90210 Episode Guide

Previously on Shannen Doherty:

Shannen agreed to direct a school play. Of course, California’s public school system requires an extensive background check, a blood sample, and fingerprinting before an adult is allowed to work on a school campus. Due to the backlog, it’ll probably be six months to two years before she’s allowed back inside West Beverly Hills High School.

Tonight on Shannen Doherty:

Shannen appears to have worked the system and found her way on campus (probably slept with somebody who isn’t me). The school play opens Friday night, and Annie has rehearsed as an understudy for a drug addicted student. The play, called the “Spring Awakening,” is all about teenagers discovering sex. The principal is less than amused, especially when he sees his daughter Annie backstage kissing a guy.

The big haired girl (wearing a dress, so no you-know-what) is tired of her mom brooding. I’m tired of the big haired girl.

Shannen tries to “relate” to the drug addicted girl. You have to search pretty hard to find someone who can overact more than anyone in the original cast of this series. They found it in the drug addicted girl.

The big haired girl, Silver, and Annie exchange in a little “girl talk” (quotes mine — the episode was written by a male writer who doesn’t really understand the female voice, let alone a teenage girl’s voice). Annie emphatically insists she has not had sex with… I don’t know… one of the generic guys in the cast. She insists that isn’t what the relationship is all about. But then the guy informs Annie he has booked a hotel room for the two of them after the play.

Shannen and Jennie Garth’s breasts are worried about the drug addicted girl. They discuss the situation with the teacher who has a thing for Jennie Garth’s breasts. If something was resolved, I don’t know what it was. I was distracted. The teacher said, “The tricky part of teaching is being friendly without being a friend.” In my day job as a teacher, ain’t nothin’ in my contract about being friendly.

Annie’s TV dad tries to have a TV talk with his TV daughter about TV sex. This is why conservatives don’t want sex taught in schools… because they think these sorts of superficial and awkward conversations constitute a genuine discussion about the act of human procreation.

In a shocking turn of events, the drug addicted girl is found to be on drugs, and it is up to Annie the understudy to rescue the play. Shannen Doherty is wearing a strapless dress. God bless America.

Serving as the show’s stage manager, Silver engages in a little headset-banter (the theater and television equivalent of phone-sex) with light board operator Dixon (I miss headset-banter). This is supposed to be juxtaposed with the big haired girl lamenting what now appears to be her parents’ pending divorce. I don’t get it. At the final curtain call, Shannen and Annie hug. No comment.

Annie wants her brother Dixon to give his condom to her so she and her generic boyfriend can enjoy a little freaky, teenage, hotel sex. She bumps into another generic guy in the hall and drops the condom. He tries to talk Annie out of having sex.

The Roosevelt, best known to non-Los Angelinos as the hotel where the idiots who waited for months to see “Star Wars: Episode I” used the bathroom, is the scene of the play’s after-party. The drugged up girl shows up at the hotel room where Annie’s generic boyfriend lies in waiting, and she concocts a lie about Annie kissing another guy. Dixon and Silver flirt. Annie reaches the hotel room and the drugged up girl convinces Annie that she had a little “you stole my part, I stole your man” revenge sex. But she didn’t. If anybody thinks this sounds like every third episode of “Three’s Company,” you are not alone.

Dixon and Silver were almost ready to do the deed, but he remembered he’d given his condom to his sister. Irony. Annie decided that because her generic man didn’t deflower her, the Beverly Hills scene is not for her.

I know how she feels. Well, not exactly, but… oh, you know what I mean. Quit looking at me like that. Go away now. Scat.