The Only Beverly Hills, 90210 Actors To Appear In Every Episode

WARNING: This article contains descriptions of sexual assault.

For Aaron Spelling, the super-producer behind such ridiculously funny TV series as “Charlie’s Angels,” “The Love Boat” and “Dynasty,” the best-case scenario for “Beverly Hills 90210” was that it would be a Thursday-night rival hit. It was never going to win the 9 p.m. slot; NBC had experimented with a 9:30 p.m. slot (where “Seinfeld” ended up fitting in pretty well), but “Cheers,” the highest-rated show on TV, dominated the first half of the slot. But maybe Spelling and the show’s young creator, Darren Star, could draw enough younger viewers to convince Fox to make a second season, possibly on a different night.

The show went largely unnoticed in pop culture, giving Fox an excuse to spend millions on another hour-long flop that would be thrashed by Cheers. Instead, they rushed a second season in the summer when other major series were returning. The beach-based show and its easy-on-the-eyes cast made it a must-watch show for kids on Thursday nights before a new movie hit theaters (as it was 33 years ago). Suddenly, Fox had a big teen demographic debating the coolness of nice guy Brandon Walsh (Jason Priestley), bad-boy Dylan McKay (Luke Perry) and jock Steve Sanders (Ian Ziering). Straight men could pretend they weren’t watching, but Brenda Walsh (Shannon Doherty) and Kelly Taylor (Jennie Garth) were appealing as the tag team of Betty and Veronica.

“Beverly Hills 90210” not only survived, but thrived. Surprisingly, for a show with such a popular young cast, there was very little turnover at the top. But of the core eight, only four appeared in every episode. Who were those four?

Ziering was a young actor with occasional Hollywood gigs, but at age 26, he landed the role of network TV’s most likable goofy best friend, a role he held for a full decade. Given his loose morals in the area code and across the country, Sanders was set up as a materialistic bully who wouldn’t hesitate to slip a mickey into his date’s drink if the night wasn’t going well. But while Sanders was a solid, loyal friend who would put himself on the line to protect his buddy if necessary, the truth is, all he cares about is shallow fun. Sanders was a goofball who loved to tease the school’s nerdy disc jockey, David Silver (Brian Austin Green), but it was all out of love. We all need a kindhearted goofball like Sanders in our lives.

Spelling was a prime target for the show’s many critics, who saw her casting as an infuriating act of nepotism, since she seemed genuinely uncomfortable in front of the camera in the earlier seasons, a situation made worse by the fact that Spelling’s character, Donna Martin, was Sanders’s dim-witted counterpart, and that female materialism is often seen as a sign of intellectual emptiness (while Tom Cruise speeding through suburban Chicago streets in a sleek Porsche 928 was seen as the height of Reagan-era masculinity).

The show initially used Donna as dim-witted comic relief, but gradually led the character down shockingly dark underbelly: She was nearly raped, physically abused by her construction-worker boyfriend, and financially exploited by her true love, Silver. 90210 marked the artistic peak of Spelling’s career, but once she settled into the role, she was often the show’s most interesting character (especially after Perry left, Priestley lost interest, and Garth’s Kelly became a target for abuse). And for a season or so, there wasn’t a 90210 fan who didn’t know the lyrics to Jeremy Jordan’s “The Right Kind of Love” by heart.

David Silver was a nerd. This is not Green’s fault. His character had artistic ambitions, and on a show like 90210, which is basically a teen “dynasty,” anyone with real musical talent or integrity probably wouldn’t want to be associated with the series. So his writing was completely terrible, and the source of the longest-running unintentional laughs in the series. He also had the most daring outfits on the show, which didn’t work. But Silver wasn’t all laughs. He struggled with substance abuse and seemed destined to never recover as the series drew to a close. Given the canon of the 2008 reboot of 90210 (we won’t debate the mockumentary’s revival), this was confirmed when we found out he had split up with Donna and was living in Japan. In fact, Silver may have the most tragic storyline of the series. He just wanted to be popular, and finally achieved that goal, only to end up failing aimlessly.

Beverly Hills, 90210 began as an out-of-place drama about a pair of Midwestern teenagers who move with their parents to the most posh zip code in America, and for a time the writers managed to put Priestley’s Brandon and Doherty’s Brenda at the center of the story, until Brandon couldn’t be trusted as anything other than a level-headed teenager, and Brenda became a total jerk (her recent death is heartbreaking to even think about).

After a few seasons, it became clear that Garth’s character, Kelly Taylor, was the heart of the show. She was very self-aware of her attractiveness. of The scene where Dylan confesses his love for Kelly at the pool is clearly one of the show’s defining scenes, but it was also incredibly awkward because Kelly knew her best friend’s heart would be completely broken. These things were important to Kelly. And like Silver, she dealt with her anxiety and unhappiness with drugs. The writers handled these scenes with a sensitivity that is unusual for a show like this. The same can’t be said for Kelly’s rape, which felt like a ratings-driven escalation. It was a betrayal of Garth, who had given the show’s most consistently compelling performance over nine seasons at this point. Garth stayed until the series finale, but unlike her three co-stars, I don’t think the show was right for her anymore.