Brandon - Whenever there's an episode that revolves around racism, it's Brandon that the story is centered around. In the season premier, he and Steve are on a roadtrip in Texas. Their car breaks down and Steve, wanting to get home to Clare, hitches a bus ride to the airport while Brandon stays to fix his car. He meets a pretty black girl his age named Mariah who is into angels and wants to write a book about them. (I know, totally WTF?) He encourages her to follow her dream and move to NYC...which she does. They encounter a lot of racist remarks from both black and white people. Mariah shows up in a later episode after she has written her book on angels.
Brandon becomes part of the CUTV production team and starts dating the anchor he and this other guy, Mark, hire named Tracy. Tracy is the jealous type and doesn't like that Brandon and Kelly are still friends and believes Brandon still has feelings for Kelly (which is true). She tells Brandon she hopes their relationship is going somewhere (like marriage) because she doesn't want to be "something to pass the time." Brandon takes her to Hong Kong to meet his parents (only Jim though, since Cindy was in London because with Brenda - I guess they couldn't get the actress at that time!) Eventually Brandon breaks up with Tracy because he's not in love with her like she is with him and she takes this pretty hard. Brandon and Kelly end up back together towards the end of the season and Kelly moves in with him, Steve, and Valerie.
Brandon and Mark are competing for a prestigious scholarship that is only given to two recipients in the entire country and it's very rare when they choose two people from the same state, let alone two people of the same gender. Mark tells Brandon how important this is to him, that his father is expecting him to win it and he gives Brandon some "tips" (because he knows somebody from the committee), but it turns out his tips were bogus, but golden boy Brandon manages to charm the committee over and wins the scholarship.
Kelly - At the beginning of the season, Kelly volunteers at an AIDS hospice as part of her school program for psychology. She makes friends with a guy named Jimmy and freaks out when he is helping her in the kitchen and cuts his hand with a knife (as soon as he picked up the knife to cut vegetables, I KNEW that was coming!) and she gets blood on her as she helps him clean up. Paranoid, she goes to the doctor to see if she has AIDS, but she doesn't. Jimmy inevitably dies and Kelly becomes depressed until her next story line comes along...
...which is her seeing this guy named Mark who works at the TV station with Brandon. She confides in him about her past cocaine problem and tell him he wants to take things slow because she always rushes too fast with guys. Mark starts off as a nice enough guy, but I knew there was something up after he told her about his stupid phone calling methods. One ring = I'm thinking of you. Two rings = I love you. Three rings = I wanna sleep with you (or something to that effect). Ugh, gag me with a spoon. Stop trying so hard, arsehole. Remember how Mark was up for that scholarship and lost to Brandon? OMG, what a fucking tool! He got really mad at Kelly and blew up at her and accused her of supporting Brandon and not him and just starts screaming at her. He tells her to never call her again and she replies, "Well, if the phone ever rings, you can always know that it WON'T be me." Go Kelly Taylor! That guy was a real creep. I can't help but notice that since Kelly and Brandon have broken up, Kelly has been dating guys who seem nice at first, then end up total assholes. This guy was the King of Assholes.
Remember when Brandon proposed to Kelly at the end of season 5? (I did mention that, right?) Well, this season, to prove his devotion to Tracy (HA!), he sells back his engagement ring, but what he didn't know was that Kelly followed him (what a creeper!) and immediately bought it and wore it around a string as a necklace tucked inside her shirt.
One morning, Kelly finds a young boy named named Joey sleeping on her porch. She finds out that he ran away from home. She lets him crash at her place for a couple days and calls Social Services. When they take him, he runs away from them that night and they inform Kelly and she blames herself and says she never should have contacted them; that she should have taken care of him herself. Um, Kelly, you're a single 21 year old with two roommates. Why the hell would you or your roommates want some random kid around? Eventually Joey finds his way back and Kelly promises him that she won't call Social Services, but makes Joey tell her why he ran away. He's from New Mexico (and he got all the way to L.A.????) and his mom married some guy who hates him (not true...the guy hating him is not true, not the part about his mom marrying him) and they're having a new baby. Kelly tells him about her experience with stepdads and new babies and how great they worked out for her even when she wasn't keen about that idea at first. Joey tells her his last name, so she calls all the people with that last name in New Mexico and eventually finds his mother who is worried sick about him even though Joey told Kelly that he knows his family is not looking for him, but of course they were. That kid was such a little punk.
Kelly learns she has a younger half-sister who was born in Mexico and lives on the East Coast, I think. We only see her in two episodes and it's like, who cares. Surprise, surprise, the other daughter never sees her dad either so at least the two of them can bitch about their dad.
