Again With This: Beverly Hills, 90210

We kind of respected Sophie for having some skill as a con artist, but she really loses a lot of her prestige with her latest scheme: getting Steve to let her write for the Beat. Over Janet's objections (which: that'll teach her not to require that Brandon designate her editor when he's out of town/on his way out the show's door), Steve not only gives Sophie a column in which she can apparently write whatever she wants; he also thinks said column should be adorned by her head shot, and that its début should be announced on the cover? David has a hard time being excited for her because he thinks she's just using Steve to get ahead (in the world of shitty weekly newspapers?), but he gets over it to have an even harder time boning her on the Beat's brand-new almost-live webcam. Noah has a typically healthy response to his father's suicide: driving not only drunk but whilst drinking. It's lucky for him that Donna's just happened to meet an attorney who's sufficiently broke to take on Noah as a client, but Donna i

Noah's father having killed himself, a significant portion of the episode is focused on Noah's grief. This is bad news for Vincent Young, who can't act, and worse news for us, who have to watch him as he gets morbidly obsessed with his late father's weapon, drinks to excess, and pushes away the help of the only person who cares about him. (The only person who cares about him -- Donna -- at least gets to break up her worrying with some work drama from an assistant who's All About Eve-ing her.) Val may have reached some kind of peace with Abby, but that doesn't mean she's on board with Abby's plans to marry Carl: she accepts the gig as Maid of Honour and journeys with them to Las Vegas for the ceremony -- Kelly goes too, for extremely contrived reasons -- with the intention of entrapping Carl into proving he's the wrong man for her mother. Sophie continues checking items off the fame and fortune to-do list in her diary, though it would probably be a lot harder if Steve would actually heed his own instincts abou

What's worse than surviving childhood sexual abuse from a parent who goes on to kill himself? When the primetime soap you're on is running out of ideas in its ninth season and makes you keep reliving it over and over and over again. Now, Val wants to tell Abby about the last days of Mr. Malone's life, but her attempts to get Abby alone for this rather serious conversation are immediately foiled when it turns out that Abby's brought her new boyfriend Carl to town with her -- and, it turns out, has told him a whole bunch of bullshit about exactly how she became a widow. Val remains focused on bringing Abby her radical honesty, though why she bothers at this point is anyone's guess. Some old bag on the Wyatt Foundation board has decided she cares more about literacy than she does about poor kids getting vaccinated or whatever, and the Clinic Clinic is at risk of losing its funding. Kelly enlists Brandon to write a laudatory piece about the Clinic Clinic for the Beat, and the rest of their friends to put on a fun

Brandon and Kelly mutually and amicably agreed to leave one another at the altar, and you know what that means. ...Oh, you do? Please tell them, because they're not sure. Kelly decides to invest a round of ex sex with meaning: she forgets all the reasons she and Brandon broke up, gets maudlin and regretful, and suggests to Brandon that they go ahead and take their honeymoon to Corsica together after all, leaving him to decide whether to go along with this to avoid confrontation -- you know, kind of like what motivated him to propose to her in the first place. When Val's HIV diagnosis leads her to attempt to live more honestly, David follows her lead, and discovers that the director who's been throwing him so much jingle work doesn't actually want to hear how David truly feels about doing work he thinks is beneath him. At the other end of the honesty spectrum is Sophie, who meets Steve while running a short con at Restoration Hardware, as one does, and parlays that into a place to live and a love triangle with

It's the week of Brandon and Kelly's wedding, and preparations are underway: Steve is getting excited for Sarah to meet all his friends at the reception, but she might not be ready to keep seeing him because some other friend of hers is breaking up with her boyfriend and splitting up all their books and furniture seems like a big hassle, or something? Donna has somehow landed the job of wedding planner, putting her in constant contact with Jacob the caterer. He's way into her, and it's coming at exactly the wrong time for her, since it turns out Noah is one of those very interesting iconoclastswho thinks a marriage license is just a piece of paper and that people who are really in love don't need it. As all this is going on, it's becoming increasingly clear that Brandon and Kelly may not even want a piece of paper: are their nagging doubts about their imminent wedding just standard jitters, or are the starting to figure out, as we all did a long time ago, that actually they hate each other? Val tries to tough

