Description

Recess: School's Out.School's out at Third Street School, but T.J. is unhappy, because his friends are all at summer camps. T.J. notices that there's something going on at the school. He sneaks inside to see a tractor beam levitating a safe. Panicked, he tries to tell his parents and the police, but no one believes him. When he gets Principal Prickly to come to see what's going on, he is dematerialized. T.J. uses his sister Becky's diary to blackmail her into driving to all the camps to pick his friends up. T.J. and his friends steal a box of documents, but when they find it filled with boring information, they accuse him of inventing a plot to bring them back. They are about to head back to camp when they see the tractor beam come out of the school and shoot out a green laser and agree that something is going on. The next day, T.J. finds Pricky's golf pants in a dumpster, so T.J. and his friends infiltrate the school at night to find Prickly. While there, they are caught spying and flee. T.J. is captured and his put in a storage room where Prickly is tied up. A man named Dr. Phillium Benedict comes in to talk to them. After Benedict leaves, Prickly relates how, back in the spring of 1968, Benedict became principal of Third Street School and moved to abolish recess to improve test grades. Prickly then revealed that the plan obviously didn't go over well as it was met with angry parents protesting to Benedict to reinstate recess which he refused to do. Prickly went to the superintendent as a means of recourse. While the superintendent assured the parents that the plan Benedict made would never be carried out, Benedict still refused to back down. The superintendent then demoted Benedict and promoted Prickly to principal. Benedict jumped to the conclusion that Prickly threw him under the bus to take his job, which, along with his anti-recess views, caused his then-girlfriend, Muriel P. Finster to break up with him. Infuriated, Benedict ended his friendship with Prickly, quit teaching, and swore revenge on his now-former friend. Later, Prickly says, Benedict went on to become Secretary of Education but was fired by the president when he tried to abolish recess nationwide...