Kelly misses her period and thinks she's pregnant (with Brandon's baby), but she takes a pregnancy test and it tells her she's not pregnant, then she goes to the doctor and finds out she was pregnant but had a misscarriage and finds out that she won't be able to have kids.
Clare - Clare breaks up with Steve towards the beginning of the season because she's sick of Steve acting so immature. She starts dating a smart preppy guy named Dick (hehe) and he's on the school's row team. Eventually she gets back together with Steve towards the middle of the season. She moves with her dad to Paris at the end of the season. I will have to say I will miss Clare. When we were first introduced to her back in season 4, I LOATHED Clare, but after she stopped being an annoying Brandon fangirl, I really liked her. I thought she and Steve were a really cute couple. Clare gets the award for Most Improved Character!
Donna - While at a party at David's new house in the Hollywood Hills, there's a big brush fire and everyone has to evacuate. The only ones who stay are the gang because they want to spray water on the roof. (I guess this helps). Donna, the idiot she is (albeit a nice one) sees a baby deer...the same one she and Clare had seen earlier with his mother, but this time he is without his mother, so she decides to trek out in the bush and help the deer. Don't ask me why. Was she thinking on leading the deer back to the house or something? Donna approaches the baby deer, which doesn't even run away like any other wild animal would do, but since Donna is like Snow White, woodland animals love her. She ends up falling and twisting her ankle and has to be rescued by a hot fireman. They start dating until he has to move somewhere out of state for another job. He does end up coming back and wants to be with her, but Donna is already with David and tells him it won't work out between them. He ends up moving to Orlando to take a security job at a "large theme park." (Seriously, why can't they just say Disney World?)
Brandon hires Donna to be the weather girl for CUTV and after her first day, she gets a creepy call from a little too fanatical fan. After she gets a few more calls like that and is nearly run over at the After Dark, she begins to suspect it's the guy who nearly raped her two years ago. She shares her worry with David and he assures her he's still in jail. Later, Donna gets a notice in the mail that he has just been released out of jail right around the time she started getting the creepy phone calls. How convenient. The show makes you want to think that guy is the one stalking her, but I had a feeling it wasn't him. I thought it was one of the two guys who worked behind the camera at CUTV. Donna's ex attempted rapist stalks her just so he can tell her that he's not stalking her and that she's in trouble. WTF? How the hell does he even know she's in trouble? Yeah, he knows Donna's been getting threatening calls, but he doesn't know who it is and even if he did, why the fuck is he so concerned for her safety. Stupid. They were just showing him creeping on her at CU so the viewer would think he was doing the stalking. The one guy I thought it was turned out to be innocent because they were making a big deal that he was being questioned by the police and he was just too obvious, so then I knew it was the other guy, Evan (who Donna just happened to fix on a date with Kelly! Yikes! Luckily that didn't go anywhere). Evan takes Donna and the other crew members at the TV station hostage and points a gun to Donna's head and makes Tracy air them live as Donna professes her love to him on the air. Brandon, in the control room, calls the SWAT team and they arrive and manage to get Evan to release all the hostages except Donna, Brandon, and Tracy. Finally Donna convinces Evan she loves him and kisses him and he puts his gun down to put his hands on her and she kicks the gun away from him and Brandon lunges himself on Evan so he can't get the gun.
BH, 90210 love to do storylines where they put the actors in flashback stories from another time as other characters. This time it was Donna and David as Donna's grandparents. Donna and David are visiting Donna's paternal grandmother. Her husband died as a fighter pilot in WWII right after their son (Donna's father) was born. As Donna and David read the love letters he sent to Donna's grandmother, we are treated to some flashbacks. I understand why they used Donna and David as Donna's grandparents, but shouldn't Donna be a little concerned that her boyfriend looks like her grandpa when he was a young man? :p
Donna's dad suffers a stroke and David was with him when it happened and Donna blamed David for what happened! What a bitch! She thought David was confronting her dad about why her mom doesn't like him. She did apologize when she learned that David being in the same room did not cause her dad to have a stroke. She and her mom hire a full-time nurse to live at home and take care of her dad.
David surprises Donna with a trip to New Orleans - only it will be for one night (!!!) and the next morning Donna has a huge presentation in her business fashion class. David does persuade her to go, but Donna was so stupid to agree. Seriously, is one evening in New Orleans worth failing a huge presentation that's worth 70% of her grade. And she ends up missing the class because she and David slept in (because they were out late drinking tornadoes in New Orleans) and missed their morning flight. When it's time for her to take her final in that class, she walks out because she's too scared of going to the next step of her life, but eventually the teacher agrees to let her take an oral exam and she passes.
