Summary
Everyone struggles to get out of their own heads (and their own way) in another episode with a shocking climax.
This recap of Heartbreak High (2022) season 1, episode 5, “Bin Chicken”, contains spoilers.
READ: Our spoiler-free review.
Threesomes tend to be a pretty common fantasy for young men, especially those conditioned by pornography to think it’ll be some kind of supermodel delight instead of a weird, drunken, clumsy mistake in the aftermath of racially-motivated police brutality. After the shocking end of the previous episode, it’s only Harper, perhaps understandably, who wakes up with a smile on her face. Malakai is adamant that Amerie can never find out, and Dusty doesn’t seem especially keen on the whole thing either. It’s mostly just awkward, and one gets the sense it’s not going to be something that anyone involved is going to be able to just brush under the carpet.
Heartbreak High (2022) season 1, episode 5 recap
The whole situation seems especially confusing for the boys — for obvious reasons. Aside from being distant with Harper, it isn’t immediately clear what Dusty is feeling, but when Malakai imagines the boy’s basketball locker room as a homoerotic fantasia — set to the smooth, whispered tones of the Ying Yang Twins — it’s fairly obvious that he’s questioning his own sexuality. And this is bad news since Amerie wants to just carry on as normal and Hartley is holding the semifinal game of the interschool basketball tournament, so Malakai has a lot of pressure to perform.
There’s also a litter-picking initiative going on around school with the incentive being a $50 gift voucher that Quinni, especially, is determined to win. Darren, meanwhile, is just using it as an excuse to try and lure Ca$h into sex by dropping him a trail of litter to follow like Hansel and Gretel, but it amounts to a more traditional date night instead. Well, I say traditional — he’s actually roped into taking Ca$h’s hilarious nan to a backroom poker game.
The poker is fun, but not ideal since Darren is realizing that he and Ca$h might have incompatible levels of horniness. Darren is eager for the two of them to have sex while something seems to be holding Ca$h back (Darren might have told his associates what they’ve been up to, but isn’t Ca$h closeted?), so desperate measures need to be taken. Quinni and Sasha go to great lengths to help Darren take an elaborate nude and Ca$h types, and then stops, and types… and then stops. Uh-oh.
Anywhere, there are worse problems elsewhere. The latest STLs subject is learning to be open with what the kids want, which involves writing things they’re into on a piece of paper and posting them into a little box — anonymously. Then other students read them out. And it’s all going well until one of the notes reveals that Harper had a threesome with Dusty and Malakai. Spider finds that hilarious, but did he write it? Harper, Amerie, Malakai, and Dusty, on the other hand, do not find it funny. Like, at all.
Still, Amerie’s reaction isn’t that overblown since she’s kind of used to Harper betraying her at this point. She also thinks back to some shadiness in their past — not revealing who she’s texting, etc. — that prompts Amerie to say that she’s realizing she never knew Harper in the first place. And things do admittedly backfire for Harper too, since Dusty, having seen how eager she was to sleep with Malakai, tells her he needs some space, and Missy and Sasha turn on her too.
At least things are going okay for Darren and Ca$h — initially, at least. After trying and failing to send a worthwhile counter-nude, Ca$h invites Darren over and, after some smooching, asks him to spend the night. But when Darren tries it on in the morning, Ca$h says he isn’t ready, and Darren gets offended. They argue and Darren leaves, but this is a complicated situation that is treated as such. Yes, of course, Darren is being pushy, but he’s used to being used as a kind of experiment for closeted men to figure out what they want, and he’s sick of that. But, at the same time, while Ca$h is obviously smitten with Darren, he’s nervous about taking a next step he isn’t necessarily comfortable with. If the gender dynamics were reversed here I’d be interested to see how people would respond to this subplot versus how they might respond to this version.
“Bin Chicken” ends with a late appearance of the actual Bin Chicken, the school basketball team’s mascot, and he’s on hand for the big game. But things, predictably, don’t go swimmingly. Malakai’s head is all over the place and he folds under the pressure and is lured into taking a swing at Spider in the locker room. Eventually, he just walks out, and when Harper sees Spider laughingly reporting this to Dusty, she takes matters into her own hands, seizes the mic, and breaks up with Dusty in the most brutal way possible — by emasculating him.
I’m sure that won’t go down well!
You can stream Heartbreak High (2022) season 1, episode 5, “Bin Chicken”, exclusively on Netflix.
