90210 S1E2: The Green Room

The first appearance of Dylan! I remember Dylan being super hot in a wounded, brooding, bad-boy-with-a-heart-of-gold way, so if this is ruined I will be supremely disappointed. All I really remember here is that Dylan’s family is ridiculously wealthy, but his father is never around and the two have a tortured relationship.

Ah yes, here is the house I remember, in white stucco with a red-tiled roof. Also, Brandon’s mullet is gone. Everyone else looks pretty much the same. Although Andrea is still being called “ANN-dreah.” I remember it being “AAHN-dreah.”

We meet Dylan because he stands up for Scott when two jocks pick on him. To be honest his hotness doesn’t hold up quite as well as, say, Jordan Catalano, but he’s still got it. He has a very affected James Dean hairstyle; enjoys the collected works of Byron for “leisure reading”; drives a black Porsche convertible; and wears a black leather jacket, white t-shirt, black converse with no socks, and … overalls. That are half undone. WTF?!? What were they thinking to model Dylan after James Dean and then make him wear overalls? Stupid costume designer.

Brandon likes Dylan and asks him on a lunch date. Dylan takes him surfing instead, where Brandon meets Dylan’s surfer friends: Sarah and two dudes she hangs out with. One crazy night, they crash a hotel and break into someone’s suite. Brandon is uncomfortable and leaves amidst a chorus of jeers, but Dylan chases him down and admits the suite belongs to his father. His parents are filthy rich, and they don’t “do” parenting. Besides, Brandon wouldn’t want to ruin his reputation, right? Brandon says, “I wouldn’t want to ruin the only thing real thing you’ve got.” Seriously, this relationship is way intense. If I didn’t know better, I’d think these two were in love.

Meanwhile, Brenda enlists her mom to help her “make for free what trendy stores sell for $150.” How Pretty In Pink of her. She is shocked when she learns that Brandon is hanging out with Dylan McKay – everyone knows he’s, like, major trouble.

Later, Brandon runs into a drunk Sarah on the beach and says, “This isn’t you.” Keep in mind that at this point, he’s met her twice. He then runs into Dylan, and they have another weirdly intense conversation where Dylan says he really wants them to be friends. After getting the cold shoulder from Brandon, Sarah gets all upset and nearly drowns. Brandon and Brenda save her, and the doctor at the hospital tells them she’s an alcoholic. Brandon goes to the beach to beat up Sarah’s surf buddies but almost gets his ass kicked. Dylan intervenes, and then breaks one dude’s surfboard in half by slamming his foot down on it. Um...what?!? Is he Superman?

When Sarah recovers, she tells Brandon she is enrolling in a program. This episode really glosses over the issue of teen alcoholism. I much prefer the Dawson’s Creek method, in which we watch a major character spiral downward over the course of an entire season.

In the end, Dylan calls his parents in France and learns that they have moved on without leaving any forwarding info. In this ep we also learned that Steve doesn’t have a great relationship with his mom, an actress who stars as the perfect mom in a popular TV show. And in the last ep, we saw that Kelly isn’t super fond of her mother. I smell a pattern brewing amongst the richies.