frustrated and finally gives Ashley a straight-up ultimatum: Him or Tyler. Ashley tries to sputter something about how her and Tyler’s families have known each other forever and their fathers are in business together, so there’s a lot of pressure, but Alex isn’t having it.
To end the episode, Cassidy comes to find Max in the cafeteria and asks why he didn’t stay at the party. He lays bare all his judgments about her - party girl, needs to be the center of attention all the time, not his type. Cassidy comes back at him with, “Type? You don’t know anything about me, and that’s your loss,” and walks away. Oh, the teenage angst.
Don’t change that channel! We’ll be right back on Teeny Bopper TV Breakdown.
Share this post