90210: “There’s No Place Like Homecoming”
Season 1, Episode 8
Ethan and Annie are tired of keeping their relationship-thing a secret. Ethan invites Annie to homecoming (or would like to) but feels it is too soon to go to homecoming with a date after his final break up with Naomi, so the two concoct a “secret surprise” meetup at the dance and a promise to dance together. Annie instead drives everyone crazy about it because she only obsessed with him asking her.
Adrianna’s fate is shown, she did not die from the overdose. Naomi finds out about this, and Adrianna is sent to court-ordered rehab (the new black in Los Angeles it seems). Naomi gets a punishment of after school detention for the rest of the semester for her part of taking the drugs and flushing them. When in detention she meets a mysterious guy who “annoys” her but ends up talking to him and showing him that she too, can speak fluent Spanish. The guy ends up popping up a few times throughout the school. She is not speaking to Adrianna, who gets a visit from Navid, who wants a story about her from inside rehab. Adrianna cannot be bothered but uses his phone to text Naomi which she deletes. Adrianna wants Navid to come again to visit, when he does she begs him to bring Naomi so she can apologize. She also finds out Navid’s father is paying for her stay in rehab, because he likes her.
On the lookout for a new friend, Naomi finally gets together with Annie. Naomi invites her over to get ready before homecoming at her house, not knowing about her plan with Ethan. Meanwhile, Annie is getting close to having her 16th birthday, her mom takes her driving in the minivan to get her permit. Up next week: her apparent birthday party. Naomi’s mom and Annie’s still have some issues, because Tracy kissed Harry. Tabitha, Annie and Dixon’s grandma, tells their mom she should approach her and talk to her about it, because she kissed another woman’s man. She gives the mom true compliments, even though they have not gotten along in the past.
Unlike the rest of the girls, Silver could care less about homecoming. Dixon asks her to homecoming but she “hates” it and doesn’t want to go, so Dixon says he doesn’t either. Later on, Annie admits to her Dixon’s love of school dances at home in Kansas and Silver realizes he would have liked to go. At the same time, Silver gets her wisdom teeth out and she is all hopped up on painkillers following the extraction, meaning Dixon stays with her to try to help her until she ends up falling asleep.
The undercover cop, Kim, is still hitting on Ryan, the teacher almost non-stop. It is making him feel awkward but he has no idea what to do with her. At the dance she tries to buy drugs from the lacrosse player who has shown up a few times and been nothing but an ass, where Ryan sees and thinks she is on drugs. She (and Harry) then admit she is a cop and not a student and her and Ryan kiss.
90210: “Hollywood Forever”
Season 1: Episode 7
October 7, 2008
Doesn’t it seem like in every high school show with awkward sexual tension between a male and female lead that the “baby project” comes out? You know the one, where the boys and girls have to pretend to be married and raise a fake baby (anything from an egg to an actual doll that responds?) That’s what this week is all about, Annie and Ethan get partnered up and their only other friend in the class, Navid, gets stuck in a same-sex partnership with the class ass. Meanwhile, “Sil Vicious” is all alone and getting Kelly to probably kill her while painting one living room wall from pale green to black, and having a half birthday party in a cemetery to watch Alfred Hitchcock’s Psycho. It seems they all have these big events that everyone goes to, including this one. Even Annie and Dixon’s parents show up. So does Ryan, with a girl he met online who is dumb as a post but needed to save face with the new student in the shared English class with Ryan, who basically makes his life miserable and hits on him in the process.
Grandma Tabitha finally comes back this episode! She has the hands down best lines, including ones in this episode about how she swims nude in the pool, starting a fight with her daughter-in-law.
Annie’s dad and Naomi’s mom dated in high school, eventually making a baby they put up for adoption. Naomi’s mom approaches him about finding the child, mentioning a P.I. When the dad talks to his wife he only wants to put a letter with the adoption agency in case the son ever comes looking for them. Naomi’s mom doesn’t listen (like mother, like daughter) and goes ahead to hire the P.I.
