MissEwa

Oh wow - Professor Randall was Christian Slater's dad in Pump Up The Volume. Is it just me or are there way too many plotlines in each episode at the moment? They've run out of reasons to put the cast into storylines together so it's just a mess - makes for good long podcasts though.

We didn't have sororities or fraternities or campus radio stations - or (spoiler) TV stations - so this is the one thing in these awful episodes I relate to, and that is exactly what student politics is - completely meaningless self-importance. Ugh. Although the "progressives" were not wearing pleated slacks and blouses. The conservatives might be wearing collared shirts but even then they wouldn't be button-downs. Poor Carteris. I think the problem was that in those early pre-bump days of pregnancy what basically happens is you just lose your waist and wearing tight things across your middle is uncomfortable and awkward, so everything you wear either sits under or over. These days, most people go for under, with longer tops, but in the high-waisted 90s that would not have been an option, so instead their hoiking all her clothes up unreasonably high, making for camel toe and other unflattering things going on down there. Still, the clothes she wore through most of high school would have worked better for this - why they suddenly started putting her in tight shorts and tank tops is beyond me. I don't know much about Judaism but Andrea hasn't exactly had a problem not flaunting her religion thus far. It's come up, what, once? In three seasons? In between plenty of megabugers with cheese? Maybe it drifts in and out of existence like her sister.

Throw those shoes into the ocean by all means, but can Brandon be wearing them at the time? This whole look/attitude/persona is so awful. Squeaky-clean no-vices Brandon was unbearable but DudeBro Brandon is the absolute worst. Andrea's shorts are bad but that pink singlet is atrocious. She is not a big girl at all but she has backfat rolls. I feel like everyone and everything looks a bit grubbier this season? Like they've changed locations or lighting or something and everything is a bit less shiny-high-school. The beach looks unappealling and even when the sunny shots look kinda miserable.

Fimo?

I agree. It definitely didn't need to be two episodes (especially since it means neither works as a standalone at all and so in reruns it's just a mess - they probably should have broken it up into E29 being a clip show/senior breakfast and E30 being grad - a few days later - and the stupid banner). But I feel like clip-show as season/series finale was somewhat common in the 80s and 90s? I could be wrong but I have memories of watching daytime reruns of 80s sitcoms and getting a clip show one day and a return to the pilot the next.

Ugh. Was Dylan's so-intense-more-than-he-knew-possible love for Brenda more or less than the blah-blah-soulmates love he has Kelly? Because UGH. The thing is, I hate him, but I have to give the writers kudos - he's THAT guy. Consistently and completely. With Brenda? Hates Brenda, wants Kelly. With Kelly? Hates Kelly, wants Brenda. Dad's abandoned him? Misses his dad. Dad comes back? Dad's a pain. Mom's in Hawaii? She's terrible. Mom comes back? She's the worst. Money in a trust? Wants his money. Money in his bank account? Wants it in a trust. Jim calls him 'Son'? Don't call me 'son'. Jim tells him he's not welcome in his house? Jim's like a father to him. Wants to go to Berkley. Wants to go to CU. Doesn't want to go to college. Will be miserable and complain a lot either way. He's always miserable and he's determined to always be miserable and he'll be divorced three times and completely broke by 40 because that's mad, bad and dangerous to know, remember? But in the meantime he will always have some girl madly in love with him and thinking that she - SHE - is the one that will FINALLY make him happy and she will for about five minutes before he gets bored and it's TOO INTENSE and she EXPECTS TOO MUCH and blah blah shut up Dylan. UGH.

I know Dylan gets a lot of hate for his Sydney Opera Hair at this point but I have to say I prefer it to what Brandon and David are sporting in these visual aids. Dylan's is big but it's big in a way that suggests he towel-dried it and then ran some product through it, not that he spent half an hour blowdrying it into a shiny, perfectly-shaped wave perched on top of his forehead.

I was completely on Team Donna when this episode first aired, but in my defence I'm Australian so our legal drinking age is 18 and I'm pretty sure in 1993 alcohol was actually served AT our school's Year 12 Formal (prom-equivalent). By the time I graduated in 97 they'd stopped doing that but I remember it was kind of a big deal when they did. Nobody marched on school board meetings but that's because we were nerds. And it didn't stop drinking at the after-party... or the before-party... or the unofficial-but-widely-advertised champagne breakfast we had in the park across from the school on graduation day THAT SOME TEACHERS ATTENDED. So of course a student being punished in any way for being drunk at prom was scandalous and not fair and yes, totally equivalent to the Vietnam War. Now, I think it's completely ridiculous. Shut up, Brandon. All these guys are totally and completely insufferable.

