The Big Day was a special hour-long episode of Rocket Power, transmitted on Nickelodeon on July 30, 2004, and also the series finale.
Summary
The plotline of this ep picks up from that of the previous one, and mostly concerns Raymundo Rocket's preparations for a wedding to Tito's cousin Noelani (voice of Kim Mai Guest), whom he had just met on Oahu for the second significant time (Tito's mother, voiced by Brookes Almy, has also come over), and Otto's attempts to postpone the planned wedding so that the gang can compete in a skating contest (coinciding with the opening of a new skate park in the neighborhood, the Zero Gravity Zone), with a prize of two weeks' training with young pro-skater Shaun White (cameoing as himself as the contest moderator).
At face value, one might think that Otto just wants to compete for a chance to play with the pros, after missing out on a roller hockey exhibition game with Jeremy Roenick, Martin Brodeur, and Luc Robitaille in "Power Play" (US tx: April 12, 2002), and especially with Lars being their main competition. However, some fans believe that there was an ulterior motive to postponing this wedding: basically, that Otto and Reggie, after such a long time growing up from toddlerhood to adolescence without mama Danielle around, weren't prepared just then to accept a stepmother (despite this issue, however, Danielle wasn't mentioned in this ep).
What about Breezy?
Until about October 2003, Rocket Power fans had speculated that Ray was going to be marrying traveling saleswoman Breezy Copeley, who had appeared in an ep of the show ("There's Something About Breezy") in April 2002 (she would appear again in March 2004 in "Summer Breezy"). That month, Klasky Csupo announced in their newsletter the then upcoming "Island of the Menehune" telefilm with Ray getting a new girlfriend, thereby apparently putting Breezy out of the picture.
Although Breezy was not in "Island", in the wedding party scene at the end of this ep, she could be seen sitting next to schoolteacher / Madtown Skatepark manager Conroy Blanc.
Trivia
- 12-year-old cancer survivor Daniel Stark appeared in this episode, courtesy of the Make-A-Wish Foundation. His part was only 30 seconds long, and it shows Stark snowboarding through a snowboarding course at the tournament and talking to Otto et al.
- Although this was the last ep to be transmitted, one ep that takes place after this episode and features Noelani as the new stepmom had been shown a month earlier ("New Girl In Town" and "After Shocked", US tx: June 16, 2004, the former of which actually mentions the fact, and the latter of which has some scenes at the new skate park).
- The video game Rocket Power: Zero Gravity Zone was released some months prior to this episode; people who've played the game will recognize parts of the new skate park in this episode and in "After Shocked".
- An episode of another Klasky Csupo Nicktoon with a similar storyline - the All Grown Up! episode "Runaround Susie" - aired just two weeks prior to this special.
- The wedding band is named "The Merryland Mansions" a spoof of Shock Rocker Marilyn Manson
