Review: Legends of Chamberlain Heights “Just Say No to Cracky”

The opposite of “Snowfall”.

Spoilers Below

The Shirley Chisholm Dance. Where the girls ask the guys to go to the dance instead of the other way around. Grover thinks his answers are about to get answers and go to the dance with Cindy, but instead is forcefully chosen by Chrakee, the high school crackhead. Milk gets chosen by Griselda, the hottest girl in school, and Jamal isn’t even getting any offers other than Medina, the monstrous big-girl who is always after him. Jamal is repulsed by Medina, so Jamal resorts to hiding inside his locker. Grover’s issue is that doesn’t want to go to the dance with Chrakee, he wants to go with Cindy. Cindy wants to go with Grover too, but once she sees Chrakee in the girls’ bathroom looking like the puppet from the “Saw” movies while trying to get her make-up, Cindy decides to give Chrakee a complete makeover. After the makeover, it turns out that Chrakee, whose real name is Patricia, is actually cute.

Grover goes to Chrakee/Patricia’s house to tell her that he won’t go to the dance with her but quickly changes his mind and decides to take Patricia to the dance. Meanwhile, Milk seems to be regretting Griselda choosing him, she is certified crazy. While she does kiss him and what not, she won’t let him do even so much as accidentally look at another woman without getting slapped and corrected. She really keeps him on a short leash. Meanwhile, Patricia is getting a ton of attention from every guy she comes across thanks to her new looks. Jamal finally decides to go with Medina, but she already has a date. This makes Jamal realize that he actually does miss Medina and decides to take action. Thanks to a small pep talk from Fat Albert, Jamal decides that he has 24 hours to lose all of his weight and become attractive.

In no time at all, Patricia becomes the hottest girl in school and Cindy becomes jealous to the point of throwing mad shade and hating on Patricia. At the same time Patricia gets tired of all the attention she is getting from the guys and she decides she isn’t going anymore. Dateless, Grover heads to her house to cheer her up and he convinces her to go to the dance. She agrees, but the only condition is that Patricia goes as Chrakee, her true self. Meanwhile, Grover is losing more than his weight due to all the diet pills he’s been taking.

At the dance we see the results of the girls asking the boys out. Everything seems cool until Cindy and Griselda get into a fight once Griselda gets a load of the new slim and toned Jamal,  and the entire gym erupts into a catfight. Chrakee is the only one who can see the negative effects of the Shirley Chisholm dance and makes a powerful speech that empowers all the women the be their true selves. This leads to the girls embracing themselves for who they are and at the same time, literally beating the sexism out of the boys. Leave it to a crackhead to see the true ugliness brought about by the dance. Who would’ve thought that crack would save the day? Wow.

The episode ends with everything being back to normal, except Medina and Jamal are now a happy couple.

I actually enjoyed this episode because there were actually messages in it. The lesson is that the most important thing you can do is be true to yourself. Chrakee literally was the hottest girl in school but she knew that it wasn’t who she really was, and all the attention she was getting was fake. No one cared about her when she was Chrakee, but once she became Patricia, everybody was all over her. All the fake attention became too much and she had to be true to herself, even if that meant being addicted to crack. Even Jamal went through a “be yourself” lesson when he lost all of his weight. Sure, he was toned and attractive to the ladies, but he was getting sick and wasn’t healthy. Once he accepted himself and also accepted that he could be his true self around Medina, he allowed her to nurse him back to health. To really drive it home, happiness can be brought about and easier to obtain when you are true to yourself, and it’s always better to be yourself rather than what people make you up or make you out to be.  This episode had a good balance of humor and realness to it and was one of the better episodes of this series so far. I’m actually excited to see what happens in next weeks episode.