Review of School House Rockz Episode 4

School House Rockz Episode 4 by Steven Ang

Today’s episode opens with Inka meeting up with her old friends, who told her in a not-too-subtle way that she’s no longer one of them. In their own manipulative way, they hope to convince Inka to come back to their old school and help them win the upcoming Brain Juice Competition. So now Inka has a problem: just how can she get out Eastwood?

Meanwhile, Inka’s troubles with Eastwood gets bigger when she finally finds out who her mysterious MSN buddy ‘Donatello’ is! The proverbial cat is let out of the bag when Wen Bin accidentally calls Inka online by her real name, which gave her the clue that ‘Donatello’ is from Eastwood. With help from Dawn, she sources out a few rather unlikely candidates: Eastwood’s ever-hungry ‘Makan King’, the handsome Casanova, or the plant-loving principal Mr Tan, who’s online identity on his blog is a plant named Audrey…

But before Inka finds out who ‘Donatello’ is, she hatches another one of her grand schemes to show Daddy how bad Eastwood is, by releasing a tank full of frogs in the canteen kitchen! But this time the plan quickly goes awry when Ms Eng catches her red-handed, and puts her in detention to clean up the library!

And guess who she meets at detention in the library, none other than her nemesis Preety Krishna! But she’s not here because she did anything wrong (or at least not caught in the act), but to replace an even bigger bully, who arrogantly walks out of his own detention with Krishna cleaning up in his place.

One thing I love about School House Rockz is that every character is well thought out, and no one is just a stereotype. Everyone has a good and bad side and we always see the reasons why someone behaves in such a way. In this episode, we get to see how Krishna became the fearsome bully that she is. Being the subject of an even bigger bully, she needs to regain her sense of power by bullying the younger students after she was bullied herself.

So back to the library, where things quickly get out of hand after Inka and Krishna lay eyes on each other: they get into a big fight while singing an angry rap song, while their fellow students perform a ‘serious’ dance around them. This leaves them with a big mess in the library that both of them have to clean up! (I personally feel that this song is one of today’s highlights.)

But they make up quickly, and Inka helps Krishna get back at the bully with another one of her ingenious plans: they quickly set-up a trap using glue on the sleeping bully, rudely waking him up before making him fall flat onto the ground. This causes him to fly into a big rage, threatening to bash them up just in time for Ms Eng to catch him red-handed.

As it turns out, Ms Eng was told to go to the library by the mysterious ‘Donatello’, whom Inka found out earlier to be none other than Wen Bin himself! At that time, Inka accused him of lying to her. When she saw how Wen Bin went out of his way to make her feel better, the two online buddies quickly make up and all is well again at Eastwood. Inka makes a promise to help Eastwood win the Brain Juice finals, much to the despair of her ‘friends’ over at the Elite School. So what grand scheme will they hatch next to get Inka to return to their side? Watch the next episode to find out!