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Aaaaannnndddd we’re five for five when it comes to dream sequence openings, but this time we get Brian Austin Green shirtless and putting out a fire with his t-shirt, so I really didn’t want anyone to wake up. Unfortunately, Brian does wake up, and we’re brought back to the harsh reality of this 90210 reboot.

If you’ll recall, the last episode ended with the entire set burning down, but we somehow still have The Peach Pit set, so filming must go on. Of course, the very first scene being shot is a love scene between Brian and Tori, leading me to believe that Tori is full-on still in love with Brian in real life and created this entire reboot to be able to kiss him again.

Brian tries to buddy up to his new-found stalker-turned-son, Zach, offering him a job on set as a production assistant, and then quickly telling him it would be okay if he wanted to call him Dad, which was so cringeworthy I wanted to throw my TV out the window. Zach tells him it’s weird…because like, duh, especially because Brian has yet to tell anyone about Zach, including his wife or other children. Brian acts all embarrassed, but he’s so cute it doesn’t matter and I immediately forget about how awkward it was. Frankly, if Brian Austin Green asked me to call him Daddy I would jump at the opportunity.

Before they begin filming the Tori/Brian sex scene, Emily Valentine reappears like the loch ness monster rising from the sea, and announces that the production has been shut down, yet again. They can’t film because they’re uninsured, and nobody will insure them until they find the stalker, so naturally the cast decides to take things into their own hands and go find the stalker themselves. Emily Valentine tells them if they don’t find him by the end of the day, they’ll all need to clean out their trailers—that they’ve all fully moved into. Tori Spelling has all six of her children, a big screen TV, a dog, and a literal f*cking live chicken in her trailer when she’s supposed to live a fifteen-minute drive away, but it’s better than the weird mountain-yurt-esque trailer Shannen has put together.

Gabrielle is still confused, receiving flowers from her poor, sweet husband while also navigating a sexual relationship with snake-woman Emily Valentine, who demands she sign a release saying she won’t sue over anything to do with their relationship. Gabrielle doesn’t want to sign it because she’s not out to anyone, and doesn’t want her coming out party to be signing a piece of paper, which like, calm down Andrea, it’s not that big of a deal.

Jennie has started dating her bodyguard who, despite being super hot, is boring AF. She starts pretending to like whatever he likes and we’re quickly given insight to her three failed marriages. She then debates whether she and hot bodyguard should sign a sex contract like Gabrielle and Emily Valentine, and there’s an uncomfortable joke about #MeToo and how they all miss the 90s.

As they’re all heading out of a meeting discussing the hundreds of people that hate them and could be their stalker, Tori falls down the stairs and is suddenly reminded of Ray Pruit, who in season six pushed her down the stairs, and in doing so accidentally destroyed his whole career. Fans literally ruined his career and sent him tons of hate mail as though he had pushed real-life Tori down the stairs, and this, the whole gang decides, is why he’s now going after them. They find him singing in a dive bar and he tells them he’s now a passionate fire fighter who would never set a fire! He fights them! Ah, yes! Logic! Also, depressing! As they’re apologizing for accusing the failed actor of being obsessed with them, they get a call from Jason saying they caught the real stalker: a bizarre-o super fan who owned the dress they stole in the pilot episode.

Now that we’re all safe and insured, the pilot can finally start shooting again, and Tori explains to the girls how she’s super nervous about the sex scene and doesn’t know if it’ll be better if Brian gets a boner or if he doesn’t…what’s a girl to do!? Tori spots David walking to the craft services table and follows him quicker than I follow any dog account anyone sends me. “SO, DEEP THOUGHTS, DONNA AND DAVID, HOW HAVE THEY MAINTAINED THEIR RELATIONSHIP THROUGH THE YEARS!?” She screeches at a quiet, forlorn David, who’s simply trying to learn his lines. “Well, their relationship is imaginary…” he answers, ignoring her while also being crazy hot.

