Again With This: Beverly Hills, 90210

Dawson is being extremely annoying and maudlin about his first-ever breakup, and nothing Joey says can snap him out of it. But when Billy (somehow) hears about the split and reappears to try to get Jen back some more, she firmly shuts him down, forcing him to take the long way around: inviting Dawson to come with him to a bar in Providence where Billy knows the bouncer and thus can get his underage ass in. (Pacey comes too, because...they needed something for Pacey to do.) Back in Capeside, Joey accepts a lift to school from cool football player Warren (Eric Balfour!), immediately regretting it when he claims that he and Joey had sex. Then Jen gets an idea for a mother of a revenge plan. Get your motor running for our podcast on "Road Trip"! JOIN THE AWT CLUB

It's time for the cruise! Tony is VERY annoyed to see that his would-be girlfriend brought her husband, and orders Amanda to run interference, which Amanda is happy enough to do, both because she wants to secure his account, and because -- as WE all know -- she enjoys spending time with Peter because he is her favorite. Meanwhile, Lexi's assistant Julie has heard all the gossip about Amanda's recent business moods, convincing Lexi to take a break from boning Michael to try to...compete with Amanda for Tony's account, which she almost has, rather than just try to scoop up all the clients Amanda just fired? Sure! Terry is furious that Ryan didn't send Sarah home as planned, and gets the authorities involved to make sure he returns her. Sarah then hatches her OWN plan to stay in California by falsely claiming she can't go back to New York because Terry is abusive. There's nothing for it but to bring Terry to town so she and Ryan can both clear her name. Jane finds out about Amanda and Kyle's divorce and heads st

After the extremely awkward events of "Detention," Dawson claims to Joey that things between him and Jen are just fine! Little does he know that Jen's ex Billy (Eion Bailey!) has come from New York to Capeside to try to get Jen back. It doesn't work immediately, so he contrives a reason to remain in town, but also cries poor, which leads to him getting billeted with...Dawson? Feels like a mistake. The addition of a crying baby to the Potter household has left Joey extremely sleep-deprived, so Dawson should be especially grateful that she has any energy to expend on his dumb whining. But when she finally hits the wall on her shift at work, Bessie orders her to go to a beach party with Pacey. Many beers are downed, and some track for one of the most memorable relationship endgame reversals in TV history is laid! Deep, DEEP in the background, Gale and Mitch are back, trying to get their relationship BACK on track. Could the answer be scuba diving?! Put on a t-shirt and boxers you stole from a beau in your past a

WELL, Sarah (McBride, to be clear) is still in Los Angeles. Immediately, she determines that the true Megan is meant to be with her dad, and is compliant with everything Ryan tells her to do, starting when he's still at her boarding school on the other side of the country, yelling at Terry about challenging her custody. Sarah ends up at the beach house where the uncle she never knew she had is imposing on his wife's employee; when Aunt Amanda comes home, she's not that interested in getting to know her new niece, but does notice that Sarah, Kyle, and Jane look a lot like a family. Lexi uses the trip back to L.A. to tell Ryan about all the scheming she and Michael have been doing to mess with Ryan and Megan, while Michael does the same for Megan back at the complex; Ryan and Megan are more determined than ever to forgive all their misunderstandings. Eve is still letting Amanda essentially pimp her out to Tony Marlin (non-sexually (so far)); Peter is suspicious about it, but still books that trip to Maui he and

Four separate disciplinary incidents have, it seems, landed our four teen protagonists in all-day detention in the Capeside High library...but it wouldn't be a full Breakfast Club homage without a fifth, which is why we're meeting chaos agent Abby Morgan (Monica Keena)! What crimes did they each commit? What terrifying admissions and world-changing challenges occur in the course of Abby's game of Truth or Dare? What's Mrs. Tringle's favorite soap opera? And how much better is this first episode from future White Lotus creator Mike White than what has come before? You don't have to block out a full eight hours to enjoy our podcast on "Detention"! JOIN THE AWT CLUB

