The _Beverly Hills 90210_ thread

there's so much

Valerie is the best thing that ever happened to this show besides maybe baby Brenda or Dylan-stealing Kelly

or Tori's acting when she gets pushed down the stairs

last night I annoyed my wife w an extended comparison between "let Donna Martin graduate" partisans and Trump voters

BHHAHHAHAHA

I can see Alfred's point that past season 3 or so the unlikely scenarios and "everybody gets a trauma!" plotting begin to pile-up to ridiculous degrees. Like, Brenda having a pregnancy scare (however contrived and telegraphed) in season 1 is not really outside the bounds of normal teenage experience, as opposed to being caught in the middle of a mob war with exploding boats and shit.

does anyone ever get amnesia on this show? or come back from the dead? (pretty sure both things happened on Melrose Place iirc)

the Brenda pregnancy scare was persuasive, actually. That's the summer when the show took off.

omg in S2 ep 4 Kelly is complaining about David's dad dating her mother and she says... "it's like something out of a David Lynch movie"

zeitgeisty!

Mel is so gross with that mullet.

"I can't keep my hands off women."

huh so we got to the "Brandon dates a racist" arc in season 3 and I was actually kind of struck by how well it was handled/depicted (in contrast to the S1 "Brandon meets a black neighbor" episode). His girlfriend drops a number of snide comments - no n-words or overt slurs but plenty of subtle shade-throwing at Brandon's black boss, homeless people, etc. The last straw for Brandon is (of course) when she says some snarky anti-semitic shit about Andrea behind her back. Brandon actually references the Rodney King riots (and not even for the first time!), calls himself "a liberal kind of person", and, after initially trying to say he's willing to set aside their political differences, tells her to get lost and that it doesn't matter how well they get along, how attracted they are to each other. I had totally forgotten this storyline, was kind of surprising that it wasn't as super-clumsy as some of the other contemporary references.

you fuck with the Zuckerman, you fuck with Brandon

however there will under no circumstances be a Brandon fucking a Zuckerman

don't fuck a Zuck

episode also featured the debut of David Silver's musical career, which is so awesomely painful to witness

AH-ndrea Zuckerman.

Season 4 and everyone's in college, cast expands, and the writing really starts to devolve into separate who-is-getting-down-with-who storylines that don't have much to do with each other. There isn't even a central storyline for each episode, just this v soap-opera-ish devotion of equal time to everybody's dumbshit storylines.

Still entertaining for the general tone deafness of it all, the clumsy cultural signifiers, the occasional random guest star ("oh hey that guy shows up on Mad Men"), and the intermittent "issue" episodes (Take Back the Night! Are Sororities Really Anti-Semitic? etc.)

Also a huge chunk of the male cast is devoted to predatory sexual behavior (glaring exceptions being David and Brandon), I'm not entirely sure it's intentional but it sure is fucking creepy.

Dylan is still a reliably hilarious character - a selfish, entitled, aimless millionaire committed to a one-dimensional "literary rebel" persona (he likes Rimbaud AND Kerouac!)

and Brandon found a volume of Byron in his back seat!

Dylan was reading Byron in third grade before it was "cool" iirc

Things Dylan did prior to the start of the show:
- had a drinking problem/joined AA
- raced cars
- rode horses
- had lots of sex
- hung out with mobsters

y'know, average teenage millionaire stuff

Ugh, so many boat anchor plots dragging down season 4 - anything with Emily Valentine, Brenda getting all woke.

I have opinions about this "Take Back the Night" episode in season 4.

The show is generally hit-or-miss when it comes to acknowledging contemporary issues but man did this one really irritate me with its reactionary framing. Steve has a one-night stand at the frat house with some walk-on freshman character who subsequently pesters him/follows him around thinking their fling meant something, and then when she is rebuffed she finds herself swept up in the rhetoric about sexual assault and accuses Steve of being a rapist. The whole way this plot is set up is so awful - it ostensibly introduces the political rhetoric and POV of sexual assault victims, but places them in the mouths of characters that the viewers will inherently find untrustworthy (the freshman, the opportunistic black Student Senate leader who previously gave Brendan crap for not being committed enough, etc.). The whole episode hinges on Kelly at first taking the freshman's side but then refusing to believe her when she finds out the sexual predator in question is Steve, who "couldn't possibly be a rapist". Combined with the show's repeated instances of portraying various male leads' sexually aggressive behavior as harmless, romantic, comedic, etc. it reinforces this dynamic of guys being excused for casual misogyny, stalking, emotional abuse.

dude it's Steve

I know I know

Dylan is still a reliably hilarious character - a selfish, entitled, aimless millionaire committed to a one-dimensional "literary rebel" persona (he likes Rimbaud AND Kerouac!)