They try filming the scene, but Jason won’t shoot her from the right side, so she refuses to continue and runs off set using a comforter as a towel. She tries again the next day but freaks out when Brian, who’s preoccupied with the fact that he has a new child, is acting distant. She decides to hire an “intimacy coach,” who comes on set to make sure everyone’s comfortable and happy. When they start getting into the scene and Brian brushes up against Tori’s boobs, the intimacy coach calls a cut, activating Tori screaming “THIS IS LIKE THE HANDMAID’S TALE!!!” She has literally been waiting twenty years for Brian to brush up against her boobs again, and the disdain and disappointment in her eyes is the best “acting” she’s delivered so far.

Meanwhile, Ian and the new writer start dating and keep asking each other to “Netflix and chill” like preteens. They act super dramatic about it the whole time, like somebody, anybody, is going to care, but it just doesn’t matter,q and their storyline is by far the hardest to get invested in. I mean, I don’t want to say Ian could be removed from the show and nobody would notice but….Ian could be removed from the show and nobody would notice.

Jason decides he can’t raise someone else’s baby and wants to leave Vanessa Lachey, but Jennie tries convincing him not to, because now that she’s in a committed relationship with her bodyguard she believes in love again…oh, and she’s also become completely insufferable. Gabrielle announces to the cast that she’s not straight and doesn’t know exactly how she identifies, Shannen calls her gay, and Tori wonders out loud if Brian is gay too, and that’s why he’s not into their sex scene. Ah, Tor…so sad, so delusional. Brian, inspired by Gabrielle’s announcement and desperate for attention, takes the moment to introduce Zach to the rest of the cast as his son. Shannen eats a sandwich, and through her lackluster attitude and subtle bitchiness, she has quickly become my favorite character.

Tori and Brian finally get through their “sex” scene, which is literally just a soft makeout where we don’t even get any tongue, and Tori is very pleased when Brian pops an accidental stiffy. Jason calls cut for the day and announces they’ve finally shot one scene, only 46 remain before the pilot is done! As they leave for the day to their apparent live-in trailers, Gabrielle meets the detective who’s investigating the case they allegedly solved, and we watch him pick up a water bottle that had been tossed in the recycling by none other than….Brian’s stalker-turned-son Zach!

The episode ends with Shannen kidnapping Tori’s chicken in her brand new car, and I’m left wondering how they’re going to wrap this whole thing up in only one more episode. Next week is the season finale, so I’m going to re-up my Xanax prescription and snuggle in for what is sure to be an episode even more confusing than the pilot.

Images: FOX; Giphy (6)

After the premiere of the 90210 reboot last week, I was left feeling disappointed and genuinely sad for Tori Spelling and the rest of the self-identified has-been cast. Frankly, it was a mess of a pilot. I needed a Powerpoint slideshow to help me keep track of the plot lines and an Anne-Hathaway-in-The-Devil-Wears-Prada level assistant to remember all the relationships.

Going into the second episode, I was harboring resentment that they somehow managed to get me to tune in, but within the first 10 minutes I was invested. What can I say? I’ve always been a sucker for the underdog, especially when the underdog was a child star. The fact that Tori Spelling needs this show financially is super evident, both in real life and on the show, and it’s oddly refreshing that she has no qualms about saying it.

The more times she brought up her dire financial situation, the more I connected with her, and at a particularly touching moment featuring her deadbeat husband, she opened up about needing this simply to prove to herself that she can do it. After several comments about living in her super-producer father’s shadow, I was completely on board. You’ve got this, bitch! You can do anything! Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez was a bartender just a year ago, you can do anything! Well, obviously not anything, but I mean you can probably get this reboot together.

