So watching 90210 today, obviously. The date rape episode. Well the first at least. And this thing was a total mess of “What the fuck?” I actually sat around and sat “WHAT?!” at the screen no less than twenty times, in 44 minutes.

So let’s see…

Brenda decides she wants to do something meaningful, so Brandon suggests she work with Andrea, who volunteers at a teen crisis hotline. Except the call it “a rap line” every single time. Which, to me, suggests that you call the hotline and Run D.M.C. talk you through your problems. And while that would have rocked, it is not what happened.

The first night Brenda is just listening and learning. And she gets a personal call, which is not allowed. It’s Kelly, being Kelly, and Brenda says “Yeah.” “Not really.” and “The center closes at 10.” When she is then questioned by the woman who runs the Rap Line, who I might add was standing RIGHT THERE when Brenda got the call, Brenda tells her: “That was my ride, she just needed the address.”

So is this help center located at Yeah St., Not really lane or The Center Closes at 10 Drive? I mean, that might just be the worst lie I have ever heard in my life. And I’ve heard kids who just learned how to talk lie. They’re better at it than Brenda Walsh. I think she pulled off a lie to a deaf mute once, but only because her hands were in her pockets. Christ.

Anyway, Brenda, while waiting for Kelly who is always late, ends up back in the call center after hours. The phone rings. It’s a girl who has been date raped. Well. Raped. They add the tag “date” to it, but the circumstances they describe are oddly sketchy. Anyway – she calls at 10:30 from a payphone behind the school. The drama is now afoot.

And no I am not making light of rape here, but this show deals with all of this with its usual ham-handed flair.

Night two and Brenda has tried to tell Andrea that she kinda sorta, woopsie, picked up a call when she wasn’t supposed to. Andrea doesn’t listen to her. So that night they get a call at 10 (center is open 6-10, this call comes as they are closing) and it’s the same girl. Everyone gets upset but they give the call to Brenda anyway, since this girl knows her. Brenda tires again to get a name but only find out that she was raped again, this time by the same guy who brought along a friend. The girl hangs up again and everyone goes home.

Night three! No call. They wait till a bit after 10 and then leave, but once the women in charge goes, Brenda convinces Andrea to go back upstairs and wait. At around 10:45 they get the third call and Brenda gives the girl some tough love, telling her she has to fight back and say no and that there is a problem and she has to come forward. The girl hangs up again but this time Brenda is certain she knows who the girl is.

So she confronts her at school and the girl freaks out a bit. She tells Brenda she can’t come forward and that Brenda is jealous because this girl is getting attention and Brenda is a nobody. She storms off.

That night the girl goes to her car and there are the two rapists. Back for night four. Yeah, they aren’t the smartest rapists in the world. Let’s rape the same girl in the same place for four nights running! What could possibly go wrong? This time the cops show up and arrest them and the girl is lead away crying.

We cut to Brenda, Andrea and Brandon standing on a hill. Brenda says she needs to be alone and walks off. Brandon asks Andrea how Brenda knew this was going to happen. Brace yourself for this exchange.

Andrea: She knew all the calls happened after 10 and from the school so she figured they all happened after Grudge Week events. (Grudge week is a school spirit week, the girl is a cheerleader and guys football players)

Brandon: How’d Brenda put all that together?

Andrea: She’s a good listener.

Wait a fucking second. What did she put together? She was TOLD where this was. She knew the times. Three times in a row in the same time frame at the same place and she gets credit for “putting together” that it would happen again on night four? Yeah, Brenda is fucking Kreskin. Maybe they give her all this credit because they figure Brenda is slow? I don’t know but that just amazed me.

Oh, and in the B plot: Brandon meets an “older woman” (she’s 23) who is an amazing accupressurist and new age-y woman. He falls for her, thinks she has fallen for him and agrees to be her test subject for a full body wrap. So they go to her place and he meets her boyfriend.

That’s the extent of the main B plot. The minor two second C plot is Brandon being mooned after by a freshman. That’s about it.

Oh, side note since I forgot to mention it before. In an earlier episode, when Brenda steals Brandon’s car, she mentions it to Kelly thusly:

Brenda: Brandon would freak if I took Mondale.

Kelly: Mondale?

