Welcome back to Teeny Bopper TV Breakdown! Today we recap Breaker High, episode 9: “Belly of the Beast,” for which we are in Turkey!
The usual group has split up a little differently today. Cassidy, Tamira, Alex and Jimmy are all in on belly dancing (Denise begs off and goes back to the boat, claiming she has to study and that “shaking it in public” isn’t exactly a cultural experience in her mind), while Ashley and Sean, ever the shopper and haggler, visit a rug merchant, who is the most stereotypical “used car salesman” type you could imagine and he totally gets one over on them - not only did they pay more than they should have, but when they get back to the boat, the teens realize they were given factory-made rugs from New Jersey, not Istanbul.
Later that night, while Jimmy is headlining a belly dancing show (he truly is a natural), Ashley and Sean go back to the rug merchant to confront him for ripping them off. Somehow they just get conned even further - he claims he doesn’t have the exact amount of cash for a refund, but if they give him $100 each he’ll give them a million liras, and the teens do not understand that the exchange rate is very much not 1:1 (they find out from Denise later that a million liras is more like $7.27).
The next morning, after hearing about Jimmy’s escapades secondhand and missing out on staying up late to catch the sunrise, Denise decides with Max’s encouragement that maybe it is about time she had a little more fun. She balks a little when he tells her to meet him at the gangplank at 10:30 pm, which is after curfew, and goes as far as to arrive at the ship’s exit, but bails out of fear at the last minute.
Jimmy’s dance moves have made him so popular that a Turkish news reporter is now on-ship to interview the friend group. And of course, Ashley and Sean take advantage of that to try and help their situation: The reporter can get the exclusive broadcast of Jimmy’s next live performance in front of the rug stall, the group can then charge the merchant an “appearance fee” of $800 (just enough for Ashley and Sean to get their refund) for the TV advertising his shop will get, and Ashley and Sean can crash the broadcast, revealing the merchant’s shady business practices. Win-win.
There’s one more chance to do something in Turkey before they set sail, and this time Denise takes it. She and Max watch the sunrise over the Hagia Sophia, and Max has sketched her in front of it - I’ll be honest, when he talked about drawing earlier this episode I thought he was being dry and sarcastic, as is his go-to, but he’s actually really good.
The episode ends with the whole group debriefing their stay in Turkey, and it’s good to see Denise laughing and joking along - after Jimmy takes his leave, she shares with the rest that his “Budala” nickname actually means “the goofy one” in Turkish! Purposeful sparing of Jimmy’s feelings and a good-natured “score one for the encyclopedia” from Cassidy to bring Denise back into the fold? Give me all the warm fuzzies, why don’t you?
Don’t change that channel! We’ll be right back on Teeny Bopper TV Breakdown.
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