Babe and Kenzie’s plans to hang with Mason are ruined when Bunny and Ruthless crash a birthday party; Dub uses Hudson to make Trip jealous when Trip chooses work over hanging out with him.

I decided to revisit Game Shakers to see how the show has evolved since its debut.  Sad to say, it has not.  I’m mystified why even a tween would laugh.

With most Dan Schneider/Dan Warp shows, there are quirky characters, inside jokes and sly references.  This episode feels like a ripoff of iGo Psycho from iCarly, except Peggy doesn’t rise to the Nora Dershlit level of lunacy.  She does have an odd penchant for fruits and vegetables.

The episode revolves around Babe’s crush on Peggy’s brother, Mason (played with utter coolness by Tanner Buchanan, who is much, much better as Charlie Gardner on Girl Meets World).  Babe and Kenzie agree to go to Peggy’s birthday party (yep, they are the only ones in attendance); the party is interrupted by Bunny and Ruthless, as Bunny is trying to get his manicurist’s license (say what now?) and he sees the party as the chance to make some money (wouldn’t he be in trouble for practicing without a license).  There’s the usual series of missteps as, just as Babe is about to get close to Mason,something happens to steer it off course.  Its neither original nor funny.

The B story involves Dub trying to make Trip jealous by taking Hudson out to dinner, supposedly in the Hamptons.  Trip cancels the father-son night so he can finish his work at Game Shakers (he has a deadline after all) so Dub decides to have a father and HUDson night.  At the end of the episode, as they are finalizing plans for an impromptu father-son night, Dub gets a call for some action with Valerie (after all she is Valerie).  He actually cancels on Trip.  The wise father would have spent time with his son.  And after all that mumbo jumbo throughout the episode, that would have made sense.

The acting here is still rather raw and the storylines are nothing new.  So it’s no great shakes about Game Shakers.

Riley is upset when the boys at school won’t let her participate in a science experiment and attempts to become more involved.  Meanwhile, Augie learns the meaning of “being in the game.”

There are good episodes of GMW, there are exceptional episodes of GMW … and then there is this one.

Line of the episode: “I’m reading this great book on anti-gravity.  I can’t put it down.”

In the episode, which focuses on science, technology, engineering, math (STEM) and girls, our chemistry lab teams are required to (a) drop a marble into a beaker of liquid (for some reason at 3:15 PM and then (b) spend the next few classes trying to figure out its chemical composition.

Surprise, surprise.  The girls get to drop the marble and, allegedly, the boys get to figure out whats in the sludge.  (Spoiler alert: Mr. Chemistry teacher has been doing this experiment for 35 years.  The answer is that “all of us have unlimited potential.”  By not dropping the marble in the beaker, the solution stays clear, so that you can see the other person clearly.  Get it?)

Understanding one’s identity has been done so much better on GMW (remember Donnie Barnes, regular guy).  As a science educator, I am painfully aware of the need to sustain girls’ interest in STEM disciplines, especially in middle school.  If you lose them in 8th grade, you’ve, in some ways, lost them forever.  I’ll give GMW credit for at least pointing this out.

But getting to this point was painful, mainly because the storyline and outcome was so blatantly obvious.  There’s some mumbo-jumbo about sacrificing Yogi, and enough “Up With People” lines to fill an after-school special.  By the time the episode concludes, I was screaming at the TV, “We get it!”

The B story was equally as dismal.  Augie gets a participant trophy in soccer and we get another cornucopia of politically-correct statements from the soccer field about not playing to win.  I got the point here to but I often feel that Topanga is wasted on these side plots.

Sorry, GMW, but this one wasn’t a winner.