Annie and Adrianna both go for the role from the previous episode. Annie does well all on her own. Adrianna struggles then in a Cruel Intentions moment sniffs some powder and does all better. She eventually gets the role. Meanwhile, she tells Naomi about her problems and even says she will tell her mother that she needs help and to go to rehab. She is met with her mother making her a huge cake for getting the role and “saving” them, saying that they were on the fast track to lose the house.
That new student, she is an undercover cop hired by Principal Harry to sniff out drugs in the school. This happens after a raid, that Adrianna has a lipstick tube full of powder (I assume cocaine). Instead of her getting in trouble when she is freaking out about being expelled, Naomi takes the tube and the heat for the drugs. Adrianna promises to come to her rescue and tell the truth at the lawyer’s office but never does. Annie tells her dad she saw Naomi take the tube, and Naomi calls Adrianna repeatedly, but she never answers. The episode ends with Adrianna passed out and unresponsive on a floor at a party, paramedics over her and trying to revive any of her vital signs. Meanwhile, Naomi is leaving her a message how she is “dead to her.” Will she survive?
90210 : “Model Behavior”
Season 1, Episode 6
September 30, 2008
In the aftermath of the play, Adrianna is upset that Annie took her role and denies that she does drugs. Her little plot with Ty involved at the hotel gets Annie to tell the guy she never wants to see him again. Meanwhile, Annie’s dad wants Adrianna and Annie to stop bickering over the role and just get along, telling Annie to hang out with Adrianna and try to make friends. She does, eventually inviting her to come assist with her mother’s first big photo shoot at a fashion show. Once there, a girlfriend of an agent who was brought to the play by Adrianna’s mother approaches Annie, telling her to audition for a low-budget scary movie she is producing. Annie mentions she only was the under study for Adrianna, getting Adrianna into the audition too. This makes them friends, at least for now.
Meanwhile, Naomi is still desperately trying to get her parents back together. She keeps thinking that if she forces them to the same place at the same time they will just figure out how they miss each other since they went to bed together that one time. Her first attempt is to invite her dad and the other woman to dinner, and then try to sabotage the relationship by saying that he is a workaholic and that her dad slept with her mom. She even gets an extra ticket for her mother to the fashion show, then calling her dad with a 911 emergency to run there, without telling the other one. They both just take it out on her when they realize, and tell her how much they are not getting back together. Ethan tried to warn her real life was not like the Parent Trap, and she chose not to listen.
Brenda (now almost a teacher), Ryan and Kelly are all friends and worried about Adrianna. Ryan still would like to date Kelly, but it seems less and less likely to happen as Dylan calls her at school and wants to see her and Sammy, and tells him he doesn’t want her to wait for him. Ryan and Brenda then go to the fashion show to make sure Adrianna is not doing drugs, making a big scene that eventually makes her think that the principal was using Annie as a narc. Annie and Adrianna weren’t getting along anyway when she told Annie about lying to her about Ty.
Navid feels like a third wheel when Dixon and Silver start dating. Instead, he wants to get set up with someone, first suggesting Annie. Dixon and Silver try to make it less weird for him by bringing him to the fashion show too, and he meets a few girls that like Persians. Silver gets approached by a gross older dude who wants her to do modeling, then tries to hit on her. She basically tells him off and Dixon and the guy get in a fight.
In the end, Naomi and Ethan break up for good, Kelly leaves for two weeks with Sammy to go see Dylan, leaving Silver alone in the house. Annie tells Ty she just wants to be friends, and Adrianna gets into a sketchy car after asking for a guy that “doesn’t work for him anymore” from the guy in the car. She still buys and does drugs on the spot.
