S01.E06: Higher Education

[Primetimer]

Brandon decides he's entitled to cheat just because his History teacher isn't charmed by him, while Brenda finds out if blondes have more fun.

Read the story

[JennB]

The girl sitting behind Brandon in class seems to have wandered over from the set of "Anne of Green Gables."

[Sarah D. Bunting]

Please note that we see Brandon's green shirt on Brenda many times in future. Also, hi, Geneva font!

[SCS]

Brenda's hair in image 4 and Andrea's hair in the image at the end are disturbingly similar. When I was in high school the lone 16-year old guy who could call in a favor from a high-end stylist wore a turtleneck dickey and velvet Audrey Hepburn flats.

And in the "Dylan could..." category: Dylan could ensure Brenda gets a bad case of road burn should he take a corner too sharply while she's wearing that terrifying workout garb.

[StatMom]

How many times does Ohhhhhndrea need to be disappointed in Brandon before she recognizes his true (shitty) nature? This is at least the third time already.

[lottiedottie]

Did you all catch when Cindy was telling Jim that Brandon was upstairs studying with Ohhhhndrea that Jim gave her a little "that's my boy" look. That guy is way too eager to assume Brandon's pickle is getting tickled.

 

ETA: That jacket that Dylan is wearing with his jean overalls (joveralls?) reminds me of the JCrew barn jacket which was so popular back then. Kind of like this one, though the pocket placement is different. http://s8.thisnext.com/media/largest_dimension/0DE12D04.jpg

Edited June 30, 2015 by lottiedottie

[txhorns79]

I appreciate that Brenda's fantasy hair looks like a wig Daryl Hannah rejected for Splash.

[swimmyfish]

I think this may be the very first episode of 90210 that I ever saw! And I was *very* charmed by Dylan's flirting with Brenda at the end about her botched hair. Ah, at least those memories haven't been completely ruined by realizing that Brandon is an insufferable prick. Holy shit, that guy.

[gpgurl50]

How many times does Ohhhhhndrea need to be disappointed in Brandon before she recognizes his true (shitty) nature? This is at least the third time already.

Word.  And if he apologized right away, you know she would've forgiven him.  Instead it was "Your mistake may have messed up my future" and Brandon is like, "welp, I guess we both have a reason to hate Danzel now."  I would never speak to a teacher the way Brandon did.  Anytime there was a curve in one of my classes, it was just an adjusted scale.  Like teachers would say if no one in the class got a perfect score, it was probably a miscalculation of the teacher's part so the highest score would turn into an A and so forth.

 

Why does a hairdresser owe Dylan a favor?

[MostlyC]

Wow.  That episode was.....bad.

 

Dylan looks hilarious- he's much better season three, and when he's all DSD.

 

Andrea-  it's true.  Why can't Brandon get her name right?

[Kristen]

All I can think when listening to the selected clips is that I used to think everyone on this show was so cool, and now they're all super annoying...especially fuckin' Brandon. Everything Jason Priestley says is tinged with peevishness. What the hell, 13-year-old me?

[John Ramos]

I'm reminded of Jack Donaghy to Liz Lemon: "I knew it; you're a blonde in your fantasies. It looks terrible."

[lottiedottie]

All I can think when listening to the selected clips is that I used to think everyone on this show was so cool, and now they're all super annoying...especially fuckin' Brandon. Everything Jason Priestley says is tinged with peevishness. What the hell, 13-year-old me?

Hell, I was 18--what was my excuse?! I guess Brandon was just sooooo dreamy, I couldn't see what a douche nozzle he really was.

[auntlada]

Who does the girl in the purple hat in the forefront of the fifth picture remind me of? Or alternatively, who is she and what have I seen her in?

[AndySmith]

Just looking at the visual aids, you could have spent a whole podcast on just the episode's fashion choices. I mean, nearly everyone in every picture just look horrible (horrible in a way we can laugh at them kind of way, but still). Is this really what the elite of Beverly Hills were wearing each day to school? Yikes.

[Lindsey]

Who does the girl in the purple hat in the forefront of the fifth picture remind me of? Or alternatively, who is she and what have I seen her in?

She looks just like Tiffani Thiessen to me, except that actress is too old to be her.

[KateeBar]

So, Brenda's fantasy look is Dee Snider's hair and a multi-strand pearl choker? Okay. I think I've blocked the memories of how terrible we all looked in that era, but this brings them all roaring back.

 

I'm noticing all these episodes end with some "the more you know" twinkly music to help cement the lessons I was supposed to learn each episode. Things like - cheating is really a grey area; teachers need lessons in life from teen tools; as girls, it doesn't matter if the guy can't even say our name correctly, as long as he's cute. And so on.

[StatMom]

Also, Brandon SUCKS as a cheater. So you've got all the questions in advance, giving you a huge advantage in terms of what exactly to study/memorize, and yet, you STILL need a piece of paper that you have to pull out from UNDER your desk WHILE the quiz is taking place? Hey, kids: don't cheat! But if you do, don't do it like this bonehead.

[YoSaffBridge]

I'm sorry, is Kelly paying $300 to have an inch of dark roots? Because: not great.

[Kate]

Am I crazy, or is the music different in the Amazon streaming episodes than the original? I would check against the DVD, but then I'd have to watch the episodes twice, and I can only watch Brandon's righteousness so much.

[cassandle]

My 9th grade science teacher graded on the curve and one of my classmates had a photographic memory and would literally write out her answers straight from the text book and ruin it for those of us who may have answered correctly but not as completely. So dumb.

Anyhoo...Brandon sucks.

[Tara Ariano]

Am I crazy, or is the music different in the Amazon streaming episodes than the original? I would check against the DVD, but then I'd have to watch the episodes twice, and I can only watch Brandon's righteousness so much.