Me neither. It's terrible. Before looking at the visual aids, I was picturing Ginger as Christine, the gold-digger that Steve went out with a billion years (one and a half seasons) ago. They're styled differently, but there's something similar about the face, and of course Steve went to the 'Samantha Sanders is my mother' well again, so I maintain that my confusion is justified. And yes - Steve for MVP. Probably of this entire season, this and the ridiculous legacy key thing notwithstanding. Everyone else has been so awful. The only other contender would be - and I hate to say it - Donna? The "stuff" has been awful but she's been surprising a few times. Although the next couple of episodes may change my thoughts on that. This season is too long and really very boring.

We had superlatives but they weren't a public vote but a thing the (three) Senior Yearbook staff put in to be amusing. They were everything from 'most beautiful' (one of the staff, of course) to 'most likely to be caught with a prostitute' and 'most likely to die of a drug overdose.' Every time I move house I find that thing and am more amazed that an actual member of staff let that thing go to print. You know, between Jordan and Nikki and Celeste and (purely for the eye-candy) Reek, this really is the season of the multi-episode love interests that I like SO much better than anyone in the main cast. I would watch that spin off - and Steve could even come and visit, at least for a while, until he becomes a dick to Celeste next season. How is he the most (only) likeable one at this point? And I'm so, so glad that they've stopped the endless parade of damsels in distress for Brandon to fall in love with and then bray at because they didn't react to the world exactly as he would like them to. I like to imagine that there was the 90s equivalent to altTwitter where all the girls in Beverly Hills were faxing his photo around with warnings about what a "Nice Guy" he was.

The Dylan-Urn stare-off had me laughing for a good ten minutes. In fact, all these visual aids are much funnier than they have any business being given all the death and grieving. I do have to give it to Brenda - I am pretty sure if I was seventeen and by boyfriend dumped me for my best friend my reaction to this whole thing would have been far less kind. Kelly, on the other hand, has obviously starved her brain to such an extent that she's become a completely different and terrible person. I remembered as the whole Jack-out-of-jail storyline going on for much longer but he was out for what, two weeks before he exploded? That's some OC-level plot-burning, show. And SO MUCH of season three left.

Yeah I'm not sure that I didn't mix up a few things he's said to get the girlfriend-named-Santana story. I actually like him - not as much as I liked some other but he's a solid chef and seems like a good guy - but his edit has been very very quiet. I feel like if he was going to win, especially as a LCK comeback, he'd get more backstory. Maybe editing is playing with us and the key to the whole season is actually Jeremy's 'first loser' comment. That would be nice.

This season has been fine but the result of this episode has just knocked all the wind out of its sails. I feel like whoever wins is going to end up at Nicholas/Kevin-level forgettable and we'll be asking who it was by the time Season 14 starts. They're both... fine? Jeremy's brodude thing is a bit grating and I think I'd prefer an Amar win, I think based on the edit it's unlikely - Amar has had basically no storyline development at all. I feel like I don't know anything about him at all except that he worked for a chef who passed away recently and... had a girlfriend called Santana? Maybe? I knew Isaac wouldn't win but I would have loved him to outlast Marjorie. I suppose them going out at the same time kind of fits their barely-there storyline. Rustic and refine battled it out and the winner was someone else. Probably there will be crudo. Yawn. Whatever. I don't like immunity at Final 4, which is effectively what it was, even though they called it 'going straight through to the finals', and especially not when you're only leaving one other place. Having four cook and two go through seems a lot more fair, as does - if you must - having one go straight through, three cook and only one go, for a three-person finale (which I personally prefer). Having a challenge where only the winner goes through at this stage that is NOT last-chance kitchen and is after LCK wraps up so there's no chance of redemption bothers me. Everyone else all season just had to be not-the-worst and even if they were the worst they had a chance to come back but if you survived this far you suddenly have to be the best and there's no safety net. It's just jarring. (IDK, one of my problems with LCK has always been when the winner comes back. Get eliminated first thru thirteenth? Get a second chance. Kick ass for the entire season and get eliminated fourteenth or fifteenth? No second chance for you. I'd almost prefer LCK runs right through and the winner goes straight into the finale-finale.)

