Goin’ Back to Cali
90210 has come back strong this year after a very rocky and inconsistent first season. Tonight’s episode was what we want from out teen soaps: back-stabbing, love triangles and a good sex scandal. The main plot follows the cell phone image(s) of good girl gone bad, Annie, and her desperate plea to Naomi not to release them. Considering that entire storyline is completely dependant on Naomi refusing to believe something that didn’t happen, didn’t happen they still managed to get a lot of juicy tension out of it. And perhaps most shocking of all, I actually start to feel something other than annoyance for Annie. I don’t know of it was just the plot or if Shanae “Grimey” Grimes took some acting lessons over the hiatus but her character is finally coming together they way it should have last year. The only thing that really bugged me about the “sexting” plot (besides the fact that sexting is like cyber-sex via text not texting nude pics, CW get your teen speak right) is this is 90210’s second plot involving nude high school kids in digital media, do kiddie porn laws not apply in that zip? Because seriously all those kids should be registered sex offenders, or is Annie already 18? Either way Silver definitely wasn’t last season.
The other biggest plot is the brewing love triangle between Navid, Adrianna and the new 30-something high school student/movie star’s kid/pro-level tennis player, Teddy. I’m a little disappointed in this twist, Adrianna and Navid have been my favorite characters since pretty early on and this doesn’t really seem all that consistent with the relationship that’s been established between them, and also Navid isn’t usually such a dick. I am thrilled that Jessica Lowndess was actually promoted to series regular though, because she can act circles around the other girls. Hopefully Teddy becomes more interesting as time goes on, and I can stop noticing that looks like he should be one of the parents and not one of the kids.
Elsewhere Token and Silver continued their annoying breakup, for the record I think both of them could do better but I do side with Dixon as Silver is just nuts. Rumer Willis made a cameo appearance, not memorable but if it became a recurring role I wouldn’t mind, I begrudgingly admit she can be charming. Ryan also came back, but I’ve heard he may be leaving for Melrose Place which is all well and good, Melrose really needs the help and Glee definitely wins the hot TV teach award anyways. So far, even though we’re only two episodes in, it seems like season 2 will be a big improvement over last year!