The CW’s 90210 returns from hiatus on Monday night (April 18) with a fun episode that takes the gang on Spring Break.
Before I start with my review, I’ll point out some self-admitted hypocrisy on my behalf: As much as I make snark about The CW’s focus on way too many “spoiled rich pretty white people who have sex with one another” shows, 90210 is a show I’ve watched from the very beginning – yep, that poorly-conceived pilot is where I got started, and now it’s two years later and I still haven’t been able to shake it off. I’ve been through the good, and the very, very bad (like letting the main character kill someone without serious consequences), but for some reason, I’ve kept watching. I blame it on the appearances from original series stars luring me in and then somehow, some way I ended up curious about what happens next.
90210 this season has had its shaky moments, but I’d like to think it’s pulling itself together. For starters (spoiler warning!) Debbie and Ryan, the adults of the show (or the ones whose characters are adults, at least) are on the way out. Their little affair was kind of gross and not very engaging. Annoying peripheral characters like Emily or Liam’s half-brother are, thankfully, gone and far away. 90210 in this week’s episode, at least, seems to focus on the main, regular characters, which is exactly how it should be. It’s like yes, I do love to hate Naomi’s sister Jen; but I think it’s much more interesting to hate on villainous characters who are on the show every week.
And that villainy seems to be coming out in full force here with Adrianna. She’s a woman scorned right now. Navid cheated on her with her best friend and her brush with fame seems to be over — and interestingly, forgotten, since no one on their Spring Break trip even seems to recognize her. He and Silver do some Very Bad Things to one another here, picking up from the last new episode. They’re both not too happy to be on the same trip together, that’s for sure. A side note to a Silver/Adrianna rivalry – since when did Silver really care what everyone thought of her? Is this not the same character who made a nearly-pornographic movie with Dixon? Didn’t she also run a blog herself that would frequently expose how much certain West Beverly students sucked? I feel like some of the older developments for the character were forgotten, and I admit, I miss the old, snarky Silver.
The other big storyline for “The Enchanted Donkey” involves Trevor Donovan’s character of Teddy. No offense to the actor, but I never bought the whole womanizer aspect of the character in Season 2. When he came out of the closet this year, suddenly Teddy made sense. I don’t know if this was always the intention of the writers, but it works. Unfortunately, it seemed that before now Teddy’s storylines were in the backburner, if Teddy even appeared in a given episode at all. But anyway… in this episode Teddy is reunited with an old buddy of his (Smallville’s Aquaman, Alan Ritchson) who he may have had more in common with than he knew. I’m happy to see his story developing, though I’m still disappointed that Kyle Riabko, who played Teddy’s first love interest Ian, did not continue with the show.
Another character who seems to be finding a chance at love is Gillian Zinser’s Ivy. My Ivy opinion has kind of been the opposite of how I’ve changed my tune on Teddy. When Ivy first showed up, I thought she was awesome and snarky; now, it seems she has only one setting – mopey. I hope that Raj can break her out of her shell and not instead give her more reasons to be mopey.
The storyline with Naomi and her nerd Max is a fun change for her character, and it’s great to see Naomi actually smiling. I hope for good things with the Max storyline, and wouldn’t mind seeing him sticking around on the show.
“The Enchanted Donkey” starts 90210 down its path of final episodes for Season Three, and I know it’s being very optimistic, but I hope it continues to get better. I’m excited by the prospect of the series getting a new showrunner (Rebecca Sinclair is moving on) and I hope the next one gets rid of the ridiculous artsy opening titles and instead goes toward that whole “turning around and puckering at the camera” credits thing that the original series did. 90210 is still a powerful brand and with the right direction and care, it SHOULD do as well as it did in the past. All of these creative changes have NEVER done the show a good service, but I feel that they’re getting there… it’s just taken a while to make it happen. The first goal should be to be sure Annie, Dixon, Liam, Silver & co. are as memorable as Brenda, Brandon, Dylan, Kelly, and hell, even Andrea were.
Oh, and hey – “The Enchanted Donkey” has a monkey in it. And a cat fight that ends with some characters in a pool. Those things immediately makes it worth watching or giving it a chance. The only really bad part of it is I spent a lot of time speculating on what changes are coming for the show in the future, instead of focusing so much on the “now.”
