90210 recaps

I never really watched 90210 until after I graduated from college. Right now I'm all caught up on the shows that I watch regularly now, but I've still got another week of vacation. I discovered that on CBS.com, you can watch the first four seasons of 90210, so I've gotten through seven episodes now. I'm glad that I waited until this point in my life to watch 90210, because not only is it entertaining in the way that it probably was when it came out in the 90's, but it's also got an added element of humor now that it's totally outdated.

Here are a few observations so far:

In one of the first episodes of the first season, Brenda uses a fake ID to get into a club. Kelly and Donna also try to get in, but the bouncer kicks them out. Instead of leaving the club once Donna and Kelly don't get in, Brenda starts talking to a guy. She lies about her age, and he asks if he can buy her a drink. She lets him get her a drink, takes forever deciding what she wants, and then she orders a banana daquiri. I think I'm going to try to order a banana daquiri next time I'm out at a club. I'll let you know the bartender's response. This was also the first instance in the show where I was thinking, "Oh my god, I can't believe 90210 starts out with Brenda being date raped!," and I was pretty surprised when her drink wasn't laced with roofies. Maybe that was more likely to happen in later seasons, at the Peach Pit After Dark.

So, of course, Brenda gets a ride home with this guy from the club, but she says she'll go back to his apartment first. This was the second instance in the show where I was convinced Brenda was about to be date raped. She was in the guy's apartment and they start kissing, and he starts to push off the shoulder of her dress, and I couldn't believe where this was about to be going. Who knew 90210 was so full of lessons?! Anyway, Brenda asks him to stop, and he does, and then he takes her home (well, she has him drop her off at some random sorority house, since she lied about her age).

Eventually, Brenda is at a nice restaurant with the guy, drinking wine, and confesses to him that she's only 17. Lucky for him she told him at dinner, because she was planning on sleeping with him that night (since he was so much older, it may have been statutory rape then, regardless of her lying about her age....little legal lesson for you). Anyway, he gets really furious with her, and starts basically crying about how he really liked her. Not the response I expected, but whatever. I don't remember the rest of the episode, nothing really noteworthy happened.

Episode seven of season one is the mother-daughter fashion show at West Beverly High School! But Brenda is ashamed of her "normal" mother, and thinks Kelly's mother is so much cooler. Kelly, though, is tired of her alcoholic mother, and longs for a normal mother like Mrs. Walsh. It turns out Kelly's mom is having a relapse, and Kelly comes home after dinner at Brenda's to find an empty bottle of vodka. It's actually kind of a sad episode, but what really caught my eye was that it was an empty bottle of Popov vodka. Personally, I would think that since Kelly's family is so rich, her mom would be drinking something a little more high-end than Popov.  I never would have found the humor in that when I was 12.