Classic 90210 Recap S1/E3 The Green Room (or Chad Corey Dylan)

[babydraco]

Surfing footage. Brandon is “surfing”, meaning, we're seeing a body double but up close, bad special effects show Jason Priestly having water thrown on him. Brandon sees a beautiful girl in a swimsuit walking towards him. She lowers her sunglasses and mouths his name. She...morphs into his sister because this is a dream (making the bad effects funny instead of fail) and Brenda is yelling at him that they're late for school.

I'm so glad they don't continue a pattern of every episode starting with Brandon waking up.

Cut to a shot of the Minneapolis house covered in snow as a bundled up mail carrier retrieves letters meant to be forwarded to LA. The Walshs apparently live on “Hillcrest Ave”. In real life, Beverly Hills apparently does have a "Hillcrest Road". We get the theme song, which ends in a blond female postal worker in shorts delivering the mail to their sunny new home. It's not a permanent addition to the themesong.

Brandon and Brenda walk across the campus while Brandon tries to convince her they need to go to the beach. They both have more stylish haircuts, his is cut shorter and neater, she has Nineties Bangs and is wearing a much trendier outfit (a dress similar to this).

Brandon finds Scott in the AV room mocking up a thing in like, LogoWriter or something on a hilariously out of date computer. He's designing “the perfect dance club” although he admits he's never actually been in one. Some jocks start hassling him (the worst part about being bullied in school, you were never safe anywhere) and just as Brandon ineffectually tries to intervene, a voice speaks up from a dark corner. A boy turns around and...

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This is the moment when it all changes. For It is Chad Corey Dylan The Most Perfect Fantasy Nineties Boy*! The James Brando-Marlon Dean lookalike manages to threaten the bullies and make them back down and leave without having to really do...anything. He tells Scott “ keep up the good work, kid” and leaves.

“Your friend's pretty cool,” Brandon says.

“I've never seen that guy before in my life,” Scott replies, befuddled.

Brandon finds the guy reading on the stairs. He is wearing Chuck Taylors , a leather jacket and what looks like pegged jeans to complete the 1950s teen idol look, although when he stands up, the jeans are actually overalls which is also so nineties. Remember when people who were almost adults went around wearing overalls? Actually, overalls are pretty comfortable compared to skinny jeans, lbr. It turns out his name is Dylan McKay. Brandon invites him to lunch, which Dylan declines sarcastically. Dylan then invites Brandon to the beach, so they play hooky and go surfing.

All the surfers know Dylan. We learn that the title of the episode, “The Green Room” refers to “riding the perfect wave”. A montage of Brandon trying to learn how to surf. He warms up under a towel after and has a conversation with a surfer girl from The Valley (she describes it sarcastically as “the darkness on the edge of town”) and says that nobody really knows Dylan, not really. She introduces herself as "Betty" but admits her real name is Sarah and the guys just call her Betty because they don't care to learn her real name. She mostly hangs out and drinks and surfs.

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At the Sanders house, Steve and his mom talk over an intercom. He claims to have too much homework to come down to dinner. She admonishes him to be nice “to the Silver boy” because his father is producing something she wants a role in. Steve swears he will, then tells her he has to go because “you're on”. Steve turns to the tv (having a tv in your bedroom was a sign in the eighties that you were spoiled and comfortable) and we can see he's watching his mother's sitcom. I wonder if he can't relate to his mother any other way, because she spent more time being someone else's fake mother on tv than she did being his real mom and if, IF that will ever be addressed on the show!

Jim Walsh can't come home from his business trip to Chicago yet, while Cindy is distracted by the news, Brandon lies about needing to work on a story for the school paper (the story is about being a fish out of water transplant from Minnesota). In reality, he is sneaking out to meet Dylan.

Oh yes. Dylan in his cool black convertible with his dreamy hair.

Brenda asks her mom to help her make a knockoff of an outfit she couldn't afford in a store. Because Solid Midwestern Middle Class Values means she obviously would know how to sew. And I guess they don't have bargain basements in Minneapolis?

