REACTION: 9021OMG Episode 27

Monday’s “9021OMG” covered the second episode of season 2.

“The Party Fish” sees Brandon (Jason Priestley) growing close to a beautiful but mysterious co-worker named Sandy (Deborah Goodrich) as one of the beach club’s older members buddies up to him. Brenda (Shannen Doherty), meanwhile, is taking a summer drama class with Donna (Tori Spelling), Andrea (Gabrielle Zuckerman), and David (Brian Austin Green).

The episode, which was was written by executive producer Charles Rosin and directed by Dan Attias, really kicked off the show’s debut summer season in earnest. But Tori and Jennie Garth (Kelly) didn’t like it much…

9021OMG Episode 27, “Jennie has a Crush on Jim”

• As things kicked off, Jennie pretended to be snoring to indicate how she felt about the episode.

• Tori was ready to dive into it, but Jennie said she wanted to catch up first. Tori was surprised but then said they’ll chit-chat because “people like that now”

• They still got to the episode extremely fast for them — roughly three minutes in. Jennie didn’t like or understand the episode title. She also wrongly said it was written by Charles AND Darren. Ugh.

• Tori: “We’re just gonna rip this episode from start to finish.”

• They didn’t understand why this was the first episode to really kick off the beach stint and didn’t like that it wasn’t entirely focused on the kids and instead introduced older characters, but also somewhat positively compared it to Dirty Dancing in that way.

• Tori explained the grunion run, saying she grew up with the experience. Jennie was mystified.

• There was a tangent about Tori eating shrimp.

• Jennie really didn’t like Sandy or understand her introduction and thought it was a “weird storyline.”

• Tori even joked about fast-forwarding at one point.

• Tori thought Jason had a New York accent in the episode.

• They wondered how old Sandy was supposed to be given that Brandon was 17.

• Tori objected when Jennie called Sandy a “hooker.” Jennie went on to call her a “sex slave” and a “toy.”

• Tori: “Can we get a sugar daddy, minus the sex?” She pointed out both her and Jennie’s dads have passed. This was a crazy tangent.

• Jennie: “My manager wants to know if he can be your sugar daddy.” As I’ve said before, I’m pretty sure he’s on the Zoom when they record.

• Jennie: “I’ve got more baggage than LAX.”

• Tori looked up where she had seen Deborah before and realized she was in one of her favorite horror films. She said she “would’ve died” if they had Deborah on the podcast to discuss the episode.

  • As if she’d want to hear them trash it…

• Sisanie said they had to take a break “because we’re losing Jennie.”

• After the break, Tori said she was more interested in the drama class storyline. Jennie said it was interesting to her because she could see the early chemistry between David and Donna. Tori agreed but said she wasn’t sure if the writers knew at that point that they’d be putting the characters together.

• Jennie said she “didn’t care” for the acting school storyline and said it gave her “PTSD.”

  • She says that about a lot of things, I feel like. I find it kind of offensive.

• Tori joked that it was “Elvis’ acting tips.”

• Jennie: “I wonder how long the drama stuff is gonna go on.” She wanted everyone at the beach and for that to be “exciting.” She was relieved when they all reunited at the beach at the end of the episode.

• Sisanie thought the wardrobe must be simple for these episodes with Brandon always in a uniform, Dylan in his wetsuit, etc.

• Tori questioned the characters taking a summer elective and speculated that the writers / producers wanted to do a summer school storyline but not a “boring” one. Jennie called it “odd,” but theorized it opened the door to Brenda’s acting interests.

  • Of course, they already opened that door in season 1 with “Fame Is Where You Find It,” but naturally they didn’t remember that.

• Jennie said it “made no sense” that Donna wasn’t at the beach with Kelly.

• Superfan Sisanie: “Summer school usually is only half the summer, so hopefully it ends soon and everyone is at the beach club.” Tori: “Fingers freakin’ crossed.”

• Jennie revealed her daughter has to go to summer school and she (Jennie) is not happy about it.

• Sisanie didn’t think Henry “manages a lot.” Jennie thought him watching TV on the balcony was improbable because he wouldn’t be able to see the screen with the sun’s glare. Tori: “Let’s try to interview him.”

• Jennie: “How long are they at the beach club? All summer? Into season 3?” Tori said she didn’t know and has no idea what’s next as they watch week to week.

• Jennie was perplexed by Brandon and Dylan using slang names for each other, including “Jones.” Tori thought it came from Jason. Jennie: “Why don’t you ask him?” Tori: “I’ll text him right now. Because he loves to rehash old ‘90210’ stuff.”

  • Both of them had quite the tone when they said this.

• They went into another break at about 36 minutes in, saying they should discuss favorite lines and fashion. This might be the earliest they’ve gotten to those parts. They were clearly grasping at straws to keep the conversation about this episode going (and this podcast was about 10 minutes shorter than other recent ones). When they came back, Jennie sarcastically called it a “super-exciting episode.”

• Jennie: “I’m kind of developing a little crush on Jim. On James Eckhouse. I didn’t see this coming.” She liked his suspenders and said, “I just want to snap them!” Tori thinks suspenders are “so sexy.”

