Oh, Aimee Teegarden. We’ve fallen in love with you as the sweet, shy Julie Taylor on Friday Night Lights. But now you’re doing a guest stint on 90210, and while you look like the same Coach’s daughter we’ve know and love, this character is a little bit… different. I mean, bitch is crazy, right?
When Teegarden appeared in last week’s Adrianna-centric episode as Rhonda, the fellow West Beverly student who Ethan hit with his car, she seemed like a dorkier version of Julie Taylor. Teegarden herself describes Rhonda as a “band geek,” but I really think there’s more going on. Rhonda is clearly using whatever she can in order to win Ethan’s affection, and I don’t think her machinations stopped with just exaggerating her injuries.
I was surprised when Rhonda admitted to Ethan that she had been exaggerating so that he would keep on talking to her. She wasn’t really caught, so it would have made sense for her to just keep on going with it. Her admission may have made her seem honest, but to me, it just seemed like copping to dealing drugs to cover up the murder that you committed.
My favorite scene in this entire episode is the one in which Rhonda casually, over waffles no less, shares the story of her school dance humiliation and subsequent suicide. Now, I’m not saying that people with dark moments in their past should be ashamed of them, but uh, that’s some awkward breakfast talk right there.
What makes this scene so great for me is Annie’s complete inability to hide her disgust with Rhonda. You can almost hear Annie thinking, “Ugh. Too bad your mom found you,” when Rhonda talked about swallowing an entire bottle of pills. But also? I think the story is a total lie.
If I were sitting at that table, I would call bullshit on this entire story, because as I talked about last night on TVTalkRadio, nothing she said made any sense. I’ve been in high school. The Ethans of the world may not necessarily hang out with the Rhondas, but come on. Rhonda is a cute blond girl. People don’t go out of their way to terrorize the cute blond girls, and they certainly don’t dare people to ask them to dances in order to humiliate them.
Maybe I’m giving the writers more credit than they deserve — perhaps that story just served to further Annie and Ethan’s alienation, but I’m choosing to believe that this is an over-arching devious plan. Maybe Rhonda’s mother didn’t move them to Beverly Hills because of an attempted suicide; maybe it’s because she’s a cuckoo crazy-pants who goes all Fatal Attraction over dudes on a regular basis.
When Ethan pulled away after she kissed him, she seemed more than just a little disappointed. She seemed a little… unhinged, like she couldn’t believe her plan didn’t work out the way she wanted it to. Right now, Teegarden is scheduled for one more episode (the next new one on March 31), which to me, says that I’m right.
When she got into her car and left, that could have been the end of it, so why bring her back at all? Are we really just going to have her standing around being sad for one more episode? That doesn’t seem very interesting to me. If they’re bringing her back, there has to be some sort of explosion.
I predict that Annie is going to go digging around, in an effort to save her relationship with Ethan. She’s going to find out that Rhonda’s story is a lie, and there’s going to be a showdown. While the fact that Teegarden isn’t immediately scheduled for any more episodes, makes it seem as though Annie will win this round, apparently Rhonda’s exit is open-ended, so I wouldn’t expect Ms. Crazy to necessarily stay gone for too long.
What do you think? Am I totally off-base here?
Clacked by Kona Gallagher 
on Feb 12, 2009 @ 17:00 EST5EDT
What I saw when Ethan pulled away was not a “my plan isn’t working” look, but more a psycho “he’s my boyfriend and I’m not letting him go” look. Like she’s going to be one of those girls who you look at sideways and she has you married with children in her head. I can’t stand Annie, so its fun to see her upset.
Yeah I’d take insane blonde chick over Annie. She’s so annoying. I want her to get in a crash or to get super depressed & off herself cuz she sucks at acting in her acting class.
That’s “suicide ATTEMPT.” It would be very awkward if she was a character on the show while at the same time being dead.
Not really, the rest of us just call it Greys Anatomy when that happens.
Oh I think she’s just this side of completely losing it, so thats exciting. I saw the same look in her eyes as the first poster here. I don’t think she’s devious and calculating so much as she is nutso. So, to her, this is a real relationship and she’s going to be boiling-bunny mad when she finds out it isn’t.
Although, not for nothing, I don’t really blame her for thinking Ethan was into her. Touching her hand and then telling her he didn’t care where Annie was? Yeah, all signs he’s looking to her for “comfort”. He’s a jackass.
I also think that Rhonda’s story was a lie. I sort of expected that Annie would get busted for it not by Ethan, but by someone in the acting class recognizing it as being from some movie or play.