I don't think anyone (except David) knows about the summer of deception, at least not officially. If this were either real life or the writers were even a little bit better, as soon as Dylan and Kelly first hooked up after the break-up, everyone there would have either strongly suspected or straight-out figured it out, because they were not at all subtle over the summer, but this is 90210 with these writers so I think we're supposed to believe that everyone's just fine with it and doesn't ask questions or even really care. I have no idea why Brenda doesn't say anything though. Especially when she starts getting shit for making the whole thing awkward. If it were me the first time anyone gave me a hard time about not being gracious I would have told them everything and probably added a bit of bitter exaggeration too, and given the way she's blamed them for everything else about her situation with Dylan, I'm shocked there's not even a 'this would never have happened if you fuckheads hadn't sent me to Paris' directed at Jim and Cindy. I want to say she's so embarrassed that her pride won't let her tell anyone but I suspect it's mostly just more terrible writing. I don't like Andrea and I don't especially care, but the way they make her back away from Yale after it apparently being her dream is so terrible. Yeah, snobs, yeah, money, but still, way to teach kids (and girls and "poor" kids, especially) that ambition is futile, show. Just have her go to Yale and bone Jordan and send the occasional postcard about how much ass she's kicking over there and write Carteris off the show - she's only around for another season and some and she's pregnant the entire time and barely part of the gang anyway. It would have been much more satisfying than what actually happened to her. I feel like I remember the second half of season three as much more interesting than this but it's really a lot of wheel-grinding and scene-setting for just a few episodes of actual excitement. Bring on DeadJack, I guess?

I ranted about it a few weeks ago when this scene came up on KODTTM but UGH Dylan is so awful. It's less awful when it's just audio but his sneering 'We owe it to you Bren' is the worst worst worst. It's a leaf right out of Brandon's self-serving braybook. He's so put-upon because he cheated on his girlfriend with her best friend but look at him here being the big man and giving her what he OWES her. How dare she not just take it with a smile? Fuck off Dylan. And to think at this point all the tween girls (myself included) thought he was so wonderful. He's just... UGH! I think Brenda's hair looks flat at school but great on their walk. Maybe whatever was wrong with it mellowed out. And she looks so, so much better than Kelly, which I love. I wore those exact boxy mens black jeans for years but they do no-one any favours. Once you see the waitress doll, you can never unsee it. Hee.

See, 'Aw, shut up.' would be one thing, but the was completely flat during both of them, especially the one to Isaac. And it was particularly weird because everyone seemed to be yelling support and then she just cut Isaac dead and sucked the fun out of the room. The 'shut up' to Jeremy was a tiny bit more understandable - he was ribbing her about something she was already stressed about. Neither read as playful to me, but YMMV. I do think some of it is her mannerisms though - she sounds dour and mean-spirited even when she is joking around, so it can be hard to tell. I'm not a fan but I can see that some of what might make her seem unpleasant isn't actually her fault. This is how all the other SDQFs have worked, but I see why they had to change it here. They needed three people left in the competition at the end of this episode, and a normal SDQF *might* lead to an elimination, but it might not, so they couldn't guarantee that. I do wonder how they deal with them over the course of the season but I guess they have a few tentatively scheduled and adjust according to how many people they actually eliminate. There are certain points during the season where they need a specific number of chefs still in it (RW needs eight, for example) and they'd have to make sure the SDQFs don't mess with that. Overall I don't see a way that I'm going to love the winner of this season. Isaac is my preference but I can't see him winning, and even if he did I don't think I'd necessarily think it was 100% deserved. I think maybe Mei's win last season spoiled me - she was my absolute favourite from the beginning of the first episode of last season and that's probably not going to happen again ever, or at least for quite a while.

Maybe my favourite thing was Liz and Peter at TC and her hand on his knee clutching for him like they were Mr and Mrs Anderson seeing the principal about little Joey getting expelled. In terms of my feelings about her, she basically did what Jenny did last episode - went from being someone I quite liked to just awful, albeit in a more controlled way. I'm beyond annoyed that Jason has the idol. Because of course he does. Because the most obnoxious person out there always gets an idol. So far I'm not feeling this cast. My official position is always that I don't love returnee seasons and I'd rather see newbies but to be honest the last all-newbie season I really enjoyed was One World (I think I'm one of very very few Survivor fans who didn't like Cagayan but I hated so many of those people so, so, so much). I think I've become too lazy and don't pay enough attention in these early episodes so I feel like the only people making an impression are the ones I dislike. Everyone else is falling into the 'eh, whatever' category. Hopefully that will change as numbers dwindle.