Since Kelly and Brandon have decided they really are definitely going through with their engagement and will absolutely get married, for sure, they've divided up the list of tasks required to plan their wedding. However, questions about the guest list and wedding registry are interspersed with their interactions with Alex, who meets Kelly when he brings to the clinic the woman whose baby he just delivered in his cab. Before seeking refugee status in the U.S., Alex was a doctor in Sarajevo. He hasn't pursued certification in the U.S. because he's still grieving the loss of his wife, Katya, in the war -- but Brandon, Kelly, and eventually Janet ignore his stated desires and go hard in their investigation of proving to him that Katya is alive and reuniting them. Gwyneth's determination to pry Noah and Donna apart gets a boost when Noah informs Donna that she's going to put on a fashion show in two days, and Gwyneth somehow knows instinctively that she should seek Val's advice on how to use the event to create a

It's been a while since the show gave David something he could really be stressed out, so: time for him to get robbed at (possible) gunpoint while taking money out at an ATM. Noah's got the perfect solution: he should get a gun, like Noah did: he's got one behind the bar and one on his stupid boat! David starts the process, but he has to wait eleven days to take possession of his confidence and self-worth. Meanwhile, we don't have to wait long for evidence that Noah does need protection on his stupid boat, when he brings Donna back there to find a woman waiting to ambush them: it's his childhood friend Gwyneth, who arranged to visit as soon as she saw Noah in a magazine. Turns out it wasn't so that they could catch up: the article said Noah was single, and Gwyneth has designs on him. But Noah quickly cuts off her attempted kiss...and Gwyneth's night only gets worse from there, with an assist from drunk David. Val is contacted by a representative from the Red Cross, who tells her she's matched with a leukemia

Kelly's notions of feminism have, over the years, perplexed us in their inconsistency; "Skin Deep" compresses all her worst instincts and muddiest thinking in a single episode. Brandon has decided to write about the grand opening (heh) of Beverly Hills's first sex shop, which has already attracted protesters even before its manager has opened the doors. Among those protesters is Kelly, who is suddenly a sex-negative scold: she confronts Brandon in front of Steve and Muntz over the Playpenmagazine she found in their room; she tars all porn with the same misogynist brush; and she blames the unrealistic expectations it sets for women for her mother's decision to get a face lift and for Erin's choice of frozen yogurt over ice cream to avoid consuming empty calories. (Telling Erin she doesn't need to worry about that because she's thin is just one of many moments suggesting that Kelly hasn't totally refined her ideas about the male gaze.) The sex shop also comes (heh heh) between David and Val: first, David brings

It's been five years since the gang graduated from West Beverly High, and since someone at the network presumably had the sense to predict that this crew wasn't going to make it to their ten-year reunion, we're made to suffer through their stupid, pointless five-year reunion. No, that doesn't mean we get appearances from Brenda, Dylan, or DeadScott's restless ghost; only Gabrielle Carteris had nothing better to do, so Andrea returns to let us all know she's desperately unhappy and that her marriage is on the verge of collapse. Brandon -- currently dating a woman who's already dumped him twice -- decides he's an expert on relationships (as well as everything else), and that it should therefore fall to him to bray her into making things work with Jesse. Among the many West Beverly alumni we've never seen before is Ross Webber, Kelly's rapist -- someone she identifies to Val but not to her "partner," Brandon. Donna accepts that Noah doesn't want to be her date right up until the moment he gets profiled in a maga

Somehow, a real journalist (named Peter Raitt) has become aware of Brandon's work in the Beverly Beat, and somehow, it's convinced him to partner with Brandon on a story about a proposed football stadium. Brandon is so busy sucking up, he doesn't notice that Kelly is in the midst of a crisis regarding Chris, an intellectually disabled man who works the night shift at the clinic but may have to give up his job now that his mother's work schedule has changed and she can no longer drive him. Kelly gets way too involved, ignoring Chris's mother's warnings about his capacity and the stress the busy day shift will cause him and basically ruins everyone's life, again. Val has nothing but bad news to dish out this week: first, that David the idiot hasn't set aside enough money to pay his taxes; and second, that the bracelet Noah gave Donna is paste. (One of these is, of course, actually fun.) And Jill and Steve are, against all reason, still happening. We can't believe it either, as you'll hear in our podcast on "All