The episode opens with Jennie Garth and Tori Spelling waiting to pitch their reboot idea to an overzealous Fox executive who mentions what a 90210 fan she was when she was a kid. It goes very well, and after almost no discussion the execs agree that it is in fact time for a reboot—a real reboot, Spelling specifies. The only stipulation being the entire cast needs to be on board. As we saw in the pilot, nobody is in a place to turn down a regular acting gig, but after the entire cast gets charged with public drunkenness, among other things, they’re less inclined to sign onto anything with Spelling. “See you in another 30 years!” Says a very dramatic Jason Priestley before the cast all leaves Tori standing desolate in the lobby of the Los Angeles Courthouse. Been there!

Obviously everyone’s going to sign on—they’re all depressed and poor, and as someone who’s depressed and poor, I guarantee you they’d all jump at the opportunity to earn steady money and those SAG rates are nothing to shake a stick at. Plus, collagen and botox are not free! Brian Austin Green decides he’s out of the reboot because he’s a “serious” actor now and he’s committed to doing movies! After he announces he’s apparently too good for Beverly Hills 90210 now, we see him poorly auditioning for what appears to be a terrible movie.

The audition sucks, and he knows it, but he miraculously gets the role because his Beyoncé-esque wife agrees to do a song for the soundtrack. He gets irrationally upset and storms into her dance rehearsal yelling and screaming that she doesn’t think he can do it all on his own, and like…he can’t do it all on his own so….get over it? Regardless, he ditches the movie and tells Tori over cocktails that he’s in for the reboot. A still-in-love-with-Brian, drooling Tori is thrilled.

Gabby, fresh off her first-ever girl kiss in the pilot, only agrees to do the reboot if her character Andrea is exploring her sexuality, a life-imitates-art thing that she shares with half the cast before her sweet old man of a husband. I am here for this Gabby-is-fluid-story line and she’s the best actress on the show, giving us a little taste of drama when she starts coming out to her husband in a teary monologue at the end.

Jason will only agree to the pilot if he’s made the director, and Tori, desperate for this reboot to happen, agrees. After Gabby gets him back in the good graces of the Screen Actor’s Guild, of which she’s president, both on the show and in real life, he goes home to tell his on-screen wife, played by Vanessa Lachey. She’s excited and agrees it’s the right move for him, especially with their baby on the way. Only it’s not his baby! You have to love the drama! Her baby’s father shows up at the house and she tells him never to come back, and he doesn’t…he instead pulls some strings and gets himself hired to write the reboot! You love to see it, where there’s a will, there’s a way, kids!

After Jason goes to the hospital for getting kicked in the balls by the same actor he punched in the pilot, he learns that he’s incapable of having children. In fact, he never was able to naturally conceive, as he’s informed by the doctors he inexplicably needs to see after a light ball kick. Ah, imagine having that kind of health insurance! As we wait for his breakdown moment, they decide not to give us too much in one episode, and he tells the doctor he’ll call him back which, as someone who consistently sweeps his problems under the rug, I totally connect with.

Ian Ziering’s still struggling with his wife’s infidelity from last week, and insists he’s not signing on to any contracts while he’s still married and could risk losing half of everything he makes. Half of very little is even less, after all. After planting some cameras in his house to get his cheating wife on video, he tells Tori he’s on board, under the condition she launches a line of skin products with him, which I don’t understand but whatever, it’s Beverly Hills.

Willing to do seemingly anything to get this reboot to happen, she agrees, and it seems she actually might’ve pulled everyone back together. Well, almost. Shannen Doherty is still saving wildlife and simply doesn’t have the time. We’re introduced to the idea that Shannen and Brian Austin Green are “secret best friends” when Green calls her to explain why he’s so mad at his superstar wife for being nice to him. As Shannen pulls netting off a distressed sea lion, she tells Brian to get over it, and then he presses her about the reboot. Naturally, we don’t get a clear answer before she has to hang up the phone to deal with the wild sea lion that she’s rescuing, all while using AirPods to chit chat oceanside.

