Tread Perilously makes a course-correction to the 1990s with the Fox primetime soap Beverly Hills, 90210 and its latter-day episode, "The Nature of Nurture."
Kelly (Jennie Garth) looses her cool when the semi-orphaned child she brought to child protective services gets placed with a gay couple. Is she a bigot like the child's mother or will the series excuse her homophobic tendencies? Brandon (Jason Priestley) tries to stop Steve (Sharknado's Ian Ziering) from placing cigarette ads in their newspaper. David (Brian Austin Green) bonds with his new next-door neighbor, who happens to be a former guitar god. Valerie's (Tiffani Thiesen) mother starts dating Kelly's father, only freshly out of prison. Meanwhile, Steve pretends to be another man to woo a woman he met via mail fraud. It's as terrible as it sounds. Also, Lindsay Price appears in this episode.
Erik and Justin immediately get lost in a discussion of The CW, Clone Wars and Justin's interest in the Disney+ streaming service. Erik tries to define the difference between a primetime drama and a primetime soap. He also makes a pitch to become a professor of television at an accredited university, but then slams his alma mater. Both discuss the problem of TV shows set in college and high school shows attempting to pivot to college settings. Also, Erik and Justin try to pitch the perfect Paul Rudd sitcom for 1998.