We all know that Brandon considers his job at the Beverly Beat a waste of his prodigious talents -- so much so that even after publicly reaffirming his commitment to it in the last episode, he's already prepared to edit the Beat on the side while joining the Los Angeles Chronicle as a reporter on the Metro desk. Somehow, despite being a journalist ostensibly focused on local news, it has entirely escaped his notice that the Chronicle's reporters are striking, and that Brandon is only being offered this job because the paper needs scabs. Certainly we've always thought of Brandon as a scab in the sense that he's the unsightly result of a wound, but is he the other kind too? Val and Kelly are horrified to discover that their unattached parents are actually serious about dating, and briefly join forces in order to try to reverse-Parent Trap them into breaking up. Though Noah might have had cause to believe his plot to buy Donna success as a fashion designer would never, ever be detected by his dumb baby of a girl

So Kelly was all about getting that confused teen mother, Leanne, to take back the baby she abandoned at the clinic. But when that teen mother, Leanne, let Kelly know that, actually, leaving the baby was the right call, Kelly decided that, actually, Kelly should foster the baby...which is why, when Pam tells her that, actually, her agency has found a pair of qualified foster parents to take the baby, suddenly Kelly is a homophobe who doesn't think a baby should be raised in a household without a mother. Brandon doesn't necessarily agree, and lets her know in the form of a cover story in the Beat, which alerts Leanne to the baby's fate because Brandon doesn't have the sense to use a goddamn pseudonym. So then Leanne wants Kelly's help to recover the baby so that he isn't raised by "queers," and Kelly has to face her own bigotry when it's looking back at her out of Jessica Alba's face. Also Kelly's father's out of prison and dating Val's mom. Brandon and Steve battle over whether it's more important to keep the

Brandon already took a giant dump all over journalistic ethics the last time the Beverly Beatchronicled David's music career, but that was when it was on the rise: perhaps Brandon's now trying to balance the scales by exploring the fallout from David's decision to pursue Jasper's Law's record deal minus...you know, Jasper. It seems as though Jasper knows what's behind The Rise And Rise Of David Silver, though, so Brandon must pursue the allegation that David's stupid song got so much radio play because of Frank's payola on his behalf. There's more going on at the paper that doesn'tinvolve publishing stories about current events: Steve's also convinced himself he's in love with a woman named Jill after reading her half of her correspondence with some guy named Ted who gave Terri the wrong forwarding address. Kelly's latest professional overreach involves her trying to reunite an abandoned newborn with the teen mom -- Jessica Alba! -- who left him at the clinic. Kelly may not have convince the terrified child t

In show time, Noah raped Valerie less than a week ago, so of course, now they're in court as Val pursues her civil case against him. Val's lawyer is confident that the facts make Noah a poor defendant -- the poor little rich boy who got drunk and had sex with a woman who wasn't his girlfriend (anymore) -- but Noah's lawyer knows some things about Val, like that she faked a pregnancy before Noah even knew her, and got arrested for bookmaking in the extremely recent past. Reputations are tarnished on both sides, but all the character witnesses on Noah's side may not be able to counter-balance the damning testimony Val's counsel gets out of Josh. Donna is also very interested in getting in touch with Josh, because she's got cascading deadlines at work, she's already hoovered all the pills her dad prescribed, and she's jonesing real bad. David takes a break from failing in his career to fail his newest friend Jasper: the record label is only interested in David, but is David interested in going forward with them

