Beverly Hills, 90210: Wedding Bell Blues

We're going back in time a bit to the final episode of Season 2. It always makes me happy to see the Walsh parents in the opening credits.

Brenda and Dylan are in an office at border control because Brenda went to another country without a driver's license, as geniuses do. Jim shows up and is NOT PLEASED, because, sure. His child lied about where she was and went to ANOTHER COUNTRY INSTEAD. He yells at Dylan a lot, not even realizing that Brenda lied to Dylan, too. He wants to know if Brandon was part of it, too. He was! And Kelly! Everyone was lying for her! Cindy isn't pleased. Cindy isn't pleased one bit. Jim suggests that the relationship is the problem, and Dylan gets all up in his face, since they are peers. After Dylan takes off, Brenda makes it clear that somehow she has been mistreated and wronged and is the real victim here. 

Kelly is dating Jake from Melrose Place, or rather Jake who will be on Melrose Place, and gets in trouble with her mom for having lied for Brenda. She isn't delighted.

Andrea thinks she wasn't invited to Kelly's mother's wedding. Andrea feels sorry for herself, as is the norm, and is furious. Because she thought she and Kelly were friends. Literally nobody points out that Andrea isn't friends with Kelly's mother, the actual human getting married, although they are about the same age.

Dylan seeks advice from Brandon on making up with Jim, but at the moment there's no way to make up to him. WHICH IS FINE. GOOD GRAVY, SHE WENT TO ANOTHER COUNTRY.

At Casa Walsh, there are a lot of awkward silences. Brandon is in trouble for lying to his parents for Brenda, who still feels persecuted. At school, Dylan smooches her and says he wants to skip Jackie's wedding, and Brenda decides she'll skip the wedding too which makes all the sense in the world. Dylan is unhappy about all of this, but in a rebellious way, which manifests itself in a dramatic exit that involves this:

My boyfriend is such a dark and tortured soul, he slapped the ceiling!

Jake has finished his job, which gives Kelly the sads. It makes me happy to see Kelly with eyebrows, because once we hit the college years they are gone, gone, gone.

Jake makes himself irresistible by telling Kelly he's the last person she should be dating. Kelly and Brenda get in a fight about this, and about how it's exhausting that all Brenda talks about is her problems with Dylan. Brenda insists Kelly has no right to talk about her relationship issues as if they compare with hers. And there's some sort of plumbing issue at the house so the wedding can't happen there!

Andrea finds the wedding invitation, which was stuck to her mother's purse or some shit. Brandon offers up his parents' house for the wedding, which they don't want, but get stuck with. The Walshes continue to have terrible kids and only punish one of them, the girlchild, so on some level I can understand why she gets so confused when she gets in trouble for legitimate reasons.

Brenda makes some sort of feminism argument at Cindy for standing by Jim's decision to ask Brenda and Dylan to cool it for a bit. Cindy, who is in love with Dylan, wants to help. She gives Brandon a letter for Dylan. Inexplicably it is not covered in hearts, but it might as well be.

She signs it, "With love, Cindy Walsh" as if there might have been confusion.

Kelly apologizes to Brenda, who actually realizes she should apologize too. They hug it out.

It's going to be the last time. 

Dylan shows up and he and Cindy do not kiss, which is weird since you can cut the sexual tension with a knife. Or maybe you can't even cut it, that's how thick it is. He goes to chat with Jim, who mysteriously isn't delighted with him yet. He wants Dylan to stay away from Brenda until he can trust her again, but okays his presence at the wedding. Mostly: POOR CINDY.

The love that dare not speak its name.

Kelly, Donna, and Brenda are wearing some of the worst pink bridesmaid dresses in human history, and I feel really sorry for Jackie because she apparently has no friends. 

I really want to write a whole musical about Dylan and Cindy. They were the true Will They/Won't They of the first half of this series.

What was I talking about? Oh, right. The fact that poor Jackie has no friends her age and has to have her daughter's teenage friends as her bridesmaids. The least she could've done is ask Andrea to be in the wedding party since, again, she is her peer. Donna, Brenda, and Kelly all talk about how they picture their future weddings, one of which we will actually see in eight years! (Kelly and Brenda go on to be spinsters, though Brenda gets a great acting career and Kelly and Dylan have an obnoxious son OUT OF WEDLOCK!). Jackie cries at Kelly about how important she is to her and Kelly calms her mother's nerves.

Jackie's hair will look like this until the end of time, or until the reboot UNCEREMONIOUSLY KILLS HER WITH CANCER. (Let's just decide as a group right now that that's not canon, okay?)

During the wedding, Brenda has a brief fantasy of the wedding to Dylan that will never happen.

Chill the eff out, Andrea. 

Your age is showing, woman!

