90210: Sit Down You’re Rocking the Boat

This week’s 90210 was a fun little episode that provided some laughs, some catty fighting and some great escapist television.  It progressed the storylines of the Annie vs Naomi battle as well as the Adrianna/Navid/Teddy love triangle, as well as continuing the aftermath of Silver and Dixon’s break up.  At the start Navid is proclaiming his new mission to be overly nice to the 30-something high school student Teddy to prove he isn’t jealous, as Dixon sets off on a quest to find his “Female Dixon”. 
 
Busy with his news paper duties love triangle Navid loans Dixson his Lamborghini to get pizza where he meets a hot, fun older woman who shares his love of baseball and music.  The two appear to hit it off so, in the great tradition of many classic 90210 plots, Dixon lies about being a high school student and pretends to be an executive in the music business.  The two setup a date for that weekend, but coincidentally both end up on Teddy’s yacht for a party Dixon is invited to and she is DJing before their date. 
 
At the party are a sea-sick Navid, still trying to prove he isn’t jealous, and Adrianna who is busy with Teddy giving Navid a reason to be jealous I in the first place.   To her credit she is for now taking the high road and turning down Teddy’s advances.  I really enjoyed how these scenes played out, with Navid starting to think Teddy isn’t so bad as he gets to know him and Teddy meanwhile making good on the threat Navid thought he imagined.
 
Also on board the yacht are Naomi, Annie and Liam continuing their (now played out) drama and throwing poor Silver in the middle of it.  I must say I am starting to like Annie this year, she is going back and fourth between being a victim and the aggressor in tormenting the irrational Naomi.  It is far more interesting than her dull, aw-shucks girl-next-door personae from last year.  Liam is still the one completely to blame for this for A) sleeping with Naomi’s sister and B) not coming clean about it when Naomi incorrectly blames Annie for her sister’s trespasses.  These scenes took on a great soapy ridiculousness as Annie first gets the boy from the sexting to prove Naomi sent it out to Silver.  However, after clearing her good name Annie goes strictly on the offensive by lying to Naomi that she’s been sleeping with Liam since they got together as Liam stands there looking dumb and pretty.  The cliff-hanger to this is Liam breaking into some basement and looking at blueprints, I can’t imagine what his plan is now.
 
 
 The only other really interesting development is whether or not Kelly Taylor is going to try and steal Principal Harry Wilson away from Aunt Becky.  It will be really interesting to see where they are going with this plot in the future, but my guess is that it could just be a red herring plot that won’t go anywhere because the Wilson’s just don’t feel like a couple headed for affairs and divorce to me.  Yeah, and also I’m just waiting for Naomi’s sister to be revealed as the one who stole her boy away, my real hope is that once this happens Naomi kicks her out of the house and over to Melrose Place because train-wreck could use somebody as coldhearted as her.

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!