One Beverly Hills, 90210 star has so mixed feelings looking back at a romance on the hit TV show. In retrospect, it comes across as a bit creepy.
Appearing on the Melrose Place podcast Still The Place, Grant Show said that he found the romance between his character Jake Hanson and Jennifer Garth's character Kelly Taylor to be creepy. On the show, Jake was 25-years-old and a handyman. Meanwhile, Kelly was in high school.
"They cast me for Melrose Place knowing that they were going to put that character on '90210' sort of to springboard 'Melrose Place,'" Show said. "It wasn't the spinoff [or] any of that kind of thing. It was, like, they knew this all going in. And then I did three episodes of '90210' [as] Jake."
Beverly Hills, 90210 introduced Jake as a handyman working on Kelly's gazebo. The two ended up sharing a kiss in the backdoor pilot for Melrose Place. "[It] would now be illegal and, like, [part of the] Me Too [movement]," Show said. "I think we only kissed, but still, you know, not good. . . . How odd is it that we are more, sort of, prudish now than 30 years ago?"
In real life, Garth was older than her on-screen counterpart and over 18. However, Beverly Hills, 90210 star thinks the age gap on the show was crazy. "That's not that crazy in real life [but] it's knowing that it's high school," Show said of their characters. "Now, you put it in those terms [of the age gap], that's creepy."
'Beverly Hills, 90210' Star Looks Back
"She was a grown-up, professional actress," he said. "I didn't really think much of it at the time we were shooting. When I watched it, I was like, 'Oh yeah, look at that.' ... It's different."
Likewise, podcast hosts also found the romance to be creepy as well.
"I was watching it thinking, well surely they're gonna almost kiss, then not quite. And I was like, 'Oh my God, they're kissing, they're kissing!'" Courtney Thorne-Smith told the outlet. "It just didn't age well. Grant is such a straightforward, ethical guy that he would never do that today. But at the time it was romantic. We forget how badly those things age."
Meanwhile, Garth appeared on the podcast to talk about the death of Beverly Hills, 90210 icon Shannen Doherty. "It's still really fresh," she admitted, "still processing the grief, and I was in shock, because we all knew that Shannen was fighting cancer for a long time, but, I don't know, there was just something about her - she was such a fighter and a pro, I just didn't think that would happen, for some reason."