Brenda: Brandon’s car. He named it after Walter Mondale? He ran for President? Is from Minnesota?

Kelly: Whatever.

Yes, Brandon’s car is named Mondale.

Side notes for you: Part of me expected Steve to be the rapist. Except then the girl mentioned he brought friends the second time and I crossed Steve off my list – because he doesn’t have friends. That’s sad, but true. There you have it, Steve’s greatest defense! He has no friends.

Dylan showed up long enough to be a sarcastic fuck, and I love him for it. Brandon asks his advice about older women and Dylan spends the entire conversation mocking him, quietly and openly, and it goes right over Brandon’s head. Dylan is a great superhero, isn’t he? Snarky as well.

————–

So let’s see. A bunch of episodes to talk about this time. Specifically: The First Time, One on One, Higher Education, Perfect Mom and The 17-Year Itch (also known as Season 1, episodes 5-9).

First up we find Brandon and his old GF. She comes to town and they fuck. That’s … yeah. His parents let her stay in their house, in a room that has a connecting door (via the shared bathroom) and then they seem to act surprised when they hear Brandon having sex. What did they think would happen? Seriously. Brandon is a man whore, and we all know it, why don’t they?

But anyway this also starts what I think of as the “Rock Block of Bad Parenting” episodes. You see his GF, who is so unmemorable I couldn’t even be bothered to try and find the character’s name, ran away from home. Why? Because after Brandon left she couldn’t take her hellish life.

Now she describes her hellish life. Her step-father is mean to her. This is a show where people have coke problems, date rape, abuse… her step-father is mean to her. That’s it. And yet once she looses Brandon she can’t cope at all and runs away. That’s how good he is, folks. Brandon Walsh for May… no Presi… no GOD! I mean what the hell?

The episode also features Dylan, being a stand-up kinda guy who takes a punch from his friend because sometimes people lose their cool. It’s all good, in Dylan’s world. He’ll be fine, hair wasn’t even mussed.

Then we go on to a great dual-plot set: Brandon tries out for Basketball while Brenda learns how to drive. No, really, that’s the episode. This being 90210, of course, they have to try and make things vapidly socially relevant. So we get told that a lot of the team are part of this bullshit program to get inner city kids to the school where they don’t have to do any work just so they can be on the team. Brandon suspects this new kid of being one of them. The kid isn’t. They yell about racism for a few and then make-up.

Understand: we learn quickly this kid is not part of the questionable program. Do we ever deal with the actual problem raised? Of course not. We single out someone who isn’t part of it and show that racism is wrong (Hear that Steve? Steve is now not only an asshole he is also a bigot, way to develop character! What do they THINK they’re doing?). But we knew this already, all of it. So what about this program and the fact that it is ruining people’s lives? Eh, fuck that, this one kid who, I need to repeat had nothing to do with the program, isn’t in trouble! HURRAY! THE WORLD IS SHINY AGAIN!

Meanwhile, Brenda can’t drive. We get a dream sequence where she thinks she’s a NASCAR driver, but she sucks at driving. So of course Kelly convinces her to borrow Brandon’s car anyway. And Brenda does and it … runs out of gas. She doesn’t crash it or anything. It just runs out of gas. So she goes to get help and when she gets back the car is gone!

They file a police report and Brenda lies about everything, then admits the truth to Brandon. The car is found, because it was simply towed. Why was it towed? Well, abandoning a car in the middle of the road can result in that. We get a grin and a smile, the 90210 nod and wink, basically, and with an aw shucks everything is fine.

What did we learn there, kids? Issues don’t matter and stealing the car will turn out fine. Thank God for these life lessons.

As part of the Rock Block of Bad Parenting, Jim, the Walsh dad, pressures Brandon to … try his best … until Brandon snaps at him. What? I … well all right. Yeah you don’t want your parents wanting the best for you. That must suck.

Moving on! We come to a great life lesson moment. Brandon cheats on history quizzes, thanks to Steve who has copies of the tests. What the fuck is it with Steve, man? He’s the root of all fucking evil on this show! Anyway, Brandon cheats until he realizes he doesn’t want to be a cheater so he stops. He doesn’t get caught, deal with it or do anything other than feel guilty for upsetting Andrea, who knows he is cheating. And she’s just pissed because, well, he’s cheating. We also learn the history professor wears ugly suits because his dead wife picked them out.