The very end of the season, Donna sleeps with David. Or at least, it eludes to that. She's wearing her sexy lingerie and has candles lit all around her room. Who knows if they actually went through with it, because the show ends as they're just kissing. I'm a little confused because I thought Donna was going to wait until she was married and she and David aren't married, they're not even engaged, so maybe she was just going to wait until she was in love with somebody? I don't know.
David - David has dropped out of school to pursue his music career and his dad takes away his trust fund. When David's grandpa dies he inherits $250,000 which he begins spending wrecklessly. After he spends a weekend in Las Vegas and spending money left and right and getting robbed by two hookers, David is committed to a pysch ward and eventually gets his life back in order, goes back to school, and starts up a relationship with Donna again. (David and Donna are the Rachel and Ross of BH, 90210. They're on again, off again). When David goes to sign up for classes he finds they're all full and says, "Geeze, what do you have to do? Win a gold medal or something". Then of course, Kerri Strug (fresh off her Olympic win in Atlanta - remember this season started in the fall of '96) turns around and says, "It doesn't hurt" in her chipmunk voice and David goes, "OMG! You're Kerri Strug!" She was sooooo bad. She made Brian Austin Green look like an Oscar-winning actor, no joke!
Valerie - Valerie starts off the season by trying to get money for the After Dark (the club adjoined to the Peach Pit). She seeks financial advice from a guy named Kenny who used to work with Jim Walsh and knows the Walsh family pretty well. Even though Kenny is married and has a young daughter, he has the hots for Valerie. (And who can blame him; TAT is hot!) They start sneaking around and he tells her he loves her and is going to leave his wife, but never seems to and Valerie gets jealous when she calls him and he can't talk because he's with his wife. When it becomes clear that Kenny has no intention of leaving his wife, she hatches a scheme where she tells him she's pregnant (and I totally called she wasn't) and blackmails Kenny into giving her 100 grand so she can have an abortion. If he doesn't give her the money, she threatens to tell his wife about them. She did go over to his house to deliver diapers to his wife. Kenny gives her the money, but the gang realizes there's something up and that Valerie never got an abortion and was most likely never pregnant so Brandon makes her give the money back to Kenny or threatens to kick her out of the house and she gives him the money back.
She goes into business with David when he buys half the After Dark with his inheritance.
Valerie's mom from Buffalo comes to visit and we learn that they have a very restrained relationship because Valerie was sexually molested by her father and her mom never knew about it. Upon learning this news, her mom smacks Valerie, not believing her, but they eventually end up hugging and crying.
For Christmas, the gang does Secret Santa, opting to put the money for the gifts they would have bought for the other people towards a charity. Donna devices the whole thing and apparently doesn't know how Secret Santa works because she draws the names out of a hat and announces who has who. Uh, it's called Secret Santa for a reason, Donna. Valerie gets Kelly and vice versa and those two have had a long rival since Valerie first arrived on the scene. Valerie decides to be nice (per Clare's suggestion) and gets Kelly a cashmere sweater that's on sale. She then learns that Kelly hasn't really been putting any effort into her gift, so she takes back the sweater. At the mall she meets an old lady who's collecting money for charity and Valerie gives her the sweater (because it's not refundable) and tells the woman to give it to somebody. Then she later finds out that Kelly has had a change of heart is and going to get something nice for Val, so Val goes back to the mall and asks the woman if she has the sweater and the woman does and gives it back to her, but Valerie tells her, no, that she should keep it because she works so hard. The woman thanks her and asks her what she will be getting Kelly and Valerie tells her she'll think of something and the woman hands her an already wrapped gift and tells Val to take it and give it to Kelly, so Valerie does even though she doesn't know what it is. (Now if that were me, I would have opened it to see what it was, then wrap it back up!) Everybody exchanges gift and Kelly gives Valerie a leather journal and guess what was in the box that was for Kelly? The exact same journal! Oh, shenanigans!
Valerie's ex-boyfriend and good friend from Buffalo, Tom, comes to visit and she gets jealous when her arch rival Kelly starts to get close to Tom, but that quickly dies off once Kelly realizes she has reached her goal of making Valerie miserable. Tom knows Donna Lewis, of all people (remember her? "I Love You, Always Forever" ("Near and far, closer together, everywhere, I will be with you!")) and invites her to play at the After Dark. Valerie also gets Luther Vandross to play at the After Dark on Valentine's Day 1997. Smooooth.
Valerie starts dating an aspiring actor played by the same guy who played Smith Jarrod (Samantha's actor boytoy) onSex and the City. She even becomes his manager for a while. After his movie gets awful reviews, he decides being an actor isn't what he wants and returns home to Indiana. Very pointless plotline.