When Val makes a charge of rape against Noah, how do her friends react? Well, inasmuch as they are generally terrible friends to her, they're pretty much all awful. Kelly is sure Val's only in it for the payday. Steve ties the incident back to her fake-pregnancy extortion scheme. Brandon's not sure what to think, but believing a woman isn't exactly his default position. Donna actually manages to give Valerie the benefit of the doubt, though it's hard to know whether that's because every boyfriend she's ever had has cheated on her, or because of the pills -- which Josh is now helpfully supplementing with uppers. Brandon and Steve find time away from Valerie's legal issues to seek out some of their own -- specifically, by asking Steve's cop friend Tammy and her partner Glen to take them on a ride-along so they can do an extremely biased story about it for the Beat. The experience teaches them the shocking fact that sometimes police officers use excessive force, but not that this is a matter their readers should

It's Valentine's Day, and you know what that means: romance-related STUFF! Everyone wants to throw their single friends at Steve and Brandon! In fact, Steve ends up with too many bebs! Brandon's not interested, though, because he's still hung up on Kelly, despite the fact that things are progressing between her and Dr. Jeff -- progressing right into a hotel room! But will Kelly be interested in spending the night in it with him after he informs her that he's received a job offer in San Francisco and basically tells her to tell him whether he should take it and go, or turn it down and stay with her? As bad as some of these Valentine's Days are, though, the ones in the A-plot are worse. Donna gets David to help her pick out a stereo for Noah as a Valentine's Day gift as though he can't afford to buy a thousand of them for himself, but her plan to hide from Noah the fact that she and David spent an afternoon together is scuttled when the two of them get in a minor car accident. Noah's already been on an emotiona

As if there weren't already enough reasons to be appalled by both the American health care system and the American carceral state: "Crimes And Misdemeanors" introduces us to Andrew, a recently released convict (as a teenager, he killed his mother's abusive boyfriend, only for her to testify against him) who can only be treated at the Clinic Clinic and thus has no choice but to have Kelly Taylor inviting herself into his personal affairs. Specifically: when Dr. Jeff tells her Andrew's back story -- literally; the reason he's come to the Clinic Clinic is back pain from a beating he took from fellow inmates -- Kelly decides to involve Brandon, recommending that he write a piece about Andrew for the Beat so that someone will understand his plight and offer him a job. Will Brandon impress Andrew with his journalistic activism or piss him off with his ineptitude? (You can probably make an educated guess.) Brandon also gets embroiled in Steve's efforts to hook them up with a cute Peach Pit patron and her girlfriend,

The premise of our latest A-plot seems to be that Kelly, Brandon, and Steve are having trouble getting through their current romantic woes because they just can't get any perspective on them. Never-before-seen characters to the rescue! At the clinic, Jeff -- and, for some reason, Kelly -- treat Ellen, a teenager who's gotten chlamydia whilst cheating on her boyfriend. Hearing Jeff lecture Ellen about how important trust is in the course of telling her why she needs to tell her boyfriend about her STI convinces Kelly that she should trust Jeff enough to tell him how Brandon broke her trust. (And honestly, if things progress between Jeff and Kelly at all, Val really deserves a thank-you muffin basket for pushing them together with all her self-interested meddling.) Steve's been bumming everyone out at the Beat office to such an extent that Brandon decides Steve should be the Beat's newest unqualified writer: he urges Steve to use his KEG connection to a guy named Harry to get to Harry's fiancée, Christy, who wo

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Kelly having FINALLY been forced to confront the extremely obvious truth about Brandon and Emma's "affair" and dumped him hard, the parting of Mr. and Mrs. The Gang has ripple effects on their friends (and poor Janet, who probably thought she'd accepted a job at a professional workplace where people keep their personal shit at home instead of screaming at photocopiers). Val, improbably assigned to atone for her bookmaking by doing community service at the Clinic Clinic, immediately starts seizing every available opportunity to keep Brandon and Kelly apart -- and with a new, young doctor having just started his rotation, opportunities are all around her. Donna, reeling from this latest evidence that love isn't real, vents to Noah and discovers his attitude toward Brandon's infidelity is that she should just get over it. But Steve doesn't have much time to devote to the breakup of his best friend and his first love because he's got his own problems -- or, rather, Carly does: her dad has had a heart attack, foll