Megan still loves Ryan. Michael still loves Megan. Ryan's trying to convince himself Megan is a lost cause, but he still loves her too. NO ONE loves Lexi. Yet somehow these four idiots refuse to figure out their whole situation. Michael, at least, has the excuse of bigger fish to fry: having bought in as a board member at the hospital, Dr. Shulman is still bringing the draconian cost-cutting spirit to the new worker's co-op and driving everyone crazy. Michael gets the idea to redirect her with someone who can engage in a little sex-spionage. Who? The answer may surprise you! Amanda's pledge to cut back on work is a distant memory as she charges hard after Tony Marlin, whose cruise company could be a huge account for her. Amanda and Megan are both fine with him flirting hard at them both, but it seems like he's even more into brunettes: as soon as he gets one look at Eve, he's laser-focused on getting Amanda to deliver her to him, basically, and Amanda's determination to land the account -- to the exclusion of

The more we hear everyone discussing Bessie's pregnancy due date in the relatively near future, the more we know this TV baby is coming even sooner than that, and sure enough, he chooses a day when Bodie's out of town, the Potter phone isn't connected, and the truck is likely to get stuck in mud. The upshot is that Bessie and Joey end up at Dawson's -- initially just to use the phone, but when the community ambulance isn't available to take Bessie to the nearest hospital, everyone has to swallow their pride so that Grams the registered nurse can come from next door to be Bessie's emergency midwife. Jen also comes, to be supremely unhelpful. (What's going on with Dawson's parents' foundering marriage? Great question, but they aren't in the episode or mentioned by anyone who is!) In the sex crime plot, Pacey gets so excited about possibly taking Tamara out of town for a date that he discusses it with Dawson in the bathroom, both of them using her name; Pacey also does a terrible job checking whether they're alo

Things are going badly enough for Megan that she decides to take Amanda up on that job offer after all: if Ryan no longer has any feelings for Megan, then Megan can turn her feelings for Ryan off too. That's fine with Amanda, since it means she can wring all of Lexi's business secrets out of Megan and gain a competitive advantage -- which is probably overestimating both how much Megan retained at her fake job, and...how much was available for her even to try to learn about. Lexi isn't aware of all these machinations until much later, however, because she's still running her own schemes, now with Michael: rifling through Ryan's apartment together tips them to Poughkeepsie as the locus for Ryan's big secret, so off they go to investigate further in person. Eve and Peter have been so horny since all this surprise oil money came into their lives that Peter suggests they...not do anything with it and go back to their old jobs? That lasts about three hours until Kyle gives Eve the chance to buy into full partnershi

Hurricane Chris is bearing down on Capeside, but it can't really compete with the shitstorm that drama queen Dawson's been living in since he found out about his mother's affair and his girlfriend's sexual experiences. When almost everyone ends up holing up at the Leery house, it becomes impossible for Dawson to escape all the women he's mad at, so he lefts Gale know he knows, and also ices out Jen. Meanwhile, Bessie and Bodie dodge possibly racist, definitely tactless comments from Grams about the baby Bessie's about to deliver, although at least that stops them loudly debating circumcision. Escaping all this mess but creating their own elsewhere: Tamara and Pacey, who end up riding out the storm at her place with Pacey's just-introduced brother, Deputy Doug. Board up the windows and listen to our podcast on "Hurricane"! JOIN THE AWT CLUB

As soon as they got back together, Kyle and Amanda promised to step back from their high-pressure jobs and focus on each other. He had no problem doing that, so why can't Amanda?! And should we be worried that he and Jane -- whose back stairs he is taking forever to build -- have such an easy rapport? Peter is fighting two different wars: against Dr. Shulman's savage cuts at the hospital, and against the...legal consequences of Eve's many dumb decisions. Amanda comes through in the clutch on the latter, and an unexpected turn of events regarding the land Peter inherited from his hated father might change the calculus on the former. We are also all required to learn more about Ryan, very much against our will, and although the person he SHOULD be telling his secrets is Megan, he decides to confess sex with Lexi in Mexico and blow up their relationship instead. We hope you'll choose to join us for our podcast on "Ryan's Choice"! JOIN THE AWT CLUB

