Rewatching 21 Jump Street! Corruption in college athletics? You don’t say! It’s season four, episode eighteen, “Hi Mom.”
What’s goin’ down: A college basketball star dies in a drug-related car crash, so the Jump Street cops go undercover at his school to investigate.
Here’s Hanson: Hanson’s cover is as a tutor, who doesn’t teach the basketball players, but must secretly take their tests for them.
Penhall’s Prerogatives: Penhall is posing as an athlete again, this time a wrestler, and he’s shocked to see how drug use is so out in the open on the college campus.
Undercover blues: Fuller is undercover as a professor of African American studies. You know he’s undercover because he’s disguised under these huge glasses.
Goin’ to the chapel: Fuller’s son Kip makes a return appearance, for the first time since we met him in season two. They get along a lot better now, except that Kip is starting college at the same school where the drug case is going on.
Torn from today’s headlines: In addition to the drug use, we’re dealing with corruption in higher education, with schools pooling all their money into sports deals and away from the actual book-learnin’. Then it’s revealed one of the basketballers is illiterate, and the drama just keeps on coming.
Trivia time: Basketball legend and Airplane! co-star Kareem Abdul-Jabbar plays the head of the school’s athletics department.
Jumpin’ or not? This one’s mostly plot-based, with little of the fun character moments that we love about the show. Everybody’s just going through the “cop show” motions. Not jumpin’.
Next week: The original Spring Breakers.
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