90210 – “Wide Awake and Dreaming”
Episode 1.5 – September 23, 2008
This whole episode is centered around the school musical finally happening, and what seems like everyone’s virginity or lack thereof. The episode starts with Annie’s dad (the principal) finding her and Ty making out back stage during a rehearsal. He decides that he has to give her another version of “the talk”, only this time about Beverly Hills versus Kansas. He doesn’t want Annie to end up pregnant, because he fathered a child in high school with Naomi’s mother. Of course, Annie gets embarrassed and goes to her mom, who tries to talk to her dad but too has her concerns. Meanwhile, Naomi is telling Annie that Ty “does everyone” and that she is not the only one he has pursued. He later tells Annie he got them a hotel room at the Roosevelt Hotel where the play’s after party is being held, more or less telling her that they will be having sex.
With the play, Brenda Walsh, Kelly Taylor and English teacher Ryan is worried about her lead Adrianna who is showing up late to practice and generally acting weird. It is later revealed her mom is extremely critical on her and even tells her she is bringing agents to the opening night of the play. Adrianna was previously revealed as at least trying drugs, and it comes to a head here when she is found the opening night of the play backstage and obviously out of it by stage manager Silver. Brenda has no choice but to give the role to Annie (as if we didn’t know). Adrianna later gets back at Annie by showing up at Ty’s hotel room and telling him he saw Annie making out and leaving with Ethan after the play, and when Annie shows up being in a towel and saying Ty asked her to show up “too”, and he was currently in the shower, making her leave in tears. In reality, the shower was running but empty, Ty no where to be found.
Silver and Dixon finally act on their feelings for one another and kiss at the end of this episode. They get along better when Dixon helps Silver by running the lights at the play. He gave Annie the condom in his wallet he has had for 4 years because she asked, definitely not looking ready but trying to be prepared to have sex with Ty. She bumps into Ethan right afterwards, getting into an awkward situation with him telling her to save herself for someone who cares about her, not Ty Collins. She says she already tried that, obviously meaning him. He is already back together with Naomi.
Meanwhile, Naomi’s neediness has come to a head, trying to push her parents back together when it is obvious it is not working. Her dad has moved out to the beach house with his mistress Gail, and her mother has been in bed doing nothing for a week. She finally forces to them together to talk, which they do more fighting before ending up all over one another. When it is obvious to everyone but Naomi they are getting a divorce, it is when her mother is throwing out or donating all of her father’s expensive suits. Try as much as she wants, they are not going to end up back together.
90210 – “The Bubble”
Episode 1.4 – September 16, 2008
by Caitlin Downer
Naomi’s problems with her father and his affair come to a head when she finds out the “other woman” Gail is moving to Beverly Hills, more specifically, her family’s beach house. She only finds this out after confronting Gail and finding out the other woman loves her father and it seems to be mutual. She also tells her mother which is not good for either of them, after they had to act like a family for the annual Christmas card photo shoot.
Meanwhile, she uses this hardship to at least apologize to Silver and ask her not to put it in her blog. In 8th grade, Silver’s parents were going through an affair and eventual divorce, and Naomi told everyone, the reason why they were no longer friends. While it mended fences, the jury is still out on whether those two will become friendly again. Silver seems to be doing better living with half-sister Kelly, even flirting enough with Dixon to ask him the question everyone wants to hear, “when are you going to ask me out?”
Speaking of Dixon, he got into a mess of his own this week. He borrowed his dad’s car to go to school and in doing so knocked off the side view mirror of an expensive German-made car of a fellow student. Instead of wanting to go through insurance, he gets a job at the Peach Pit to cover the repairs, eventually telling his father and getting the money, using his earnings at the job to pay back his father for the loan. He also gets to sit courtside at a Lakers game with the guy whose car he hit, so it all works out for him.