― Οὖτις, Friday, September 8, 2017 5:48 PM (three days ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

but cmon he is so dreamy

https://images.duckduckgo.com/iu/?u=https%3A%2F%2Fmedia.giphy.com%2Fmedia%2FDSPw8tgB4X8LS%2Fgiphy.gif&f=1

knee deep in season 4 and I may have hit my limit early with the most egregiously awful episode to-date, the episode where Brenda finds a teenage girl's diary from the 60s. The entire episode consists of Brenda imagining the gang acting out the events in the diary, complete with bad wigs, cringeworthy dialogue (it feels like every other line is a period-appropriate song title/lyric reference), and the laziest plotting imaginable.

I was planning on watching up through the episode where Donna gets pushed down the stairs by her abusive rocker boyfriend but this may have been a bridge to far.

it's clearly a filler episode but nothing is really played for laughs and the boomer 60s shit is cliched beyond belief. on the plus side, Brendan plays the gung ho ROTC recruit (in Robert McNamara drag) that signs up for Vietnam duty and promptly gets killed.

season has rebounded with "Steve outs a gay guy at the frat" episode

the rocker boyfriend (the dude from The Heights!) is later, no? It's when Valerie enters the Walsh household.

Shakey, I like to imagine you at work watching these. Your boss knocks on your door, you say, "In a minute, chief."

yeah the rocker dude is way later, like season 7 or something

I am not watching these at work! lol

Spielberg sucks, huh?

Mostly

i have a new appreciation of your idea of what's worth (re)watching

Campy distractions have their virtues

Spielberg does suck but Shakey couldn't have picked a worse context to make the stand in

Imagine, rewatching all any of Bev 90210 in 2017 and not at least starting a podcast and patreon to justify it

Morbz is ref'ing a comment i made on another thread tbf

yeah the rocker dude is way later, like season 7 or something

I was so wrong about this, he is front and center in Season 5 and shit is wall-to-wall silliness now. Surm otm that Val is somehow the best thing that ever happened to this show - one of the only credible actresses/characters (also I love how her secret weed-smoking is portrayed as evidence of her inherent untrustworthiness lol)

Had totally forgotten Kelly's lesbian-burn-victim-Scientology-joining story arc wtf

also *love* Steve's dad, who plays every scene like he's the tough-talking heavy in a 40s noir film

Steve's dad and Kelly's mom are my favorite parents.

By 'the rocker' we mean Ray Pruit right? Googling him now it turns out he, Jamie Walters, did pursue a music career and actually sold loads of records. He's an LAPD firefighter now!

https://vignette.wikia.nocookie.net/90210/images/6/64/RayPruit.jpg/revision/latest/scale-to-width-down/310?cb=20170102181242 https://vignette.wikia.nocookie.net/90210/images/a/aa/Jamie-Walters-01.jpg/revision/latest/scale-to-width-down/310?cb=20160902124527

"Hold On" was the only hit, and it got substantial airplay in summer 1995.

at the time I had the distinct impression that the show was def trying to launch his music career, a bid for cross-platform brand synergies blah blah blah

That was my impression too! It was really on the nose, which felt a bit off because he also had some domestic violence stuff going on (didn't he shove Donna down the stairs?). But it was 1994, I lived and saw this in Europe, and would not have internet at my disposal until a year after that. And I never looked back.

Apols in advance for spoilers 23 years (holy fuck) after the fact obv :)

He shoved Donna down the stairs, at whose foot Kelly awaited, ready to make lesbian moves. Meanwhile Dylan watched, waiting to set them on fire while Brenda danced to Wilson Phillips in glee.

Gah. Way to make me love you more! That is some memory.

(Wilson Philips yes! Such a BH90210 band... we need a thread or a poll or whatever specifically about the INSANE musical appearances on this show... My brother and I always chuckled at the standard Dave or Steve line going "Good band!" while some indie-band was sweating it on stage at some prom or dance or party)

Color me Badd! The Cardigans! The Flaming Lips! The fucking Cramps!

The quote is "This alternative music isn't bad!" about Flaming Lips.

luv you Steve Sanders

Haha yasss