April 27, 2014
BH90210 7.22, A Ripe Young Age: Isn’t War Super-Romantic?
It’s a picture of a picture! WOW!
Summary: A guy named Rob Andrews tries to get into the After Dark but is told he’s not on the list of people attending a party with Quentin Tarantino. (Mm-hmm, I’m sure.) Valerie intervenes and offers to let him in, but Rob doesn’t want to be there anyway. As he leaves, a bunch of photographers take his picture. One of them tells Valerie that he’s an actor and is supposed to be the next James Dean. (Mm-hmm, I’m sure.)
Kelly finds a boy sleeping on the porch of the beach apartment. She wakes him up and he tells her his mom was supposed to pick him up from the beach the night before. She offers the boy, Joey, something to eat before they try to get in touch with his mother. David and Donna are driving out to see her grandmother, who is probably going to be more welcoming of David than Felice has been. Donna asks him not to ask about her grandfather, who died in World War II.
Brandon tells Steve that Tracy thinks they’re in a rut. Does anyone seriously care about Brandon and Tracy at all? Steve has to make an infomercial for a class and asks for Brandon’s help, since he procrastinated and the project is due Monday. Valerie tracks down Rob and offers him free passes to the club. She wonders why he didn’t use his fame to get in. She asks him out to make things up to him, but Rob suggests that she join him at a studio for a looping session instead.
Kelly urges Joey to call his mother, though he insists that since he’s 12, he’s old enough not to need someone looking out for him. Clare meets Joey, then pulls Kelly aside to tell her to call the police. Joey begs her not to since his mom will get in trouble. He tries to distract her with a trip to the beach.
David and Donna arrive at her grandmother’s house, and she’s very welcoming to David, so she’s definitely the opposite of Felice. She says David reminds her of her husband. Pictures come out, and Donna sees the resemblance (probably because Brian Austin Green and Tori Spelling are posing as Captain and Mrs. Martin). Mrs. Martin wants to tell them a story about how she and her husband met. Valerie goes to the studio, where Rob’s finishing up for the day. He’s working on his first movie, but because of all the buzz surrounding him, he’s already famous.
Mrs. Martin tells Donna and David about meeting her husband, and we get flashbacks of them meeting at a dance hall in the 1940s. They met the day before the Pearl Harbor attacks, and got married within a week. Her parents didn’t approve, which David can relate to. Joey won’t tell Kelly where he lives, so she takes him to the Peach Pit to bribe him with a milkshake.
Rob and Valerie have lunch and talk about screen kisses. This is her way of flirting so she can get him to kiss her. He calls her “aggressive.” Shut up, Rob. Mrs. Martin tells more of the story: She and her husband only got to spend two months together before he had to go off to war. Just before he left, she told him she was pregnant. She gave him her necklace to keep him safe. That was the last time they saw each other, but they wrote each other letters, which Mrs. Martin gives Donna.
Steve, Brandon, Clare, and Tracy gather to film Steve’s infomercial for something called Sandershine, a wood restorer. The others tell Steve it’s going to be great, though they secretly think he’s going to fail. Kelly questions Joey again, and he admits that he ran away from home. Valerie takes Rob to the Peach Pit and they look for a place for him to live.
At a hotel for the night, Donna looks through her grandparents’ pictures and reads their letters. One of them includes an adorable baby picture of Dr. Martin. David finds a letter from Captain Martin’s co-pilot telling Mrs. Martin about her husband’s death and calling him a hero. He died holding the cross necklace Mrs. Martin gave him just before he left.
Kelly takes Joey back to the beach apartment and snoops in his backpack while he takes a shower. She finds a bus ticket from Phoenix, though Joey’s been claiming he lives in L.A. Steve’s infomercial is cheesy and awful, and for some reason features Clare in the worst maid’s outfit I’ve ever seen. Tracy enjoys getting to be off-screen for once, since it means she gets to make out with Brandon. Things go south when Clare learns that Steve added some things to the Sandershine that turned it into glue.
Donna stays up late reading a letter from Captain Martin – he was supposed to fly one last mission and then go home. Fake-flashback Donna gets more action than real Donna ever has. Captain Martin tells his wife to move on and remarry if something happens to him. Joey begs Kelly to let him stay with her, telling her she’d make a great mom. He doesn’t realize that she called Social Services to come retrieve him.
The next day, Steve shows Clare, Brandon, and Tracy his infomercial, which is now for Sanderstick. Brandon and Tracy think he’ll get a C or C-. “Those are passing grades,” Steve says, totally fine with that. There’s half a day left in the weekend, and Tracy wants to go back to the TV station to make out with Brandon some more.
Valerie and Rob find him his perfect house. I know you were desperate to know how that story ended. Rob admits that show business isn’t something he really likes, so he needs someone he can trust, like Valerie. Yes, that Valerie. Poor, confused boy. Mrs. Martin blah blahs something about love being different from people’s expectations, like, we get it, she thinks David and Donna are good together. Also, the cross Donna always wears is the one Mrs. Martin gave to her husband.
As Donna and David leave, she tells him that she always thought the cross was a reminder to be a good girl and do what her parents wanted. Now she understands that it means something else. She wants to do what she thinks is right for herself, not her family. The Social Services worker returns to the beach apartment to ask Kelly for more information on Joey. He’s not really from Phoenix. Oh, and he ran away again. Oops! Now Kelly’s not sure she did the right thing.
Thoughts: Mrs. Martin is played by the legendary June Lockhart (Lassie, Lost in Space, everything else ever). Also, I totally thought she was dead, but she’s not, so yay!
Rob is played by Jason Lewis (probably best known from Sex and the City), who I can’t remember ever seeing smile until this episode. Seriously, he has the least number of facial expressions of any actor I’ve ever seen.
The Donna/David plot is like Titanic. The Valerie/Rob plot is like Notting Hill with much less interesting people and no British accents.
I’ll admit that Tori Spelling is suited to ’40s fasion and styling.
Speaking of styling, nice mullet, Joey.
Kelly, why are you taking in strays? You’re not the Walshes.
'90s Flashback 
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