Tonight's episode of Fox's 90210 meets Dawson's Creek freshman show, The O.C., made me cry, and not in a manipulative, ratings grabbing ploy, but because I actually identified with a character and found myself (if only briefly) in the same sorry-for-myself state of teenagehood that Marissa's bad-only-getting-worse-day brings on.

It was a masterpiece of after-school-special themes combined into a thoroughly engaging hour I will most likely watch again tomorrow when it airs on Fox at 9pm.

As the kids head to Tijuana for the last weekend before school, the episode continues to grow the budding relationship between bitchy snob Summer and lovable geek Seth by letting them bitch each other into a ditch only to share a motel double bed and morning-after toast. We get more intrigue into the increasingly strained relationship between parents Sandy and Kirsten. Feeling like less of a man for not being the breadwinner, and tired of having to do all the Electric Monk idealism, Sandy decides to jump ship as a public defender and take a plum job at a corporate law firm that sends him a shiny new yellow boogie board and a promise of a salary AND pro bono work. Kirsten's real estate connections come in handy when former flame, next-door neighbor and shady investment manager Jimmy needs a new apartment in a jam as he's decided to slip out with his boxes in the middle of the night and not tell anyone. Well, at least not his kids. Delightfully bitchy minx and Traci Lords lookalike Julie is nowhere in sight this ep which leaves Jimmy feeling sorry for kissing Kirsten as he thinks of what could have been, and Kirsten is reminded of Sandy's scathing assesment of their marriage the night before: "You like me not having any money... unlike these other women with their investment bankers...as long as I haven't sold out, neither have you...the only thing that keeps you from being Julie Cooper is me."

Back across the border, or as the kids affectionately refer to it: T.J,