Recap / Recess S 1 E 10 Big Brother Chad

Vince's big brother Chad comes for a visit, and the rest of the school is shocked to find out that he is a nerd.

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Tropes:

• Ambiguously Gay: In addition to his nerdy habits, Chad wears pink, has a rainbow painted on his bike helmet, and listens almost exclusively to show tunes. As noted under Does This Remind You of Anything? below, a lot of the episode can be read as a coded reference to being homosexual.
• Big Brother Instinct: Chad stands up for Vince when he is cornered by a fellow eighth-grader.
• Black and Nerdy: Chad, almost to the point of being Steve Urkel.
• Broken Pedestal: Vince realizing that Chad's a geek. As well as the other kids who looked up to him.
• Cool and Unusual Punishment: When Cy is about to beat up Vince, Chad gets him to back off... by threatening to stop helping Cy with his math homework.
• Does This Remind You of Anything?: The episode is about Vince realizing that his brother is different, and to see what it represents, replace "geek" in the dialogue with "gay".
• Five Stages of Grief: Vince, realizing his older brother is a geek, has one reference to this, right after Vince is told of the fact, by Gretchen stating "Stage one: denial." But the other stages can be seen as well: where Vince runs from the kitchen table after listening to Chad speak geek^note Stage two: depression, where Vince confronts Chad and tries to reason why he can't be a geek^note Stage three: bargaining, where Vince despairs over whether he will become a geek like Chad^note Stage four: fear, and where Vince realizes that Chad has his badass moments too.^note Stage five: acceptance
• I Am What I Am: Chad tells Vince that there's no shame in being a geek and he is fine with it. Much later, he says that he may be a geek but he can still be cool.
• Imagine Spot: Vince has one where he fantasizes about Chad's geekiness rubbing off on him, wherein he starts to take interest in pocket protectors and sci-fi cons and other things associated with nerd culture, culminating in a scene where Vince imagines himself undergoing a werewolf-like transformation into a geek under a full moon.
  NEATOOOOOOOOO!!
• Meaningful Echo: "Leave. The kid. Alone."
• Mundane Made Awesome: Refusing to tutor a bigger kid in math? Gutsy. Using this simple threat to strong-arm him into leaving alone a younger kid? Admirable. But doing all this to protect your younger brother? In spite of being a geek (or rather because of it), this is what makes Chad's simple act of standing up to Cy amazing.
• Nice Guy: Chad interacted with almost the entire student body and they all looked up to him. However, since the students he interacted with were younger back then, they all remember him as being much cooler than the nerd he really is.
• Nostalgia Filter: After seeing Chad is a geek, Vince's friends realize why he would bother hanging out with kids younger than him.
• Proud to Be a Geek: When Vince tells Chad that the latter's a geek, Chad replies with pride that he knew he was a geek since first grade.
• Rebuilt Pedestal: Despite Chad being a nerd, he becomes cool in Vince's eyes again when he stands up to Cy. The other kids can't also help but cheer.