Brandon and Dylan are hanging out on what they claim is Sunset. Dylan says only tourists call it “the Sunset Strip”. But it's dead, and the surfer friends are eager to go somewhere else. Dylan doesn't open car doors, by the way, he just hops over the side. Brandon finds a book of Lord Byron's work in Dylan's car. This surfing, convertible driving, leather jacketed, perfectly coiffed bad ass also reads poetry.

Because of course. Both hilariously on point and also a warning to others about the sort of person he desperately wants them to think he is (intellectual, worldly and debauched). He drives them to this expensive hotel, and he sneaks them in. Brandon gets concerned when Dylan appears to break into a hotel suite he claims belongs to a friend. Dylan's ordering cheese burgers from room service when Brandon storms out in a Moral Huff. Dylan chases after him just as the room service cart passes by and the bell hop asks him if he'll be dining on the terrace or in his suite. Dylan greets the bell hop by name as he casually steals a french fry off the cart.

'Cause guess what? The suite belongs to his super rich and very absent parents. For some reason though, Brandon is even more offended and scandalized that Dylan is not a quasi criminal but a lonely rich boy who just wanted Brandon to think he was cool and who has invited Brandon into his home and offered to buy him an expensive dinner.

He would've had me at “I own a car, I have a hotel room, I know who Lord Byron is and I want to buy you cheeseburgers”.

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The girls head for the beach and Kelly's in a bitchy mood already. Brandon finds Betty and the surfer boys getting drunk. The surfers are pretty mean to her constantly, she hangs out with them because she apparently has zero self esteem. Brandon runs into Dylan coming out of the water and Dylan tries to apologize for the night before and look...

This entire scene is coming off as such a romance with the crashing waves and the pouty pink lips and the windblown hair and the obviously repressed emotions. If Brandon was a girl, this would totally be that classic Leader of the Pack/He's a Rebel story where the good girl from the nice home keeps sneaking out to be with the wild, troubled boy who Ain't No Good and drives too fast and “Daddy, he's sensitive and nobody understands him except me!

Oh wait...

Anyway, David is practically stalking Steve, acting like a little puppy with a desperate crush. Steve grits his teeth and puts up with it. Kelly wants to go home, Donna, who is at this point, the Harmony Kendall to Kelly's Cordelia Chase, agrees. Brenda tells them she has to find Brandon first, but by the time she does, Brandon points out that the other girls have driven off and left her.

Betty almost drowns and of course, Brandon saves her. The doctor tells her she's an alcoholic. Brandon goes back to the beach and confronts the boys who let her wander off drunk and nearly drown. Dylan breaks up the fight, and then he casually, oh so coolly and calmly, breaks their surfboards. He runs after Brandon and invites him to breakfast and I am sorry but they are so gay for each other in this episode. The presence of yet another sad damsel in distress who Brandon will rescue and then never see again only emphasizes the intensity of his interactions with the other boy. The plot's not really about her, she's a device, it's about *them*.

They were trying, I think, to invoke the female gaze. But men in Hollywood, and let's face it men have traditionally made most of the decisions on film sets, do not always understand how to do this so when they try, it ends up coming off so.frigging.gay. The audience surrogate in these scenes isn't a girl, it's Brandon. And while I guess we're supposed to assume that dream he had of this exact beach at the start of the episode was a portent that he would save Betty/Sarah, it can also be interpreted as the dream luring him to a place where he will meet Dylan. A person who, regardless of any sexual attraction, for better or worse, is going to be important in his life, lives intertwined for years to come. I mean, remind me again which character sticks around for nine years and arguably stole the show, and which one will (probably) never be seen again?

Steve finds out that David's father isn't a producer,he's an oral surgeon, and promptly deserts him. Kelly apologizes shyly for having ditched Brenda again.

Brandon says in a cheesy voice “I think we're gonna make it” and the twins skip off down the hall Wizard of Oz style.

Dylan ends the episode curled up on the floor in the dark in a corner of his hotel suite, trying to get his parents on the phone.



Pilot pt 1, Pilot pt 2