Brandon and Valerie leave this season. They are only in the first 8 or 9 episodes. We get new characters: Matt, who becomes a love interest for Kelly, and Gina, Donna's cousin. I do not care about these characters so I will not be giving them their own little paragraph. I will talk about them when they relate to one of the main characters. I will also not be talking about Noah, the most worthless "main" character to ever be on this show. He was introduced last season.
Brandon - Jason Priestly is listed as an executive producer for most (if not all) the episodes this season, so he was still working on the show, just not in front of the camera anymore. Brandon gets a job in Washington D.C. and moves there. And even after Brandon moves, he still lets his friends live in his house. I can understand Steve because they've been friends for a long time, but Janet, Noah, and Matt also live in this house and if I were Cindy or Jim, I would not be very happy that my house was being used like a frat house. Just saying!
Valerie - Last season we were left with a cliffhanger with Val getting her HIV test back...and it was negative. Valerie drops a bombshell when she reveals that her father didn't commit suicide, but instead she murdered him when he came into her room to molest her. Now I was spoiled so it wasn't as shocking as it could have been. Valerie wants to tell her mom and asks her to come out to visit her and is dismayed when her mother shows up with her new fiance, a younger man. Val is also dismayed when her mother admits that she knew her daughter was being molested by her husband all along but didn't say anything because he was getting help. I was dismayed myself when I found out Valerie was actually getting raped by her father - eww. When she said she was molested by him, I just thought he was touching her inappropriately, which is bad and horrible, of course, but didn't realize that he actually raped his teenaged daughter. Damn, I do not blame Val for killing her father one bit.
Mrs. Malone and her new boyfriend have plans to marry in Las Vegas and invite Valerie to the wedding. She's angry with her mother and seduces her mom's boyfriend and sleeps with him...thank God this happened BEFORE he became her step-dad. (Which he obviously never did).
Valerie admits to her mother that she killed her father and Mrs. Malone plans to tell the police about it, but she never turns her daughter in and they cry and make up and Valerie goes back to Buffalo with her mom and that's the last we see of Tiffani-Amber Thiessen. Bye-bye, TAT.
Dylan - DYLAN'S BACK! And I would be a lot more excited....if Brandon and Valerie hadn't left. Dylan left three years ago after his wife (of one day, mind you) was accidently murdered (he was suppose to be the victim) and he went to live in London with Brenda. You think those three years of being away from his murdered wife (OF ONE DAY - and hell, he only knew her for maybe six weeks tops), he would have gotten some closure and be able to move on, but nope. Once back in Beverly Hills, so much more drama for Dylan. He wants revenge on Mr. Marchette, his father-in-law (the one who ordered the hit on Dylan, but accidentally killed his daughter) and when he gets to the HUMONGOUS mansion where Marchette lived, he finds this middle-aged couple who look like your average income middle Americans who have no business living in such a huge house. Dylan holds them at gunpoint and when he is told Marchette no longer lives there and has passed away, he says he's sorry and runs out.
When he and Kelly go to Mexico, he buys a statue for her and smuggles some cocaine in the statue. He does the same thing when he goes to Mexico with Gina. Dylan is a slut and a drug addict! Dylan's drug problem gets so bad that he (accidently) knocks Donna into the pool and her head smacks against the concrete wall. That look like it hurt way more than the time Ray (purposely) pushed her down the stairs! But the next episode, Donna is totally fine.
David - After breaking up with Val, David goes through a lot of women this season. And I mean A LOT. You thought season 1 Brandon went through a lot of girlfriends? Uh-huh. He has nothing on season 9 David. First, there was Sophie (played by Laura Leighton who I know is well-known for Melrose Place, but I know her best as Hannah's mom on Pretty Little Liars!), a new girl in town who wants to become a star and leads both David and Steve on. If she can't be rich and famous, then just being rich is fine with her and when a rich guy wants to whisk her away to Paris, she agrees. Then there was the girl who flung herself at him and he had sex with her only to discover she was 17 the next morning and he was charged with statutory rape, but Dylan went to her parents' house and told them to drop the charges, that their daughter was acting out and wanted attention from them. And they were dropped. Then he meets a girl through Steve's bogus techniques who falls for his "My grandma recently died and I was raised in an orphanage" bullshit line that this idiot girl fell for. When she sees David as a witness on the Judge Judy-type show, she can't believe that he lied to her! Really? Did she really believe anything he said? Was she really that gullible? Then there was the girl David met at the Peach Pit and when he asked for her number, she changed the subject and I immediately knew something was up. She does give David a number, but when he calls it (because she never shows up to the movie theater where they were suppose to meet), it's the wrong number. I thought she was homeless and didn't have a phone, but they never tell us what was up with her. She just shows up at the After Dark the next day to apologize to David and tell him she was moving. It was like they had this whole storyline planned out, but couldn't keep the actress so they had to ditch it. It was just random and odd. After Donna breaks up with Noah for five minutes, David raises the idea of them getting back together and while they do kiss, they don't get back together.
