90210 S2E10: Necessity Is A Mother

I am getting really bored with 90210, folks.

Dylan’s mom has been in town for a while and is getting on his nerves. She’s a new-age-meditation type described as a “space case.” He starts drinking again, is totally irritable, and blows everything off. One night, he shows up drunk at the Walsh home and everyone freaks out. Brenda blames Dylan’s mom, and Brandon says, “She didn’t pour the booze down his throat.” Dylan then comes to school drunk, and Brenda tells Brandon he can’t let Dylan drink. Because of course it’s Brandon’s responsibility. Kelly serves as the voice of reason in this situation, telling Brenda she can’t help Dylan. He has to decide to help himself.

Now this, I like. Brandon doesn’t want Dylan to drive drunk, so he offers to take him anywhere he wants to go. Dylan wants to go to a bar, so then Brandon is forced to watch him get wasted and lose money playing pool. Back at the Walsh home, in a super OC moment, Iris tells Cindy she can’t handle this. Cindy says she has no choice, she’s his mom. Iris rolls her eyes. Jim forbids Brenda from seeing Dylan for the second (??) time. In the end, Iris moves back to Hawaii, giving Dylan his “freedom.” However, they agree to try to build a real relationship.

In other news, Donna does exceptionally well during a stock market game in Economics class, and Steve convinces her to take all of her savings and do it for real. Kelly keeps using the word “stupid,” as in “Don’t be stupid” or “This is stupid.” And we all know that Donna doesn’t respond well to that word. Steve and Donna do well at first, but then Donna wants to sell and Steve doesn’t. Instead, Steve takes stock tips from someone named “Bernie Goldfinger.” The stock plummets and Steve blames Donna, saying he shouldn’t have listened to her stupid ideas. But surprise! Donna sold her stock and made a lot of money. She tells Steve and Kelly never to call her stupid again.

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.”

90210 S2E8: Wild Fire

Brandon and Dylan both make a date with the same girl – wild new student Emily Valentine – and Brenda’s jealousy prompts her to rethink her feelings for Dylan.

We open on Brandon having a fantasy in which he is relaxing on the beach with three girls in swimsuits fawning over him. One of them is giving him a pedicure, and is filing his toenails. Nice fantasy, Brandon.

Anyway, it’s the first day of school. I guess they are seniors now. There is a cute montage of everyone getting dressed and hating what they see in the mirror. At school, Dylan meets new student Emily Valentine when she roars up on her motorcycle. Torn jeans, leather jacket, skeleton earrings, short and spiky blonde hair, guitar slung on her back. If that’s not wild, I don’t know what is.

Dylan asks her out. Minutes later, she meets Brandon, who also asks her out. She goes out with both boys, making no attempt to hide that fact, and they are both cool with it. When Brandon discovers he really likes her, Dylan backs off.

Meanwhile, Emily becomes friends with the girls until they learn that she went on a date with Dylan. Brenda proceeds to completely ostracize Emily from the group, and the girls talk about what a slut she is. Excuse me, but isn’t Kelly calling anyone a slut like the pot calling the kettle black? In a truly fantastic moment, Brenda uses her bitchiest voice to tell Emily to “have fun at the gynecologist.”

Emily is hurt, of course, and when Brenda finally gets around to apologizing, Emily admits she’s a virgin. In one of the Season 2 special features (yes, I watched them first), Christine Elise says her best scenes were with Brenda because she felt strong-armed by Shannen Doherty in real life. Those tears? Those are real.

In the end, Brenda realizes she’s not willing to lose Dylan, and they get back together.

In other news, Scott returns from Oklahoma a cowboy-hat-wearing, country-music-listening dude, and David realizes that they are growing apart.

90210 S2E7: Camping Trip

The gang heads up to Yosemite on what turns out to be a totally doomed camping trip. Stuck in the rain, the gang makes some unexpected friends – and encounters unexpected danger.

Totally doomed? More like totally boring. The gang goes camping but gets rained out and has to stay is a leaky cabin. Boo-hoo. Next door a couple of newlyweds get into a fight when he says he doesn’t want kids. You’d think this would be something you’d discuss BEFORE getting married, but whatever. It allows Kelly, Steve, and Dylan to go on and on about being children affected by divorce.

Like me, Dylan gets fed up with it all. So, he spends the night sleeping draped over a boulder after drinking two little airplane bottles of alcohol he swiped from the newlyweds’ cabin. Oh no! Dylan is off the wagon! The next morning Brandon finds him and they go for a hike. Brandon slips and almost falls off a mountain, but Dylan saves him. The end.

Check it, yo.

Happy Wednesday.