OPINION: 90210 Goes To Vegas, JERSEY SHORE (Vinny), Billy Ray Cyrus, Brandy Come to Them, Teddy Marries Shane, Adrianna Saves Dixon?

This week our 90210 faves headed to Sin City.  Liam (Matt Lanter) is now an overnight celebrity after allowing his shirtless modeling gig to use his face.  JERSEY SHORE guest star Vinny gets Liam involved in a high stakes poker game with a high buy-in.  Liam's got all this modeling moolah so he figures why not.  Liam does really badly and frets that he will lose his bar and everything else.  Ok, but two weeks ago, Liam didn't have the money for the bar either and last week when he reluctantly started modeling he got the money and apparently quite a lot of it because he loses $80,000 at the poker table.

I know the stakes are supposed to be high for Liam here, but they aren't.  Money is too easy come, easy go in the world 90210 has created for us, no one is down and out and suffering for any length of time to make us actually worry for their character's finances.  I didn't fret about Liam's predicament and boy am I glad, because before the night was over he won most of his money back.  Phew!

I've been interested in Annie's (Shenae Grimes) relationship with Patrick (Chris McKenna).  I was wondering where they were headed with it, since Patrick seems to always get his own way and Annie is a young, independent woman.  We found out a bit where it was going, this week when she calls him from across the room and he blows her off and starts making out with another woman, perhaps another escort.  Annie doesn't tell Patrick what she saw and we don't know what she plans to do with this information.  I hope she's careful, but I'm psyched she now has the upper hand.

Dixon (Tristan Wilds) really struggled to stay away from drugs in Vegas, especially being in Liam's entourage, which I guess opens him up to a world of easily attained illegal substances.  He finally breaks down and buys some coke or crushed pills that he's clearly about to sniff and Adrianna (Jessica Lowndes) walks in.  He is so glad she came and she saves him from himself and they totally do it.  Of course, Annie walks in later and sees the drugs (why he was doing drugs in the common room of their no-doubt humongous Vegas suite, I do not know).

Annie accuses Adrianna of bringing the drugs, but Dixon sets her straight.  Good move, Dixon.  It would have been all too easy and all too despicable to let the troubled Adrianna take the fall for everything.  Annie still gives Adrianna a piece of her mind.  It's incredible that the show has played the fallout of Adrianna's horrible behavior.  I'm very thankful that they've allowed Adrianna to work her way little by little back into the good graces of Dixon and Liam, while everyone else essentially still despises her.  She really deserves their wrath after the havoc she brought on her "friends" last season.  But the character does seem to truly want to make amends and I think we are seeing a realistic healing process in a severely scarred friendship.

Then there's Silver (Jessica Stroup) who is running around taking phone calls from Brandy "The Boy Is Mine" Norwood even though she is on vacation.  I'm annoyed at Brandy's character, but I guess that's part of the story?  I think the election between Brandy's character Marissa and Teddy's Uncle will create some sparks next week and hopefully that will be the end of Silver's career in politics.  I do think the election story is really interesting and I'm interested to see if there are grey areas played between Teddy's conservative uncle and Brandy's liberal character.  It's a great time to explore a twist in politics as we know it, whether or not 90210 will take that road remains to be seen.

Speaking of Teddy (Trevor Donovan), he and his newest beau Shane (Ryan Rottman) get married in a fake ceremony while in Vegas.  It's nice to see a little sincere gay affection, but it would have mattered more if Teddy and Shane's relationship had been featured more on the show leading up to their nuptials.  It looks like their relationship will be featured heavily in the preview for next week as politics come between them again.  Unfortunately, it's been heavily publicized that Trevor Donovan is leaving the show, so we know this pair and this fake marriage will be short lived (on screen at least).

Also this week week, Naomi (AnnaLynne McCord) follows Austin (Justin Deeley) to Vegas for his birthday.  Austin is weird about wanting to spend his birthday with family only, but of course Naomi makes sure she is there.  When she meets his dad, a country superstar played by guest star Billy Ray Cyrus, Naomi learns what Austin is trying to hide.  His dad is a total jerk who belittles Austin and constantly tells him he won't amount to anything great.  Naomi is sad to see this part of Austin's life and feels badly for prying.  I just want to know if this makes Austin Miley's brother.

Navid (Michael Steger) has a package to deliver to a shady character from his uncle.  His sexy detective pal put a wire on him... again in the main room of the suite.  When they hear someone coming, they start making out to cover up what they are really up to.  Unfortunately, Silver saw her man (ex-man) underneath the sexy detective.  When Navid makes the drop, he learns that the package was full of socks.  They were testing his loyalty and he passed.  Next time, the package won't contain socks!  Dun dun dun.

All in all, it was a good episode.  Stories are starting to (finally!) go somewhere.  As shoddy as all the setup has been for the Navid/Silver stolen car story (this week Navid's uncle acted like he owned Shirazi Studios and Navid worked for him, previously it looked like the other way around), I think (hope!) that we will see a big payoff to it.  I was glad not to see Naomi fighting Holly again this week.  Maybe the reason Liam's been meandering through his life this season is that he is a lost soul.  If that's the story they are trying to tell for Liam, I'll buy it, but I still don't think it's the best use of Liam or Matt Lanter.  Alright, 90210, I'm still watching, and I'm expecting big payoffs!

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Greg Turner contributes primetime reviews for We Love Soaps. Along with Brian Hewson, Greg is the creator, writer, and producer of the web soap, EMPIRE, which can be found at www.empiretheseries.com. Greg loves soaps.