Mel and Jackie are married and it'll be at least a year until he cheats and they separate and then reunite and at least six years until Donna's long-lost sister Gina catches Mel at an after-hours strip club that she and Donna's boyfriend are running at the Peach Pit, but that is neither here nor there. Also, Denise Richards is at the wedding.

Steve, of course, strategically sat behind her. Later, Steve and Kelly have a little chat and he finally accepts that they're never going to get back together (he will inexplicably reverse course on this acceptance in a few years for one very bizarre episode, but it's okay, Steve Sanders oddly ends up being the best and happiest and luckiest and most solid character in this whole series by the end -- who knew??). 

Dylan bitches to Brenda about how her dad was mean to him. David and Kelly dance and talk about how they're step-siblings and how he's cool(ish) now and how he used to have a big dorky crush on her. Jake turns up and tells Kelly she's a very dangerous girl, because he can't stay away. In Beverly Hills, 90210's customary sensitivity toward issues of statutory rape, Jake tells her he should probably be arrested for the feelings he's having but, you guys, she promises not to call the cops! They flirt and kiss, setting the stage for the mother of all spin-offs. Also, it turns out Dylan and Jake know each other, probably from Dylan's years of hard drugs and fast women which, from the timeline, seem to have occurred from ages 12 to 15.

God bless you, 1992.

Brenda talks to her dad, who acknowledges he might have gone slightly overboard with Dylan and promises to have a chat with him later to smooth things over. "Now, Dad," his seventeen-year-old daughter orders, which he immediately obeys. Jim apologizes to Dylan, who does not accept the apology and starts screaming and crying at Jim in the middle of a wedding reception. He eggs Jim on to hit him and of course Jim doesn't, which for some reason angers Dylan even more. Dylan grabs a liquor bottle and when Jim suggests that's not a good idea, Dylan hurls the bottle against the wall and fires Jim as his accountant. I had to go into very beat-by-beat detail on this scene because Dylan was SO RIDICULOUS. And then immediately following, Brenda runs after him and asks if her dad apologized (he did) and Dylan says "not exactly" (no, it was exactly) and then he takes off and Brenda says "Dylan, wait!" which is probably her most frequent line of dialogue in the first two seasons of this show. Then Jim comes up and tells her to let him go and Brenda demands, angrily, "What did you say to him." NICE THINGS, BRENDA. He said nice things! He apologized and then wouldn't hit your boyfriend, which made your boyfriend fly off the handle! But I guess somehow that makes your dad an asshole. Dylan jumps into his car without opening the door (because rebel) and tears off into the night, once again leaving Brenda on the side of the road crying.

Get used to this.

And thus ends Season Two of the Greatest Television Show In History. And right now is when it gets really, really good. (Those summer seasons were genius in the first place, but the one they're about to embark on is iconic.)

Comments

[Callie]

Loved the recap!

I never noticed the Dylan/Cindy tension as a teenager but I did notice it after Carol Potter said that she had a crush on Luke and they had a flirtation going on.

Even though I hate what's coming up, I love this trip down memory lane and hope you'll continue with the Summer of Deception. :)

Sigh...it really was the Greatest TV Show in History, wasn't it?

[Louise]

Callie, I didn't even know that about Carol Potter! THAT MAKES ME SO HAPPY!!

[C]

Is Andrea wearing white at a wedding? Oh Nanna!

This is sacrilegious, I know, but I was a little too young for the show during this era, so classic "Beverly, Hills, 90210 to me is more Val smoking pot at the end of her first episode, Kelly being in a cult, Ray Pruit only having one T because that's all his mama could afford, and, especially, Kelly becoming a cokehead.

[nattyp3]

Love this recap. I was 10 at the time and thus 90210 was my life ! I remember watching with my mom who was only 32 the same age exactly as Andrea in real life , but I digress. my mom thought the big ender bc she was a veteran of all the ABC soaps thought when dylan pulled out and drove crazily he was going to hit jackie and Mel's wedding limo and kill the unborn baby. she literally screamed that he's going to.kill the baby but it just ended with Brenda crying in her pink hideous dress. This episode is sad to me bc it officially ended dylan and Brenda my favorite couple before the college years and Kelly brandon became my more favorite couple til they ruined it by having him sleep with a slut with Joan of arc hair and the wedding that was built up to with their ring probably from season 1 when they made out all over the dance floor only to reunite in DC. sigh 90210 was the first show that broke my heart over and over until oltl and gh. love ur comments and love ur take on dylan Cindy I didn't notice either but lol that screen cap of dylan looking over Brenda to Cindy and Cindy's face lol now that would have been so soapy and messy dylan blinking Brenda and Brandon's mom. imagine jim and Brenda s reaction s !!! ur right 1992 god bless you!!!!

[nattyp3]

oops typo that was dylan boinking Cindy but I'm sure ya'll know what I meant