This is one of the many many many things that bothers me about this whole storyline. Dylan might be "in love" with both Kelly and Brenda but he doesn't seem to like either of them. He's been making that clear since the whole love triangle started. Both those fantasies are so gross, and the Brenda one is particularly weird. Is there anything that Brenda has done up to this point that suggests that she wants sixteen kids? Is it just because she's from the Midwest? She's a drama queen who wants to take acting lessons, and doesn't she end up being the one in the gang who takes off overseas to pursue her professional dreams first? I know these are Stupid Dylan's Stupid Fantasies but they're so dumb. All they prove is that he should cut both Kelly and Brenda loose, drive his stupid Porsche into the sunset back to Anne's stupid ranch and they can be stupid miserable rich people together on another show that I will never ever ever watch. Dotti has clearly been raiding Samantha Sanders' Star Trek collection.

I am not a Dylan apologist but I hold my coffee cups like that always. Big mugs with big handles I hold in the traditional Bunting fashion, but those little cups they have at cafes and restaurants (and I have at home because I kind of like them) it's McKay-style all the way.

My first question was why Brandon made that face when Dylan asked the fist-pump question, given that's his sister they're talking about. Then I remembered: because he's Brandon and they're gross. Brandon's chains are a nice bit of continuity from when he went rollerblading with Racist Brooke. A gross bit of continuity but maybe he really is a chain guy? I'm so glad you guys are back. I can't wait until we get through these boring episodes and back to the awesomely terrible Dylan dramas.

I feel like this is a really evenly spread top five - Isaac, Amar and Carl have one EC win each and the other two have two. Each person has one quickfire. I feel like usually there's a couple of chefs who have a bunch of wins at this stage. It's nice that it's unpredictable but on the other hand I'm not cheering for anyone on the basis that they seem like a really amazing chef. I think Isaac is my top pick to win but it's because a) his personality is fun and b) his food is in my wheelhouse. Do I think he's the best chef? No. I don't think he's nearly as bad as Marjorie keeps implying though. I know it's probably selective editing to some extent but it's so tiresome and makes her seem really unpleasant and snobbish. It almost reminds me of the Texas girls and their comments about Beverly cooking Asian. Karen was probably kicking herself that she got kicked off right before the Chinese food challenge. Kwame was toast from so early on. You can't have the ingredient that is in the name of your restaurant be something you bought frozen from Whole Foods. You just can't. The chicken looked good though. ETA. I don't mind Carl but I can't get past the fact that he's the chef who served a milkshake, not even a good milkshake, for a Quickfire. He seems to have improved since then but come on.

Oh that video made me so angry I'm not sure I can restrain my Dylan-hate until we get to it on the podcast. "Because we OWE IT TO YOU, BREN." Ugh. Just because you're a seventy-year-old stick insect doesn't mean you get to bray at the girl you cheated on because she's upset. Shut up. (Voted for it though. Such great/terrible TV.)

Aw, now I kind of wish the show was Baby David Silver hanging out with people who wear Lennon sunglasses and denim hats with the tops cut off.

Yep, she was probably the most real-life famous of Brandon's Random Women at the time. She was also in The Three Musketeers that year, and that was, from memory, pitched at a 90210-age audience. Thanks! Like so many 90210 things that have disappeared forever due to music rights, I'm mostly just glad I'm not imagining it. Not that it happens often, but to this day whenever Jeremy Jordan comes up I automatically add 'All right!' to his name.

I know most of the original music has been stripped out of these, so I'm assuming this has too, but I'm 99% sure that when these episodes first aired the end credits played over music videos? I know one was Jeremy Jordan's Right Kind Of Love (...sorry if that earworms anyone), and it started off with Donna at the Peach Pit putting money in the jukebox and saying 'Jeremy Jordan? All right!' Cathy Dennis was another one, and she played at prom later this season. I think maybe they had a soundtrack out? Does anyone else remember this? I'm in Australia so it may be that this wasn't a worldwide thing but IANAC.