Plot: 7A – Powergirl Surfers: After being snubbed by a sexist reporter from a famous surfing magazine, Reggie rallies together all the great girl surfers she can find to prove that girl surfers are just as good as guy surfers.
7B – Twisted Cinema: Otto drops Twister as his best friend after he embarrasses him in his newest video.
Breakdown: 7A – Powergirl Surfers: If there’s one thing I’ll always give Rocket Power credit for it’s for being refreshingly fair and encouraging to their female audience – especially for a show focused on extreme sports. And they do it in a way that never skews so far into rabid ‘girl power’ that it seems like it’s overcompensating. Ya know, when the guys have to be made into bumbling fools while the girls all come off like flawless badasses.
Having Reggie as one of the leads was one of the wisest decisions they could have made. She kicks ass in many sports, but she’s far from perfect. She’s realistic and has flaws while still being likable and a great role model to the kids in the audience, including a young me….I mean…I was never able to do any extreme sports, but I wanted to, and part of that was because of Reggie.
She’s also very passionate about her beliefs, most specifically that girl athletes are just as good as guys. “Powergirl Surfers” allows her and other girl surfers to shine a light on the unfair treatment girls/women get in sports, especially when it comes to media like magazines.
Our sexist moron of the episode is a guy named Slack Brizack, a reporter from the very famous Gnarly Surf magazine. He approaches Otto after he shows off some moves during a tournament that very much comes off like it’s not a tournament because no competitors seem to exist and no one’s cheering. He wants Otto to be the cover story on one of their magazines, even though….Otto hasn’t done anything besides look good surfing.
Otto introduces Slack to Reggie, adding that she’s a great surfer too. Slack immediately scoffs and laughs that a girl can be good at surfing. When Reggie heads out to show her own moves to Slack, he doesn’t even bother watching and just directs his attention back to Otto and his offer.
Feeling bad about how Slack is treating Reggie, Otto at first declines the offer, but then struggles as Slack starts to leave. Sam urges him to stay loyal to Reggie while Twister convinces him to go for it because it’s such a good opportunity for some fame. Otto decides to listen to Twister and goes back to Slack to accept the offer.
When Reggie gets back to shore, she’s ticked off at Otto for accepting the sexist douche’s offer, but, for once, it’s not that hard to feel sympathy for Otto. Yes, he most certainly should have refused the offer, but it’s not like Otto went along with Slack’s insults or anything, which is why I find it weird that the Fandom page synopsis for this episode says Otto and Twister were insulting girl surfers when they weren’t.
Otto stuck up for Reggie and complimented her skills. He’s a huge fan of Gnarly Surf, and getting a cover story done on him is a huge deal for him. It makes sense that he’d go for it. That’s a tough decision for anyone, let alone a kid.
Reggie is, also understandably, pissed at Otto, but she redirects her anger toward Slack instead. She wants to show him once and for all that girl surfers are just as good as boy surfers. Recruiting Sam and Mrs. Stimpleton, both of which are being absolutely wonderful here, but especially Mrs. Stimpleton because she’s just so supportive and awesome, Reggie heads out to another beach to recruit girl surfers for a demonstration. Why all these girls are at this one beach is beyond me, but okay.
She also recruits Trish, one of the best surfers in the area. She initially doesn’t want to do it, but then she suddenly shows up at the other beach when Reggie is recruiting the other girls and just…says she now does want to help. *shrug*
The next day, they hold a “Powergirl Surfer Tournament” and Slack shows up. He’s immediately flipped on his head about his sexist beliefs, wowed by all the great girl surfers tearing it up on the waves.
*sigh* This is most certainly the biggest problem of the episode. It’s not really the writers’ fault, it’s just…..you can’t fix sexism in 11 minutes.
The guy who was so dismissive of girl surfers that he didn’t even give Reggie the time of day when she surfed and laughed at the idea that a girl could be good at surfing is just automatically not sexist anymore because he saw a bunch of girls doing vague surfing moves for a few seconds. I also can’t believe a guy who is a reporter or whatever for a very famous surfing magazine has never witnessed a good female surfer before. And these are all KIDS.