I don’t know about you but I feel like I am growing and learning as a person here.

Oh, but the Rock Block of Bad Parenting moment! All right, so Brandon is cheating and acting all gloomy and wretched and emo. His parents notice. They decide to leave him alone and not bother him. When he confronts them, all about how if he had bad grades they would hate him they simply say they wouldn’t, they just want to see him smile.

So we’ve gone from asking him to just do his best to asking him to simply lie to their faces, so they feel better. World class. World fucking class. I applaud this parenting choice!

Oh and Brenda gets a shitty dye job, care of Kelly. But all is right because as a result she meets Dylan. Dylan rides up on his motorcycle and offers to get her hair fixed because “he knows a guy.” Of course you do, Dylan honey, you’re Superman. But the following exchange happens. Word for word:

Brenda: I like your butt, I mean… your bike.
Dylan: Well thank you. Hop on. … my bike that is.

Yeah. But fuck that! Next up we get to meet Kelly’ mom! The drunk coke-snorting whore! YAY! She’s everything this show will turn into eventually. Which is wonderful and magical, I tell you. Fucking train wreck of a character here. Of course they use it to show how great the Walshes are, because that was the goal of the first season, but still! She’s impressively horrible. Kelly asks her to stop drinking, because after all she is in AA (the mom, not Kelly) and her mother agrees. And does a line instead.

Ok, now maybe it’s just me but that is not a step up. Better yet when she sees her mother do a line Kelly just shrugs, gets nominally upset, and lets it slide. ‘Cause you know, whatever.

Until! The big Mother/Daughter fashion show! Then Kelly’s Mom, who is still coked to the gills, starts acting like a belligerent drunk, and not at all like someone on coke. Well. I don’t know, I think the writers could’ve found someone in Hollywood in the 90s to check up on what coke heads act like. Maybe. It can’t have been that hard, right? But anyway they didn’t. The entire episode is done with this slightly off gloss of an after school special, except no one really cares about the mom. Sure Kelly sheds some fake tears and freaks out later, but in general everyone is just like: Well, it’s a disease, so why should she be ashamed? She should just get help. Then it’ll be ok.

There’s your life lesson. It’s hard being the kid of an addict, but when your mom goes to rehab eventually you can stay in the house alone at 17 and everything will be better, because your friend’s mom will make you dinner. Or something.

And then we come to the first episode to really focus on the Walsh parents. It’s about time! And how do they choose to focus on them? Do they show up how this great couple that is a sterling example for the entire fucking city solves bat problems at the same bat time? No, they bring them close to divorce and ruin. Eh, what else were they gonna do with 40 minutes to fill, right?

So Jim is working hard for the IRS and Cindy is still a stay at home mom. And that makes her unhappy. Look, it’s been months, she’s been unhappy and whined about not having a job anymore. She why doesn’t she get one?! What is the problem? Jim wouldn’t have to work so hard, she could do what she wants again – this would solve everything! Which is why, I suppose, we can’t do that. But still.

So an old boyfriend of Cindy’s …

Wait. I have to say that somehow I feel oddly like I’m getting away with something by using their first names. I mean it was 18 years ago when I first saw this stuff, you didn’t call your friends parents by their first names. Somehow this carries over to the Walshes. Shut up, all right? Let’s just get back it.

So Cindy’s old BF finds her and of course he is a rich photog who wins Pulitzers and shit. So they almost start an affair while Jim is oblivious. Brandon and Brenda fight about if their mom is really having an affair. But at the last second, and with overacting deserving of a Brenda Walsh Bad Acting Award, Cindy decides she can’t and runs out weeping.

Jim realizes something is wrong, finally, and decides to do something about it. Cindy smiles and says she loves him. And we’re out. That’s it! The underlying problems aren’t really ever addressed by the characters involved to each other. They split and solve themselves. And don’t talk about it. Which is part of the problem we’re shown in the first place.

I don’t get this show sometimes. I laugh at it but I don’t get it. Not really.

Side notes for all the episodes at once: Donna still has nothing to do. David still has nothing much to do but for a small note here and there that tally up to useless. Yeah these recaps can’t sit and wait and pile up like this anymore. One or two eps per I think. This is too much backlog to really get to the nut of the issue which is that this show is fucked up. Fucked! Up! I tell you.