• Jennie: “Can we have him on the show soon? We talk about him more than anybody.” Tori agreed about having James on.

  • This, of course, begs the question… why haven’t they asked him yet?

• Superfan Sisanie: “Are we going to eventually see him in a bathing suit at the beach club?” Jennie: “You just gave me something to live for!” She went on to call Jim “daddy” and Sisanie said “daddies” are the “theme of this episode.”

• Tori sorta liked Dylan saying, “Big Jimbo’s gonna be flyin’.” But she and Jennie weren’t familiar with “flyin.’” Tori also questioned Brandon saying, “Hello, females!” She assumed it was improv and said she was “not there for it.”

• Jennie liked Jim saying, “Don’t sell yourself short,” because of the “irony” with Jason being on the shorter side. This cracked Tori up for some reason.

• Sisanie liked Sandy saying, “I’m just not about to pour my heart out to the teenage boy from Beverly Hills.” Tori thought this was “John Hughes-esque.”

• At under 45 minutes, Jennie said they had talked about everything they could with the episode and wanted to move on to fan questions.

• The first fan wanted to know if Jennie and Tori were ever uncomfortable filming some things when they were younger and how’d they feel about their kids going into acting. Tori said “kissing a boy” was uncomfortable and “still is” today in her 40s. 

• Jennie said there was something she was uncomfortable with during a movie of the week and it’s even more uncomfortable today — making out with Gregory Harrison, who she said is now “the father of my ex-husband’s fiancée, if you can track that.” She reiterated, “Peter’s fiancée’s father.” Jennie estimated she was 19 at the time and Gregory was in his 40s, which was weird to her, but she acknowledged she had a choice whether to do the movie or not.

  • Teen drama fans know Gregory as Julian’s dad on “One Tree Hill.”

• Tori said she and Jennie ran into Gregory on a flight and Jennie had to explain why it was “weird.” Jennie called it a “small town kind of thing.” Tori then took things to another level, going over how twisted it would be if Gregory and Jennie had gotten together back in the day.

• As for the other part of the question, Jennie said she would not want her kids in the industry as teens because of what they’d “be exposed to.” She did crack, though, that she and Tori “turned out alright.”

• Jennie is vehemently against babies being in TV and movies because she thinks it’s a traumatic experience for them, and Tori revealed she was supposed to have a baby in “BH90210.” The baby stuff was a big tangent.

• Another fan wanted to know which love interests were the best and worst for their characters. Sisanie told Tori she couldn’t pick David. Tori objected to the question, saying it would be a “spoiler”... as if they haven’t discussed this kind of stuff on the podcast already. She ultimately answered Joe as the best and told Jennie, “You’ll remember him when you see him.” She replied, “I hope so.”

• Jennie said she “always goes to the guy, Matt Durning.” Tori agreed, saying, “Kelly’s life would’ve been really happy if she married Matt… you guys would’ve made really cute babies… in an alternate universe.”

• For the worst, Jennie wanted to pick for Tori / Donna and said, “I don’t know the character name but I know the actor’s name is Vince.” She didn’t think Noah was a “good match.” Tori thought Jennie was only saying that because Tori and Vincent dated in real life and Jennie didn’t like him in that context either. Tori and Sisanie were both surprised that Jennie was picking Noah over Ray “who pushed Donna down a flight of stairs and broke her arm.”

• Tori said Colin for Jennie / Kelly, even though she was “wild about this storyline.” They agreed he was a “bad influence.”

• Jennie asked if there were more questions and Sisanie told her there wasn’t. Apparently she hasn’t caught on that they usually only have two questions each week.

• Jennie: “Keep ‘em coming — keep the up the reviews, the stars.” She also showed off her Kelly-Donna merch (which we couldn’t see, of course) and told fans to buy it even though her shirt is “a little short.”

• Sisanie gave the episode title for next week, “Summer Storm,” and Jennie and Tori were intrigued. 

• Jennie: “We’ll just pretend like episode 2 didn’t really happen and go on to episode 3. Thanks for bearing with us, guys. I hope they agreed with us. Maybe this was somebody’s very, very favorite episode. Who knows?” Tori: “And if it is, we’d love to hear and prove us wrong [with] why you think that.”

• Tori: “You’ll see us next week. Oh, you’ll hear us next week.”

As you can see, I didn’t take many notes, or at least not as many as usual. I normally start listening and writing during my lunch break, but I actually took half the day off of work so I could rest amid my ongoing health woes. I didn’t start listening until around 8:30pm tonight and really didn’t have it in me to do much more than just listen. I jotted some things down, as shown above, but that was about all I could muster. And it will likely be the same with “Welcome to the OC, Bitches” tomorrow. I appreciate your patience and understanding.

Ironically, my issues with FOMO aside, this was a totally skippable edition of the podcast. With Jennie and Tori’s disdain for the episode so strong (each of them also separately disliked one episode in season 1), the discussion was rather boring and dispassionate. They were unable to put their distaste aside to have a substantive conversation. They are entitled, of course, to not like every episode. There are episodes I don’t care for as well. That said, they still could’ve discussed this one in a mature and engaging way. But the way they talked about it made this just such an unpleasant listening experience.

Then again… what else is new?

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