Deciding to press on sans Shannen, Tori excitedly tells her co-creator, co-star, and best friend, Jennie Garth, that she’s got the gang all together. Jennie decides to crush Tori even more than life already has, saying she’s backing out because her daughter has filed for emancipation and she needs to focus on family. After spending the first half of the episode grappling with the divorce papers her third husband sent her, the idea of her only daughter essentially wanting a divorce as well is understandably upsetting. I mean, If I ever had a kid and they tried to divorce me I would pop off like the world had never seen. While they have a good relationship, Jennie’s daughter, Kyler, wants to be an actress, but Jennie simply won’t allow it! She even throws in a classic “NOT AS LONG AS YOU’RE UNDER MY ROOF” line. Also, if you’re naming your daughter Kyler, she’s going to want to be in show business…that’s like…a given. After a far-too-dramatic back and forth, they make an agreement that Kyler can become an actress like her mother but only if she’s in the 90210 reboot. Not a bad deal for a first job honestly. My first job was bagging groceries, but then again I’m not from Beverly Hills.

Throughout the episode, we see a creepy teenager taking photos of the cast paparazzi-style, and then at the end we see him applying online to be Brian Austin Green’s new assistant. You can find anything on Craigslist these days!  The only problem is that he’s not a paparazzi, he’s a psycho stalker, and he sends each cast member voodoo dolls of themselves cut up and covered in fake blood. Ah, to be a free-spirited, passionate teenager again.

At one point, Brian is talking about the movie his wife tries buying his way into and says “What is it? is it a comedy or a drama? I can’t tell.” I’m assuming this was intentional, because I have no idea what this show is? Comedy? Drama? Soap opera? The point is, I’m here for it, and now that there’s a psychotic teenage stalker involved I’ll be here until the end. See you next week, Spelling.

Images: Fox; Giphy (6)

Okay kids, last night Beverly Hills, 90210 got the reboot its fans have been hoping for, and it turns out it’s true what they say: be careful what you wish for. Opening with a bizarre Tori Spelling dream sequence about Kelly and Brandon owning The Peach Pit and quickly turning into a depressing mockumentary about what happens if you don’t save your money when you’re a teenage actor, the entire show felt like a psychedelic mushroom trip that made me want to swear off shrooms for the rest of my life.

In no way is this reboot reminiscent of the 90210 that we remember from the 90s, but instead it’s a show about the cast and where they are now, only scripted. Confused yet? Same. With a bumpy intro they reveal each cast member’s current lot in life, and the audience (me) is left feeling kind of depressed at the peak behind the curtain and hopeful that it’s all exaggerated.

While it’s no secret that Tori Spelling’s had more financial trouble than anyone whose father was worth literally $600 million ever should, the episode seemed like a long PSA to Venmo her whatever I could spare. From multiple “jokes” about her reality shows being canceled to her on-screen husband not having a job, the entire thing just made me feel uncomfortable. Also, I’m no financial advisor, but it seems like she has plenty of money to blow on collagen injections and botox, so maybe she could save some green by not getting work done on her face seemingly every single day?

With so many similarities to the cast’s real lives, I kept finding myself Googling whether things were true or not, for example: 

“Did Ian Ziering’s wife really audition for The Real Housewives of Orange County?” 

“Has Jennie Garth been divorced 3 times?” 

“Is Gabrielle Carteris actually the president of SAG?” 

And my personal favorite, “Does Shannen Doherty own a tiger sanctuary?” 

The answers, by the way, are no, yes, yes, and very unfortunately not. Those questions don’t even put a dent in how many things came up that left me scratching my head wondering if Brian Austin Green actually owns a private plane and if Tori Spelling actually made her father cast Jason Priestley all those years ago. 

I’m sure a lot of things they’re supposed to be experiencing in the show are simply exaggerations of what the actors have experienced in real life, and in a way it’s admirable of Spelling to be so open about her financial issues, Garth to make light of her failed marriages, and Priestley to be so vocal about feeling like his best years have gone by, but the packaging of the pilot was simply too much. I found myself thinking, “is it too late at night to take Adderall” multiple times while using a red marker and a white board to try and connect all the floating nuggets of information being thrown at me like free T-shirts at an indoor football game. (I think…never been.)