Dixon’s sister Annie has many of her own problems. She finally gets asked out by Ethan, only to ten minutes later get asked out by Ty after he bailed on her, to which she has to say no and possibly lose Ty. When Ethan is late (and eventually bails) on their date, Silver gives her the news that it is never over between Ethan and Naomi, and she should end the triangle and choose Ty. She does, but Ty at first spurns her advances since he has tried before. When she kisses him, it seems firmly settled on Annie and Ty. Good thing, because Naomi and Ethan end up getting back together at the end of the episode.
In news of the adults around West Beverly High, Annie and Dixon’s grandmother Tabitha Wilson, a former actress and current alcoholic, offers to take over directing the school musical Spring Awakening. She doesn’t stay long, because once Brenda Walsh comes on to help, she sees how negative she is being towards Annie and passes the reins to Brenda, a current stage actress in London and now doing a play in California. Brenda also speaks to Ryan, the cute English teacher, in his quest to get to know Kelly. He still likes her and wants to date her, but Kelly is unsure, using her son’s welfare as an excuse. At the end of the episode, Brenda says she is still hung up on Sammy’s father, revealed to be (stop reading if you don’t want to be spoiled) former high school boyfriend Dylan McKay.
90210 – “Lucky Strike”
Episode 1.3 – September 9, 2008
by Caitlin Downer
Mom (l.), Silver (c.), Kelly (r.)
Annie makes plans with Ty to go to see a new band at the pier for the following night (Friday). At the same time, Dixon makes plans with the rest of the lacrosse team to view the new James Bond film at Navid’s house since his dad “knows someone who did a little something on it.” Both of their nights come to a halt when they get home that night and their parents drop a bombshell of their own: they want to have family night by going bowling. The kids try to weasel their way out of it by saying no one does family night in Beverly Hills, but instead invite their friends along to come rescue them. Annie is meant to go out with Ty, but he ditches her. Dixon gets the boys of the lacrosse team to come and they end up all going to see the Bond movie anyway, with Silver and Annie in tow. At the end, the kids make their parents breakfast and prepare for the next family night. Maybe they can still have a little bit of Kansas in Beverly Hills.
Silver is shown as coming late to school and even going to a woman’s shelter and asking to stay. Dixon later finds her asleep in her car parked in front of their house. Turns out her mother is back in her battle with drugs and alcohol and ends up taking it out on her. Kelly later confronts her mother about the battle (Silver and Kelly are half-sisters) and takes Silver with her. The episode ends with them joining in on some ice cream with Kelly’s four-year-old.
Speaking of Kelly, she finally goes on a date with cute English teacher Ryan. After many blunders made by him, they eventually kiss and he even asks “are we dating” and the answer is, yeah looks like they are. Kelly is still shy about having her son meet new men, since the only one he has ever met is his father, a former boyfriend of Kelly’s from high school that she met up with and “had a night with” four years earlier and still wants to try to get back into his son’s life (Brandon or Dylan?)
Annie and Ethan
Naomi is pumped to go on her annual trip to Las Vegas with her father’s company. Instead, he gives her (and her mother) brand new cars but cancels the trip. When she goes to thank him and bring him food for “working late” she sees him kissing another woman. She tells her mother about it and finds out he has been seeing her for two years and she lives out of town and the mom is okay with it (she really doesn’t want to lose her lifestyle). Ethan comforts her in her time of need and even leaves the bowling alley with her, strengthening the love triangle between Naomi, Ethan and Annie.
90210 – “We’re Not in Kansas Anymore”
Episode 1.1 – September 2, 2008
by Caitlin Downer
The characters may be new, but the zip code is still the same, not to mention it premiered to the highest ratings ever for the CW. The show Beverly Hills, 90210 was a household name with young adults in the 1990s, and now a spinoff (not a remake) is back on television, simply called 90210.