 

I haven't watched an Amazon one, but the DVD music is definitely crappy placeholder tracks that's different from what used to air in syndication.

[Petunia13]

You guys did a great job. This episode had a LOT to talk about and you guys touched on everything with humor. Please don't ever stop.

Brenda's work out outfit is straight up an American Apparel ad. They sell that top and shorts but for day wear. Or did. I bought those shorts and the top was in the Red Eye and The Onion.

I have had 2 experiences with a grading curve. One was beneficial when I took university physics and the highest score became the new 100% this was great I was a BB6 addict then so I got an A+. LOL. There is a downside to the curve like a class one has difficulty with and over studies for may get burned. I had one course where the prof curved it and only gave 2 exams and one paper that was it, so it was crucial to do well. He posted the non curved results publically (with our student ID#s to keep it anonymous) and I killed the curves and realized if I had done much less I still would have gotten the same result -an A. One last boring grading story, I did have a teacher that recycled tests. I didn't get one but told my friend what my exam questions were a year later when he asked and they were the same. I can't blame the teacher really I think it's a hard job.

The bottom line is Mr Denzel was right that its inherent on the student to take what is taught and explore the ideas and concepts further or build on it in future courses. For goodness sakes, he was teaching the Great Migration and the Civil War and those are like worth many courses and years of study to even get a handle on and begin to explore fully. It's not really fair to rake him over the coals for trying to get in 100 or more years of US history in one semester or quarter and for not enlightening Brandon on the fine points of the philosophical ramifications. I don't think this episode conclusion resolved this.

Also, Brandon sounded really stupid for calling Andrea out for her being over invested "we aren't a couple" then in a minute later complaining she doesn't care about his feelings. She would have had every right to tell him to go to hell.

Finally I love Steve and Dylan - they were some light hearted bits. Dylan was a voice of reason to Brenda and Brandon.

[FozzyBear]

Yeah, most of the time I had a curve in class it was that non-competitive sort of the top score is the new 100% curve. I've only had two classes that used the competitive bell curve type that this episode had where students compete for a limited number of As. They were both in college. My main issue with the curve is I honestly don't think a public school teacher would be allowed to eliminate Bs and Ds from his grading. I just don't think they could without being fired. Of course I think that was just sloppy writting. At times the show would do goofy things like that and as a CA native I would wonder if the writing staff actually lived in CA since they seemed really unaware of basic laws and stuff.

[Pogojoco]

I wish that the producers were brave enough to make Andrea and Brandon best friends without her being in love with him. That she was just the friend that called him on his shit and put him on the right path, and he encouraged her to, I don't know, be more social or something.

Also, Dylan is kind of great in this episode. I have no idea why a hair dresser would owe him a favour, but ok. It reminded me that Dylan and Brenda were always way better than any other couple on this show. Partly because they had way better chemistry and partly because it drove Jim completely up the wall.

[cassandle]

For some reason I've been thinking about this a lot (it's been a slow day) and isn't Ohhhhhhndrea "cheating" by using her grandmother's address to go to that school? That just seems like a wasted opportunity of judginess for a tool like Brandon not to point out.

[Bastet]

Using a family member’s address – or rental property address, or however else you could pull it off short of just pulling an address out of the phone book – was A Big Thing at the time during which the show is set.  So many schools within LAUSD (Los Angeles Unified School District) sucked that parents who couldn’t afford or didn’t want to go the private school route were, yes, cheating to enroll their kids in public schools in better districts.  It was so widespread that school administrators were actually following kids home from school to see if they really went to the address they’d used to enroll.

 

Brandon could have gone either way on that one -- be a sanctimonious ass about falsifying her address or be a self-righteous ass about the state of the public school system.  Being Brandon, he'd be an ass either way.

[Petunia13]

I don't know if its popular to do, but I knew a couple girls in school who did the Ahhhhndrea scam to go to New Trier.

But I think this just makes Ahhhhhhndrea a liar. While Brandon is a cheat. Or are they the same type of thing?

[FozzyBear]

Using a family member’s address – or rental property address, or however else you could pull it off short of just pulling an address out of the phone book – was A Big Thing at the time during which the show is set. So many schools within LAUSD (Los Angeles Unified School District) sucked that parents who couldn’t afford or didn’t want to go the private school route were, yes, cheating to enroll their kids in public schools in better districts. It was so widespread that school administrators were actually following kids home from school to see if they really went to the address they’d used to enroll.

Brandon could have gone either way on that one -- be a sanctimonious ass about falsifying her address or be a self-righteous ass about the state of the public school system. Being Brandon, he'd be an ass either way.

Wasn't just LA, pretty much all of CA was caught up in that game of 3 card Monty in the 1990s. Has to do with the way taxes are distributed to different schools in the same district. I grew up in Central CA at the same time and I remember illegal school transfers being a huge deal. Judging by my friends that now have kids in schools, many of the rules have loosened and it's not quite such an undercover stealth spy vs spy type of deal to get permission to go to a better school.

Of course Brandon could find a way to be an ass about anything so the particulars are besides the point. I always want to smack him, but it's so bad in this episode. A class is too hard for you so it must be unfair? Oh fuck off, you spoiled brat. Dylan did fine and as we later learn, up until five minutes before the Walshes hit town he was roling into class hung over after a wild night of high stakes poker and shagging older women. Dylan McKay the world's most interesting man. He doesn't always have a sorted past, but when he does it all somehow started when he was 12 and ended before he was 15.

[RuthlessMary]

Who does the girl in the purple hat in the forefront of the fifth picture remind me of? Or alternatively, who is she and what have I seen her in?

I think that's Amanda Bearse from Married with Children