Dawson has a lot of naïve ideas about love, and in this episode sees several of them destroyed. His parents' perfect marriage? Not perfect enough to keep his mother from making out with her co-anchor in the middle of their TV station, which Dawson witnesses. His wonderful friendship with Joey? Whoops, she knew about the affair and didn't tell him. Jen's purported virginity? Apparently a distant memory. Pacey's ineptitude with girls? Doesn't extend to grown-ass women, as Dawson learns when he watches Tamara have sex with a mystery partner on his b-roll, after which Pacey informs Dawson that said swain is Pacey himself. Discover all the discoveries of "Discovery" in our latest podcast! JOIN THE AWT CLUB

Kyle and Amanda are back together: yay! Kyle and Amanda's plans to move into their dream house and start a family might get postponed by Amanda getting forced into finally bringing her slum of an apartment complex up to code: noooooo, or something! Given the financial pinch Amanda is feeling, it's a wonder Eve is even bothering trying to repair their broken friendship -- but never mind, she's still got Jackie! But, before long, Jackie is in her own crisis, and Dr. Shulman overhears a conversation between her and Eve, which efficiently lays out their past association. This is exactly the ammunition that Dr. Shulman -- now working for the corporation that just bought Wilshire Memorial, and eager to make spending cuts no matter who may die as a consequence -- needs to overrule Peter and his...bleeding-heart do-gooding with uninsured patients? Okay, sure. Lexi's campaign to break up Megan and Ryan by smashing them together continues, and now incorporates Michael, whom we're now supposed to think has totally given

Since Dawson simply cannot shut up in the back of the film class he is very much not enrolled in, Mr. Gold finally tries to get him to shut up by letting him be a PA on Cliff's movie. Will Dawson's constitutional inability to keep his thoughts to himself ruin his chance to parlay the PA gig into full access to the class? At the same time, he's still very anxious to kiss Jen, going so far as to plan not just the music and setting but possibly also the dialogue, and refuses to hear Joey when she tells him THAT'S CREEPY. Joey, meanwhile, meets a preppie tourist named Anderson and decides to try on a whole new identity with him: Upper East Sider Deborah Kerr.......son. Deborah Carson! How far can she push her luck using the random facts she's gleaned about Manhattan, a place we may safely presume she's never been? Speaking of pushing her luck: Tamara. Pacey claims he strategically failed a quiz to try to weasel his way into having her tutor him and she agrees because she has a lot of issues she is refusing to ack

Amanda's one-story fall leads to medical consequences that are, for any soap opera viewer, extremely expected. Further consequences ripple through the group: Lexi takes advantage of Ryan's distress to get intel on his romantic past. Eve looks up an old prison pal for help fleeing her life. And Peter finally decides to try to run down the VA lab results to see if he can prove to Kyle that he did, in fact, father a child with Amanda. In the background of all this, Nurse Audrey takes her revenge on Michael with the help of her secret sex tape. We are going to get into all of this AND the extremely inappropriate episode title in our podcast on "How Amanda Got Her Groove Back"! JOIN THE AWT CLUB

Only two episodes in, and already it's just overall a bad time to be Joey Potter. First of all, she has to be present for all of Dawson's yammering about the romantic relationship that only he thinks he's on his way to having with Jen. Also, she has to bear the terrible knowledge that Gale is having an extramarital affair, though at least in that case, she lightens her burden a little by telling Gale she knows. And THEN, there's a friggin' Victory Dance at school, and a football player/aspiring filmmaker named Cliff (a pre-Felicity Scott Foley!) dares to ask Jen before Dawson could...ask her over to watch dance movies instead. And when Dawson decides to try to shoot his shot around Cliff, he makes Joey come and witness it. It's rough! Speaking of rough: Pacey, spending almost all his time trying to force Tamara to go against her instincts not to get arrested. Pour yourself some punch, then spike it, and enjoy our podcast on "Dance"! JOIN THE AWT CLUB