Courtesy of CW11.com
This new series revolves around the Wilson family and their move from Kansas to California, similar to the Walsh family’s move from Minnesota to California in the first series. A few of the characters from that first show have returned to this one, including Brenda Walsh (Shannen Doherty), returning from her acting career in London to be the director of the school play and drama teacher, and Kelly Taylor (Jennie Garth), now a guidance counselor and mother to a four-year-old. Kelly’s mother Jackie Taylr (Ann Gillespie) also returns, as she is also the mother of new character Erin “Silver” Silver, Kelly’s half-sister. She is still suffering her own battle with the bottle, which will be an issue in later episodes it seems. Even the hang out from the original series, the Peach Pit, is back with its owner Nat Bussichio (Joe E. Tata). The Peach Pit has gotten a face lift to be a more upscale coffeehouse/diner, but Nat still exists in the same role of a voice of support for the kids. The last character with a connection to the old series is Hannah Zuckerman-Vasquez (Hallee Hirsh). The daughter of Andrea Zuckerman and Jesse Vasquez, she is a following in her parents’ footsteps as host of the school’s “West Beverly Blaze” news show.
Courtesy of CW11.com
The new series focuses on Annie Wilson (Shenae Grimes) and her brother Dixon (Tristan Wilds), who have to deal with being the new kids in school and their father being the new principal at West Beverly High. Dad Harry (Rob Estes) and mom Debbie (Lori Loughlin) have made the move to keep an eye on Harry’s mother Tabitha (Jessica Walter), a former television star with a love of drinking. The two-hour premiere saw a host of issues of high school issues happening to the siblings all at once. Fitting into a new crowd, cheating on significant others, rivalries, gossip being spread not person to person, but on the Internet, and even theft. Annie has to deal with no longer being the cool, pretty, popular girl and make a new crowd of friends. She starts out with Naomi Clark (AnnaLynne McCord), the Regina George of this high school. In these first two episodes Naomi seems like a huge spoiled brat, using all of a paper Annie offered to her “for help” (as if we knew that wouldn’t happen) instead of writing her own, heading to a club and ordering a drink at the bar before eventually getting ratted out by her English teacher (Ryan Eggold), and having a 16th birthday party to rival all those brats on My Super Sweet Sixteen. She finds out her boyfriend Ethan Ward (Dustin Milligan) the “likeable jock” lacrosse star is cheating on her through a text message, which sets up a future love triangle between the exes and Annie, who knew Ethan when the two were kids.
Courtesy of CW11.com
Annie then befriends Erin Silver (Jessica Stroup), who is commonly referred to as Silver, after a rocky start. Silver made a video about her that was spread online, but got back into Annie’s good graces by getting her a part in the school play Spring Awakening (and a connection to its cute lead male: the “richest boy in school”). She is a quirky kid who moves to her own beat with her own YouTube series, called “The Vicious Circleí”. Meanwhile, Annie’s brother Dixon has problems of his own. He makes the lacrosse team and is better than some of the its current players, including George Evans (Kellan Lutz), who gets retaliation by trying to get Dixon kicked off the team after a fight during practice. When West Beverly High is trashed by a rival school’s lacrosse team, Dixon and Navid Shirazi (Michael Steger), the head of the school’s newscast and the one who gets all the dirt on his classmates, lead a prank back that includes releasing pigs on their field. The team is punished and Dixon takes all of the blame from the principal (and his dad) until Ethan steps up as well, making a connection between the two.
The kids aren’t the only West Beverly residents with problems. Harry Wilson meets up with a former girlfriend Tracy Clark (now Naomi’s mother) at a parent-teacher meeting and later gets the bombshell dropped that the two had a child in high school. English teacher Ryan Matthews has a style that puts him at odds with the other, older teachers and an inability to voice his feelings for Kelly Taylor, even though he finally gets a chance when he goes to her house and gets a little assistance from her friend Brenda. Their future is still unknown as Kelly has a son whose father is still unknown.
High school isn’t an easy time to get through, but it seems a little bit more glamorous for the kids of Beverly Hills. It seems only more issues will come up for all of them in the episodes to come. The show currently has an order for a total of 13 episodes, and more to be picked up if the show goes over well.
