90210 S2E9: Ashes To Ashes

An attempt to create a neighborhood patrol leads to race hate and violence.

Awww yeah! Race hate and violence! A neighborhood association meeting at the Walsh home prompts Cindy to install an alarm system, which then continually goes off at unexpected times. A new black family moves to the neighborhood and the neighbors are suspicious. Brandon and older sister Charise (Vivica A. Fox) hit it off, but in a friendly way. Shocking that Brandon doesn’t have romantic notions. Perhaps Emily Valentine has changed him.

Charise’s boyfriend Devo comes to see her and gets “arrested” by the neighborhood patrol even though he’s just walking down the street. The younger brother, Robinson, becomes the photographer for the West Beverly Blaze. As a former high school newspaper editor, I would not be too jazzed about a photog whose best photos look like this:



That's not just me taking a bad photo of the TV. There is actually a hand in front of the guy's face. Anyway, the ep is full of people being both intentionally racist, and “accidentally” racist. Brandon wants to write an expose for the paper, but the Ashe family would rather forget the whole thing. He goes to the “hood” to see Devo and almost gets beat up, but Devo saves him. Devo says the story isn’t a “story” because it happens all of the time.

In the end, Brandon publishes his expose. The ep ends with Dylan quoting aloud from the article: “It’s when we stop looking at the human race as individuals, we as a generation are in trouble.” He then says, “Eloquently put, man.”