Recess portrays the lives of six fourth graders—popular and confident Theodore Jasper "T.J." Detweiler, athletic Vince LaSalle, tough girl Ashley Spinelli, gentle giant Mikey Blumberg, genius Gretchen Grundler, and shy new kid Gus Griswald—as they go about their daily lives in a school environment at Third Street Elementary School in Arkansas. A major satirical point of the show is that the community of students at school is a microcosm of traditional human society complete with its own government, class system, and set of unwritten laws. They are ruled by a monarch, a sixth grader named King Bob, who has various enforcers to make sure his decrees are carried out. The society has a long list of rigid values and social norms that imposes a high expectation of conformity upon all the students.