Side note for you, in two years, on Sept. 2nd it will be 9/02/10. We need to plan a party.

More 90210 thoughts, for the fuck of it.

Watched the next two episodes the other night and couldn’t stop laughing. In the first we meet Dylan who is, by turns: fantastically rich, utterly alone, a fighter, a surfer, a poet and a stand-up kinda guy. Basically he needs a cape and a blow-job and we’re done. Hey Brenda, we’re all out of capes!

Sorry.

Anyway, the whole episode is just… well it’s 90210 isn’t it? The mom is annoyed because she’s all alone, what with no job here. Why doesn’t she just get one then? They make reference to her having had a job in their old burg. But somehow here, no she doesn’t think it just suffers and hates being a housewife. Ok. Kelly is a bitch, Brendan makes friends with surfers and one of them is a girl he likes!

Of course she’s also a drunk and a loser who could be so special that even Dylan sees it! And if Dylan sees something special in you then you best listen, because he’s… shut yo mouth! I’m talkin’ ’bout Dylan.

Uhm so yeah. They go to the beach and girl gets drunk and her stupid friends leave her and then Brendan saves her life. And Brenda? Well she goes and calls 911. That’s all she does. Not that there isn’t something to be said for it but everyone is all “These two saved this girl’s life! They’re heroes!” Really? Brenda just kinda… hit 3 buttons and said “C’mere!”

In the second episode Brenda makes a new friend who is also a shoplifter and Brandon gets a job, that turns into another job. This thing is a mess in ways only 90210 manages. Sure you want to bring home that Brandon works for shit money but he has a choice and some of the people working with him don’t and that isn’t fair! And when he talks to Brenda about this and they discuss that and the fact they have a maid Brandon ends the conversation by saying “They’ll be all right.” That’s it. His own assurance that, all over the country, migrant workers working for less than minimum wage are out there but they’ll be fine so don’t think about them too hard. Thank god this show had deep social messages.

On the same level Brenda overacts to the motherfuckin’ hilt when she’s accused of shoplifting because the girl she was with was a shoplifter. She screams and flails her arms and generally hams up the stage all about how she wanted to steal but didn’t.

Except 90210 is here to go the extra mile.

In her English class they are reading Les Mis. SEE KIDS?! We’re on message! With famous books! We must be important! SEE?!

So anyway, later Brenda’s now ex-friend comes over and explains the whole thing to Brenda’s mom, who hasn’t called the store or the cops just has a bag of stolen goods in her foyer and hands them over to a teenager. For reals. And the teen tells her how Brenda is innocent. and Brenda listens from the upstairs and we see her getting emotional. Her friends leaves, never having seen Brenda and Brenda whispers “Thank you” to the closing door. No, Brenda, thank you.

Uhm, meanwhile Brandon quits his job and threatens his boss and then Dylan (remember him? THE SUPERHERO?!) takes him to this place that has real people and real food” where Brandon quickly gets a new job. Yes folks, only episode 3 and we’ve hit the Peach Pit.

Meanwhile in other character news: Kelly is a bitch, Steve is an asshole, Donna has maybe half a scene, David is still three feet tall and ridonkulous and uhm… that about does it. God this show is magically stupid. And delicious.

So let me take you in a time machine. I got one right here. We can go back to the furthest reaches of time in this puppy. Where to go, where to go? I know, how about 1990?

Let’s go to a land where TV was stranger than it had been in a lot of ways. A land where teenagers don’t act or look like teenagers. Where California is some magical land that doesn’t really exist in any provable way. A time when David Austin Green was roughly three feet tall.

Yeah, I watched the opener of Beverly Hills 90210 today.

I haven’t seen it since it first aired, mind you. Back then it was this show that you watched because … it was there. It was zany and wacky and you only hoped they meant it that way. They did. For the most part. It’s aged … interestingly, let me tell you.

The California they use is familiar to children of the 80s, teens of the 90s. We saw it in Beverly Hills Cop, in all sorts of movies and shows and all 90210 did was make it a bit stranger and then drop the characters to teens. That way we could relate. Or something.