Again, I know the time constraints are the real issue here. It’s not like we can have an extensive scene where he slowly changes his views a little bit after everything else when we need to wrap it up in 11 minutes, but that doesn’t mean it’s not irksome.
Sam is covering this event for Reggie’s Zine, and Slack tries to get him to go away so he can cover it. Slack is rightfully snubbed right back, with Sam saying this event is exclusive to Reggie’s Zine. When Slack offers to give Reggie her own article in Gnarly Surf, she declines because her zine comes first, leaving Slack to wonder what her deal is. I guess that’s a little better in regards to realism. He may have changed his tune, but he’s also clearly not self-aware enough to understand why Reggie would be upset at his previous sexist behavior.
Otto and Twister, as some mild punishment, are set to go up against some of the girls in this makeshift tournament. Otto has to go up against Trish, whom he acknowledges as being really good. Both boys wind up losing, Otto apologizes to Reggie, and they’re cool. Reggie even says he’s always welcome to be on the cover of her zine.
This is a great and well-written episode with a wonderful message. The problems I have with it are purely a result of the time constraints. We couldn’t delve too much into either Trish and her sudden turnaround or Slack’s sexism 180 in 11 minutes, and that’s just going to have to do.
7B – Twisted Cinema: My main issue with this episode is the beginning because, dear god, why did Twister get all these people together just to watch a video that is not even a full minute long? A video where 20 seconds of it, so about a third of the runtime, is end credits? Why did he invite Lars and his friends there? Why did he invite the canker sore of Mackenzie? Unless she invited herself.
Oh well. At least Twister upgraded from “Otto 3000” and got an editing software that allows him to use title cards.
This episode is fine. It’s a very basic episode. Otto dumps Twister as a friend because Twister put in a bunch of clips of Otto wiping out in the end credits as a sort of blooper reel since the main video was of all the tricks he pulled off. Twister doesn’t think it’s that big of a deal, but everyone mocks Otto for the blooper clips instead of praising him for the clips in the main video.
Otto recruits poor Sam to be his new best friend, and…Otto and Sam just don’t have a good dynamic. Everyone else in this four-way friendship have a good relationship. Otto and Twister and Sam and Reggie are the BFF pairings, but Twister and Sam have a good friendship when Twister’s not mocking Sam, Reggie and Otto have a strong sibling friendship, and Twister and Reggie work okay together. Sam and Otto just don’t work well, and this episode really highlights that.
Maybe they have better episodes together in the future that I’m not remembering, but here Sam struggles to keep up with Otto and keeps getting hurt because he’s basically a test dummy for Otto’s tricks, and Otto doesn’t want to do anything Sam wants to do because they don’t have much in common. He tries to act like some melding of Otto and Twister to help fit the role more, but the poor guy is just a traumatized lump after spending all that time with Otto.
Sam does think he looks cool in his one shot in the apology video (where he’s hiding in a garbage can Otto’s jumping over) and yells gleefully when Twister retakes his role as Otto’s BFF.
It is weird how Otto was able to pull all of those tricks off for Twister to make his video in the end. It was pointed out that Otto’s concentration has been awful ever since Twister’s video, and every time we see him after the fact he’s failing tricks.
Oh well.
It’s a fine episode, but it’s just very basic. I did like that little moment where Twister smiles as everyone enjoys his video. Honestly, I don’t think he’s that great of a videographer, but he IS just a kid, and it’s something he’s passionate about, so more power to him.
Oh and, as always, Tito and Raymundo relate this story back to an event from their youth where, apparently, Tito broke off being friends with Raymundo for three days because Raymundo tried to wipe relish off Tito’s face and accidentally wiped ketchup on it as well, making everyone laugh at him.
…..That is….very much not the same thing and seems like a terrible overreaction from Tito. But okay.
Next time…
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