Amanda is doing her best to be supportive while Kyle goes through his rehab program, but she still feels guilty about pushing him to do things she doesn't think he ever wanted to do, while he feels ashamed to have fallen short of his own standards. She definitely needs a friend to lean on, and since she and Eve are still fighting about Amanda having fired Sharp Objects, Amanda seeks support from Peter, fueling rumors: Lexi tells Ryan about seeing Amanda and Peter getting a hotel room key after the foundation fundraiser, Eve remembers how Amanda clung to Peter after he got Ricky G away from her, and the one and only other patient Kyle's talked to in his program is perfectly cheerful about his own wife cheating on him while he's away, leading Kyle to jump to wild conclusions. Lexi and Ryan aren't ONLY talking about Kyle: when they simultaneously land on a great slogan for the Passion Island campaign, they throw themselves a drinking contest to decide which of them will get to present it -- a contest that has co

Dawson Leery, the world's #1 Steven Spielberg fan, has a great life: wonderful friends he's known since childhood, parents who are seriously crazy about each other, and plenty of resources to pursue his dream of becoming a filmmaker. But just as he and his pals are about to start high school, cracks start to appear. Joey suddenly decides she can't sleep over anymore, just because of their hormones. Dawson's elderly next-door neighbor takes in her beautiful granddaughter Jen, who's fleeing some kind of scandal in New York City. And...is Dawson's mother maybe sleeping with her closest work colleague?! Meanwhile, when a hot-to-trot older lady comes into the video store where Dawson works with his friend Pacey, the latter decides that the new member's request for The Graduate is some kind of signal that she wants to fool around with him. All that and it's truly just the beginning. You don't want to wait for our podcast on the Dawson's Creek pilot -- and you don't have to! Here it is. JOIN THE AWT CLUB

We're off this week but we bring you two Again With Again With This episodes full of holiday cheer. AWAWT 120: Let’s Watch SNL’s Tori: Absolutely Christmas! Our discussion of the ongoing Tori Spelling send-up from Saturday Night Live is twice as long as the pleasingly concise skit, which we give pretty high marks. Is Melanie Hutsell's Tennessee-flavored Tori a success? Is there STUFF? Listen and see what we thought! AWAWT 125: Let's Watch Tori Spelling In A Carol Christmas! Carol Cartman is a truly heinous bitch of a daytime talk show host, but can visits from three Christmas ghosts show her the error of her ways? ...Yes, yes they can. JOIN THE AWT CLUB

We're off this week but we bring you two Again With Again With This episodes full of holiday cheer. AWAWT 121: Let's Watch Jack Wagner In Falling For Christmas! Netflix's "Hallmark, But Expensive?" movie Falling For Christmas features LiLo as an amnesiac heiress, and Jack Wagner as her hotel-magnate dad. It's a completely predictable bagatelle -- but were we charmed by it? Was Wagner's best work in the blooper reel? And can we get a Tad/Ralph spin-off or what? AWAWT 124: Let's Watch Heather Locklear In Her First Spin City Christmas Episode! Caitlin may be a new arrival to The Mayor's staff, but Heather Locklear is a veteran when it comes to parrying men's romantic overtures and pretending she's not interested herself. Her stubbornness is matched by Mike's in this holiday episode: join us as we mix and mingle, but stay away from the Croot Loops. JOIN THE AWT CLUB

The good news is that after seeing his worst qualities reflected in his awful father, Kyle has realized that he does, finally, have to tell Amanda what's driven him to drink and pills. The bad news is that he does so immediately after setting the dream house frame on fire and driving off to parts unknown. Amid and around waiting for him to return, Amanda decides to send Ryan to Mexico for a resort client pitch meeting, and Lexi decides to send herself as soon as she knows he's going. Amanda also manages Sharp Objects out of the rock and roll club in Kyle's absence, pissing off Eve, who thinks Amanda's doing it on Peter's orders to sabotage Eve's career. (Peter also finds time to comfort Amanda...maybe a little too well?) Elsewhere, we find out what exactly Michael has been doing with Nurse Audrey, and whether he found the right partner for a scheme based on sexual intrigue. Get ready to salute our podcast on "Saving Ryan's Privates"! JOIN THE AWT CLUB