Watching these pans across campus with people randomly dancing, wearing outfits that no one on Earth wore in public to High School, much less a costume party, and generally acting like they were being paid to be there (well…) it becomes this carnival. It’s a wonderland. Land of Misfit Humans.

These days Brenda and Brandon’s relationship is still verging on creepy (She asks him to help pick out her outfits? Not that she takes his advice but that she asks? And they’re sixteen? Really?) and yet also bitchy as hell. They will ditch each other at the drop of a hat for social reasons and yet when they both get home from dates far past curfew say “Tell Mom and you’re dead!” at the same time and laugh. Like they’re nine.

And maybe that’s the secret. Mentally they were about nine. Physically they were about thirty-nine. Oh, Andrea. Oh why did they have to cast the “poor girl from the wrong side of the tracks who is also ultra-smart” with an actress who looked to be about forty? I keep thinking she’s the journalism professor, not a student.

Ian Ziering, and this hurts me to say, is the breakout for me in this first pair of episodes (the two that make up the pilot) because he is the only guy who comes across as remotely believable – for a college show. Except that outfit at the party! Steve! STEVE! Listen to me! Who told you a white polo shirt, white shorts and a long blue blazer were a good fashion choice? Who did it? I don’t care that Brian Austin Green wrecked your car, fuck the car. Kick the ass of your fashion consultant.

Brandon is written to be so white bread and pure that it breaks him. Let’s see – gets a date with a hot girl who is also one of the richest girls in school, while at his first party ever out there, check. Takes her on a date where she rides her dad’s motorcycle and then let’s him drive it, check. Girl suddenly exclaims, in the hot tub, “Let’s take off all our clothes!”, check. And then Brandon talks her off the ledge and wants to take it slow and easy because hey, he’s a good guy. This only happened, of course, to set up a whole “Is Brandon scum? No he’s a STAND UP KINDA GUY” bit that shows everyone that, it is true – this man has no dick. I’m not saying he should have fucked everything offered, no of course not, but it felt so false and so faked and determinalistic that the laughter didn’t stop.

Brenda, of course, fakes being in college to go out with the lawyer. Now, I hadn’t seen this episode in 18 years remember, so when we first see this guy in the club I said, to my cat “Brenda is meeting her designated date rapist for the evening, kitty, pay attention.” But he wasn’t. No he was just a hip and happening lawyer who hangs out at clubs and can’t tell a sixteen year old from a twenty-one year old. Well, on this show I suppose I can see why not. She does look about twenty-five, but do we have to admit it?

They did play one moment perfectly (and by perfectly I mean hysterically) though. When they guy finds out, after three dates, that Brenda is only sixteen (But only when she admits it! Come on! She was supposed to be an astronomy major and yet she described a black hole as “A hole. That’s black.”) he gets pissed and drives her home. On their way home she tells him that she can’t believe she was going to sleep with him that “You were going to be the first…” and they get a one second shot of this guy’s face and you just know he’s thinking about forgiving her lies, if only for the night. Fucked up? Sure. But perfect.

They also had a wonderful payoff earlier, to something that I don’t think was meant as a set-up. Brenda calls Kelly. Light is streaming through the windows of both bedrooms. Bright, the-sun-has-landed sunlight lighting the sets. And Kelly’s mother comes in and lectures her about having people call “in the middle of the night.” I started to laugh. And then her mother said something about how could people call each other at 6am. All right, that wins. When 6am is the middle of the night – your life is full of that Beverly Hills 90210 flavor! Kinda like cold coffee aftertaste, but I digress.

This show has aged with flavor, I tell you. It used to be something I would watch because it was so impossible and ludicrous that it had to be seen to be believed, at turns incredibly heavy-handed and misinformed. Pure fucking magic. But now? Eighteen years later? It’s even better. It looks kind of like someone in the future decided to make a show about teens in Beverly Hills and used bad future design sense to guess at what free-wheeling teens must’ve worn back then. And then they wrote it like they thought this sort of show should be written.

Except it wasn’t a message from the future. It was done in its time. And that is what makes it even more magical now than ever. Christ, this show is like the bubblegum you would get with baseball cards – you don’t want to chew it but you have to see if it’s fresh enough to actually chew and then… well yeah it tastes kinda funny but you’re chewing it and it is somehow strangely addictive.

Fuck. 90210. Yeah, man. Yeah.