May 4 - 11, 2000
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I can't say I didn't see it coming, but nothing could really have prepared me for the announcement: "Only five episodes left," the faceless TV announcer droned, as Kelly Taylor pouted at the camera, "for your friends at Beverly Hills 90210." Farewell, 90210
My life with Brandon, Dylan, and the gang
by Sam Pfeifle
I may have added that part about "friends" myself -- nothing's too clear anymore -- because regardless of what a certain Johnny-come-lately sit-com might claim to provide, that's the role the gang at Nat's came to play in my life. And now, after 10 years, it's like they're all moving away, never to correspond again.
Understand that, though normally levelheaded in areas that do not concern the Red Sox, I am fanatical about Beverly Hills 90210, "Bev-niner," "Nine-O," or simply "Bev." Since its inception in 1990, when I was a sophomore in high school, and the gang were beginning the first of their two junior years, I have missed very few of the first-run episodes. I often claim to have missed none, but I have to allow for that very hazy period during college when I had no TV and was forced to depend upon the kindness of bartenders.
Bev-Niner is wonderfully entertaining on numerous levels, but the show's true appeal is the fact that this crew of spoiled rich kids from Beverly Hills has hit every major lifetime milestone right along with me, including high-school and college graduations (in '93 and '97, respectively).The show became a barometer, a mirror by which to judge my life. At each step of our maturation, I could look at the show and flatter my ego with "at least I'm not that lame," or give myself a good kick in the pants when it became obvious that I was lagging.
Of course, Brandon Walsh was the only character worth judging myself against. David Silver has always been an unlikeable wanna-be of the highest order, whether with his high fade haircut and multiple earrings or with his short-lived addiction to methamphetamines, mixed in with his orange juice, from Season Four. Steve Sanders, though a top-notch guy, and generally affable as KEG house president, has never been more than comic diversion and fall guy. And Dylan McKay was too much like my best buddy Casey -- both of them rich and from Malibu -- for me to compare. The other male characters -- Scott, who shot himself (Season Two); Ray, who beat up Donna and sang terribly (Seasons Five and Six); Noah, on the show for a year and already a drunk responsible for the death of his girlfriend (Season Eight); Jesse, brought on the show solely to knock up Andrea (Season Four); and Matt, a dink lawyer brought on in Season Nine, whom Kelly is going to dis at the altar for Dylan -- were never worth comparison, for obvious reasons.
For a while, Brandon really had the upper hand. He had a cooler car than I did at 18, a lovely yellow Mustang to my beat-up '83 Saab. He lost his virginity at roughly the same time, but to a much better-looking girl (sorry, Simone). His parents were more understanding, he was the salutatorian of his high school, he had a bit part on a sit-com, and he was even student-body president of his college and editor of the college's newspaper at the end of his freshman year! How could lowly, JV-baseball me hope to compare?But by the middle of college I was all right. At least I didn't have to cope with girlfriends' being raped (Kelly, pre-Season One; Clare, Season Five), being burned in a fire and joining a cult (Kelly, both in Season Five), moving to France (Emily, Season Four), or fucking my best friend (Emily, Season Two; Kelly, Season Three; Clare, Season Five). And although my friend Casey did trash a BMW, a Porsche, and a Lexus within one year, I can safely say that he never saw his dad imprisoned (Season Two), fucked my sister (Season Three), or joined AA (Season Three) and Narcotics Anonymous (Season Five) by age 19. Nor did he frequently play with guns and threaten to shoot me, as Dylan did to Brandon. And his father was never blown up in a car in front of him (Season Three) only to return alive many years later (Season 10). Nor was he dangled from an aerial tram by gangsters, nor did he lose a wife to automatic weapons (a traumatic Season Six for Dylan).
But it's always been about me and Brandon. A weekly race to best the other. Soon, Brandon was hosting his own TV show, having an affair with the wife of his professor, and fighting off -- often unsuccessfully -- the affections of the chancellor's daughter. Meanwhile, his parents moved to Hong Kong and his sister moved to London, leaving him with a mack four-bedroom house in Beverly Hills to do with as he pleased -- all at the age of 20.
I was in sorry shape. Living in Vermont, I definitely got better weed than Brandon, but working as a pizza-delivery boy while paying my way through school and seeing my long-distance girlfriend once a semester wasn't quite cutting it. I edged up a bit by graduation, having started a literary journal, gotten my girl to transfer schools, and secured not one but two degrees (take that, Brando).
But then, with graduation, came the beginning of the end.
After starting his own weekly newspaper, winning numerous journalism awards, and getting back together with the lovely Kelly, Brandon had his epiphany in Season Nine. He left Kelly at the altar, and then left LA altogether, taking a newspaper job in Washington that was so absorbing he couldn't even return in Season 10 to attend good-buddy Steve's wedding or the birth of Steve's daughter. Meanwhile, I was suddenly alone in the middle of New Hampshire, teaching English to a bunch of derelicts, with no gal. I was set adrift.
Luckily, my relationship with Nine-O didn't end there. My next-door neighbors turned out to be fanatics like me, and many a remedial English lesson was planned around the trials and tribulations of wacky new characters like Gina (the ex-ice-skater), Janet (Steve's secretary-turned-wife), and the new and improved Dylan, back from his European sojourn in Season Nine. Finally, I met a lovely girl -- only coincidentally tall, blond, and attractive like a certain Kelly Taylor -- to whom I proposed during the Season 10 episode where Steve and Janet got married.With our move to Maine this past year, I thought we'd spend our lives together, gloating over our happiness and the misery of David's pseudo radio career, Noah's kidnapping, Donna's ugly-ass clothes, and Steve's destiny to be the comic relief in all his friends' lives. Now I just don't know anymore.
With the loss of Beverly Hills 90210, I lose my yardstick, and I lose the security of knowing that nothing important ever happens in the summer, that no calamity will ever be remembered for more than a couple weeks, and that doing absolutely nothing of import will never bar the door to a successful career.
And maybe my friends will start calling me to do something on Wednesday nights.
Sam Pfeifle can be reached at spfeifle[a]phx.com.
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