To put it as simply as possible, the new 90210 is a reboot about a reboot. It was created by Jennie Garth and Tori Spelling, who have clearly maintained their friendship over the past 30 years.Spelling’s on-screen children call Garth “Aunt Jennie” to further the audience’s knowledge of their close relationship. (I also know they’re still friends because they guest-judged a recent episode of Rupaul’s Drag Race. Apparently sometimes being gay can come in handy while watching Fox.)

There were brief moments of humor, like the entire cast smashing the enclosed glass around Spelling’s iconic red dress from the Spring dance and forcing a stranger to Instagram live it, and Priestley knocking out a young actor for calling him a has-been. Overall, though, it was very clunky and rushed and needed to contain about half of the scenes that it did. Garth and Spelling maybe should’ve chosen whether Gabrielle needed both a heartwarming scene of her and her husband becoming grandparents and a scene of her making out with a female bartender. Or whether the show needed not one, but two former MTV veejays to play the wives of Priestley and Green. Or whether Garth really needed a scene in a velvet dress sitting by the pool flirting with a self-identified pig farmer who she ultimately ends up rejecting for calling her Kelly. 

I don’t know if it’s because the show ended with a heartwarming scene of Garth and Spelling cuddled on the couch together talking about how doing this reboot is the answer to all their problems, watching a clip from the original 90210 where their fallen cast mate Luke Perry—who died suddenly earlier this year—says “welcome to paradise, man, welcome to your dream come true,” but I’m really rooting for them. 

Was it completely insane? Yes. Will I tune in again next week, yes.

Images: FOX; Giphy (5)

Few events fill us with a warmer sense of nostalgia than when our favorite actors from beloved TV shows reunite for a quick dinner or a picture. Like when Courteney Cox, Lisa Kudrow, and Jennifer Aniston reunited for an Instagram selfie, or when the stars of Clueless appeared on a panel together and then snapped a cute pic. I mean, the only thing better than one of these little reunions, which is really just former cast members hanging out together, is when the actual show comes back for a reboot. Well, 90s kids, today we’re getting a little bit of both, because two stars of the classic Beverly Hills, 90210 hung out and uploaded an Instagram ahead of the show’s reboot.

The new Beverly Hills, 90210, which will be called BH90210 (original) went into production in May, and is basically an imagining of what would happen if all the original actors (Tori Spelling, Ian Ziering, Gabrielle Carteris, Shannen Doherty, Jennie Garth, Brian Austin Green, and Jason Priestley) got together to make a revival of Beverly Hills, 90210. Uhmmm, what? That’s confusing because it’s literally what is happening. This is all too meta for me. And this isn’t the first time that there’s been a reboot of the iconic show—the CW had its own 90210 series that aired from 2008-2013, and not a single person I know watched it, but clearly it did pretty decent if it stayed on the air for 5 years.

Anyway, the new BH90210 reboot is supposed to air August 7th on FOX. But in the meantime, Shannen Doherty and Jason Priestly got together on some sort of farm (?) in front of a log cabin (?) and posted a pic. “And just like that, the twins are back,” she captioned the pic. If you’ll recall, Shannen and Jason played twins Brenda and Brandon Walsh (those names, I can’t), until Shannen left in season 4 and she was written out of the show.

 

View this post on Instagram

 

And just like that, the twins are back.

A post shared by ShannenDoherty (@theshando) on Jun 26, 2019 at 8:23pm PDT

Most of the original Beverly Hills, 90210 cast will be returning for the reboot, with the exception of Luke Perry, who sadly passed away earlier this year, and Tiffani Thiessen, who is busy filming her Netflix series, Alexa & Katie. BH90210 is set to start airing August 7, so set your DVRs now (are DVRs still a thing?).

Images: Shutterstock; theshando / Instagram