Retro Television Review: Malibu CA 1.26 “The Triatholon”

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https://unobtainium13.com/2025/01/30...he-triatholon/

Posted on January 30, 2025 by Lisa Marie Bowman

Welcome to Retro Television Reviews, a feature where we review some of our favorite and least favorite shows of the past! On Thursdays, I will be reviewing Malibu CA, which aired in Syndication in 1998 and 1999. The entire show is currently streaming on YouTube!



This week, season one comes to an end!

Episode 1.26 “The Triathlon”

(Dir by Gary Shimokawa, originally aired on May 23rd, 1999)

Stads wants to enter the Malibu triathlon but training for it is such hard work and, over the past few episodes, Stads has gone from being an athletic and likable go-getter to becoming perhaps the whiniest character to have ever appeared on a Peter Engel-produced teen sitcom. Scott volunteers to help Stads train which freaks out Jason because Jason still has feelings for Stads.

First, Jason tries to train for the triathlon too but it’s too much work for him. So, Jason arranges for Murray to occupy Scott at the restaurant on the night before the triathlon. Murray demands a lot of shrimp. He follows Scott into the walk-in freezer. Murray accidentally locks them in! I guess they’re dead now.

Meanwhile, Jason pulls out his relationship scrapbook and keeps Stads up so late that she oversleeps and misses the triathlon. Stads isn’t too upset about it because at least she got to spend time with Jason. But then, after Murray and Scott are rescued from the freezer, she finds out that Jason arranged for Scott to miss their final training night. Scott and Stads team up to get revenge and somehow, it leads to Jason dressing up in armor and riding a horse across the beach.

This show is so stupid.

Meanwhile, Traycee slips on the restaurant’s wet flood and decides to sue Peter so that she can appear in a commercial for a personal injury lawyer. Peter goes out of his way to be nice to Traycee, leading to Traycee thinking that Peter wants to marry her and….

This show is so stupid!

But let’s give some credit where credit is due. Brandon Brooks (who played Murray) and Priscilla Inga Taylor (who played Traycee) were the best things about the first season, largely because they both so embraced the absurdity of their characters. While the rest of the cast often seemed to be sleepwalking through their roles, Brooks and Taylor totally threw themselves into their roles and they were responsible for what few laughs the show did achieve. And I’ll admit that I laughed at Taylor and Brooks during the finale. (I laughed when Taylor sang her little song about suing Peter. And I laughed at Brooks muttering, “Surfing” over and over again because he wanted to make sure those were his last words.) They deserve a lot of praise for their work.

The season finale ends with Stads and Jason, the two least likable characters on the show, sharing a kiss while the audience goes, “Whoo!” The finale really reminded how much the show changed over the course of the first season. True, Jason remained a sociopath. However, Scott actually become a halfway decent human being. Due to some very bad writing, Stads went from being likable to being whiny. Murray went from being annoying to genuinely funny. Peter went from being cool to being dorky. Traycee went from being a background character to one of the show’s highlights. And Sam went from being the center of the show to someone who was lucky to get any lines whatsoever. The pilot featured Jason and Scott as high school students but now, Scott is a part-time sportscaster and we never hear any talk of homework or anything else involving school. Change can be good but, in the case of this show, it’s just evidence that no one was really sure what Malibu CA was supposed to be about.

Next week, we start the second and final season. Yay.