Anybody else just feeling really weird right now?
BH90210 just made its debut on Fox, and rarely does a TV show make us feel such a sense of reality-related discomfort. Everybody was playing themselves, but not with their actual real lives, but with elements of their real lives incorporated into the story. Tori’s got financial problems. Jennie Garth’s going through a divorce. Brian Austin Green is living in the shadow of a more famous wife. Gabrielle Carteris is still the president of the Actor’s union, and everybody’s a little bit estranged from Shannen Doherty.
But there were enough things that were also fictionalized to leave us sitting here in a sort of daze in between fiction and non-fiction. What’s real? What’s not real? What’s sorta real? What are we supposed to make of this?
Beyond that level of confusion we lived in throughout the entire premiere, this was sort of delightful. Every single 90210 alum actually managed to pull off whatever vibe this show is going for, and it was like a fun game trying to figure out which aspects of the plot were nods and which were straight up ripped out of real life.
Basically, at the start of the episode, most of the cast members hadn’t seen each other in a while. Jennie and Tori still hung out and were on a plane on their way to a Vegas 90210 convention together, anxious about Jennie’s ongoing divorce, Tori’s financial troubles and the cancellation of her reality TV show, and the fact that they were about to see ex-boyfriends/on-screen ex-boyfriends for the first time in a long time.
They all reunited in Vegas and sat through a super awkward panel at their convention (awkward due to fan questions, not because of moderator and E! News host Jason Kennedy), where they had to answer questions about their real-life problems and spouses instead of actual show questions, while suddenly Shannen livestreamed in from her charity work across the world.
On the private plane home, everything erupted. Ian learned that his wife was cheating on him, Jason freaked out about sleeping with Jennie in Vegas, Tori put on a dress she just stole, Jennie erupted at Tori, and everything turned into a big mess as life fell apart a little bit for everybody involved.
Back at home, Tori was trying to think of reality show ideas when she suddenly came up with a different idea: Why not reboot Beverly Hills, 90210?
We’ll have to come back next week to find out how exactly that goes, but in six episodes, we can’t imagine it’s going to go all that well.
BH90210 airs Wednesdays at 9 p.m. on Fox.