Remember the journal Valerie gave Kelly for Christmas? (The exact same one Kelly gave to Valerie?) When Kelly is spending the night at Brandon's, Valerie is over at the beach house with Donna and Clare to watch the gymnastics try outs. When she gets a pen from Kelly's room (because they're going to act like judges and give the gymnasts scores), she notices Kelly's journal sitting on her desk. She devises a plan where she says she's had too much to drink (she brought over champagne) and shouldn't drive home so Donna and Clare invite her to sleep over and she reads Kelly's journal. I laughed so hard when she told Donna and Clare the not so nice things Kelly had said to them and they asked how they knew this and she admitted she had read Kelly's journal. Say what you will about Valerie, but at least she's honest! She's hoping to drive a wedge between Kelly and her friends and it does work for a while, but eventually they make up.
Valerie loses all her money when she wants to make Kelly jealous by calling Kelly's dad's investment company to have him invest in her club. A guy she THINKS works for Kelly's dad comes to the club to talk business with her and she gives him $100,000 to invest...her entire savings. When she finally meets with Mr. Taylor, she tells him about that guy and he tells her that this particular guy doesn't work for him anymore...that he fired him because he had been stealing clients' money and that he doesn't have a L.A. officer where Valerie met the guy. So now Valerie is trying to find the guy and I'm guessing this will continue in the next season...
We finally learn why Valerie dislikes Kelly so much....it's because Val has always been in love with Brandon and Kelly took him away from her. Um, when the hell has Valerie ever been in love with Brandon? I can see her being attracted to him, but not in love and I'm pretty sure Brandon only sees Val as a sister, though, of course he did tell Kelly he only saw her as a sister in the first season and looked where that ended! I think the writers just pulled something out of their ass and that was the best they could come up with. Valerie doesn't trust Kelly's feelings for Brandon, so she sends a phony telegram to Kelly saying it's from Dylan and he was coming to visit and wanted to meet Kelly at the airport. I was so excited that we were going to see Dylan until Valerie confessed to Brandon what she did. Val's plan does not work as Kelly and Brandon became a couple (again).
Steve - I mentioned in the first episode that Steve is on a roadtrip with Brandon and he catches a flight home to L.A. because he wants to get home early and surprise Clare. Meanwhile, Clare has the great idea to fly to Texas and surprise Steve. When Steve returns to L.A., he finds out that Clare is in Texas, so he flies back there and they see each other in the airport.
Steve, who never learned from his cheating fiasco back in high school, continues to do dumb and stupid shit that gets him in trouble. He and his frathouse streak when the chancellor is giving a speech outside, but the big one was when he needed a paper for a class and finds out that Brandon took the same class when he was a freshman and prints out a paper that Brandon wrote, just changed his name. Well, the profeessor is a guy from season 4 who knows Brandon very well as Brandon slept with his (separated) wife and he has it out for Brandon. Of course he recognized the paper as Brandon's and Steve and Brandon get into very big trouble. There's a big hearing and the teacher claims this is not the first time that Brandon has let Steve cheat off of him....he claims that back in freshman year, Steve got the exact same grade on all his quizzes as Brandon in one of his classes because he had the grades written down. Steve and Clare proof him wrong because Steve kept all the quizzes (for study purposes) and shows them and he had failed all of them. All the charges were dropped and the teacher was fired.
Steve was still punished since he did plagiarize and he is sentenced to work night security at CU. They tell him there's been a "phantom" who's been living on the campus and if Steve catches him, his sentence will be reduced. Steve does find the "phantom" who is a student who only has enough money to pay for tuition and is living in a storage closet because he's homeless. Steve doesn't turn him in because the guy reminds him of himself.
Like I mentioned, he and Clare break up and he challenges her new boyfriend to a rowing contest. Dick wins, but really it's Steve who won because shortly after that, Clare breaks up with Dick and gets back together with Steve. Once enemies, Steve and Dick become good friends. Dick likes to do pot which he gets Steve to do too and Clare is disgusted with him. One night, Dick scores some heroin at the After Dark and Steve agrees to try some too, only Dick tried it first and OD. Valerie and David were cleared of the charges and didn't know how the drugs ended up in their club.
Steve applies for a job at the college firm and gets hit on by the woman who's giving him the interview. He tells Clare that the woman hit on him, but she doesn't believe him. After Clare and the guy who's the head of the company overheard the woman telling Steve if he sleeps with her that she'll get the job, she gets fired and Clare forgives Steve.
So that's it for all the characters, but I have to add one last thing: during most of the episodes, at the beginning they show stock footage of the college campus while they show the credits. The stupid and hilarious thing was that they would show the same footage more than once! They showed students studying outside on a step, the showed two guys playing Frisbee in a field, they showed students walking down this particular sidewalk...it was the same footage used over and over again!
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