Synopsis/Details
We are introduced to Dorian Mirren, a brilliant young man who is nonetheless unappreciated by his family, bullied by students and teachers, and ignored by the rest of his small community. Dorian’s seemingly meaningless life, however, is changed forever during one fateful, “Go To Work With Your Parents Day” during the first week of April, 1984. Dorian’s father, a local police detective, apprehends a fugitive from justice, a Wall Street bandit named Bernie Seitz, passing through Zilwaukee on the run from the FBI. Seitz boastfully explains to Dorian the intricacies of “hoard and score” stock trading, that is, to create an imaginary scarcity of a particular stock in order to drive up prices, pocketing the difference on each sale without informing the investor or the issuing corporation. Dorian listens intently, is fascinated, and later that night he conceives a brilliant idea.
Given his first baseball card by his older brother as a gift, and seeing that the local baseball team, the Detroit Tigers, is off to one of the best starts in baseball history, Dorian approaches a nerdy outcast named Bryce DeGrange, a major player in the baseball trading market, and convinces him to assist him in his scheme to “hoard and score” baseballcards. Staking Bryce with money from his paper route, Bryce buys out all the available cards in every available store, then both he and Dorian “break” the cards (bending or destroying their mint condition) and then begin selling the remaining Detroit Tiger cards for prices far above the normal market price.
During this scheme, Dorian begins to take aim at the local bully and presumed future Student Body President Brynn Blade, seeking to unseat him by throwing his support behind the second-string (and lone black player on the team) Deion Chase, convincing him that Blade can be beaten and when Chase is elected he can blackmail the arrogant football coach to put him on the first string by denying Student Council funding for a brand new scoreboard.
“Breaking Cards” eventually plays out during the series as both a parody of two wonderful TV shows, but ultimately also a biting satire of 1980s America, and a commentary on the meaning of being Generation X