David got a steady gig as a DJ at the After Dark and he meets a girl when he puts out an announcement that he's looking for a girlfriend (lame, David, lame). Her name is Claudia and she's from South America and will be sent back if she doesn't get her green card soon so David decides to marry her so she doesn't have to move. Their plans doesn't work out and she moves anyway. David meets Katie a sex addict who wants to wait a year before she has sex again and David is like, "Nope, I'm out!" Good fucking Lord, David, you dated the virgin Donna for HOW MANY YEARS before she put out and you can't wait a lousy year? David also starts to put the moves on Gina when there's trouble with her and Dylan
Steve - Steve gets mad at David when he finds out he likes Sophie too, but after Sophie leaves they become friends again and all is forgiven and forgotten. Steve mostly spends his time with Janet, who became part of the show last season and is now a new main cast member. They start out as friends with benefits, then Steve tells her he wants to date her and they become a couple. Jenet doesn't want to tell her parents about him because she is Japanese-American and her parents want her to be with somebody of her own heritage. When she does tell them she's dating Steve, her dad kicks her out of their house. Okay, #1, why the hell is a grown woman still living with her parents? And #2, you have to remember that this was still technically the 20th century (it takes places in 1998/99, ha!), so people weren't up to date with the current times.
Steve randomly finds out this his mom is a lesbian. Yep. He's shocked at first, but learns to accept her new lifestyle.
Wanting to make some quick money, Steve decides to run his own seminar about how to pick up women, complete with a video. His seminar cost $250 per guy and after they go to the After Dark and try his techniques (which all fail), they sue him and Steve is on a Judge Judy-type show and is ordered to give back his money.
Steve and Janet are the only ones who are working at "The Beverly Beat" and while it was a pretty much respectable newspaper when Brandon worked there, it has since turned into a tabloid. Steve gets the brilliant (and when I say brilliant, I mean ridiculous) idea of hiring a little person to be a leprechaun for a promotion they're doing for St. Patrick's Day. They announce that if anyone catches the leprechaun, they will get the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow. Turns out this random guy does "catch" the "leprachaun" and brings it to the "Beverly Beat" office and demands his pot of gold and after Steve and Janet explain to him it's not real, he pulls out a knife and says he's not leaving until he gets his gold! We learn he's just a guy who has a son in a hospital and needs to raise money for his treatment so Steve and Janet write about the boy and they start receiving donations.
Kelly - Even though she got a degree in psychology, Kelly goes into business with Donna and they open a boutique with Donna's designs and give it the stupid name, Now Wear This! Um, wouldn't Donna Martin Designs or Designs by Donna Martin be a much better (and fitting name?) I don't understand why Kelly, who has been working in clinics would want a fluffy job like that.
Kelly starts dating Matt, a new main character and a lawyer who works in the same strip mall where Now Wear This! is located. Matt is representing a guy who Kelly recognizes and he's the same guy who beat up his wife who Kelly treated at the clinic she worked at last year. She tries to help the abused woman and her child leave town and in the end Matt also helps her escape her abusive husband.
Kelly hates Gina because she starts going out with Dylan and Kelly is jealous.
Kelly's grandfather is really sick and she and her mother get into a tif about what they should do...her mother wants him on life support, but Kelly think he has the right to be off it if he wants, which he does. In the end, they take him home. This was at Christmas and there was never a mention of whether he died (I'm guessing he did) or not by the end of the series. They just sort of forgot about him.
Kelly is put in an awkward situation when she finds out Matt, her new boyfriend, has a wife living in New York! Lauren is schizophrenic and has been living in mental ward for the past 3 years. She is also taking a drug that her doctors don't want her to take anymore because it will kill her. So she either takes the drug and be sane, but die, or don't take the drug and live and be insane. Great! I guess Matt would rather have a sane and dead wife because he is begging the pharmacist for the medication. Kelly and Dylan decide to help them by going to Mexico and smuggling the drugs across the border. After they do this illegal act, Lauren decides not to take the medicine and commit herself to a psych ward in New York. It's a good thing Kelly and Dylan didn't get caught or they would have gone to jail for absolutely nothing!
Kelly is raped by some guy in an alley and we later find out Matt is representing him in a case where he was accused of robbery. The rapist is at Matt's office and goes to Kelly's store and when he sees it's her, he takes out a knife to kill her...which is stupid because Matt knows he's there since he sent him to the store because he was looking for something. But Kelly is packing some heat and shoots him.
Donna - Noah's father kills himself so Donna has to deal with moody Noah for awhile. Donna's cousin, Gina, an ex-ice skater joins the cast of main characters and lives with Donna and Kelly in the beachhouse. She basically replaces Val, becoming the manipulative bitch who pit people against each other. She does this to Donna and Noah, Donna and Mrs. Martin, Donna and Kelly. In case you couldn't tell, Gina really hates Donna. Donna even breaks up with Noah for five minutes when he confesses that he slept with Gina one time when he hung out with her when he was drunk, but Gina just made him think that, nothing really happened.
There's this stupid story arc where a group of four girl gang members come into Now Wear This! and one of them, Sonia, who you can tell doesn't want to be in the gang (and we later learn she's only in it for the protection and because she feels like she has to). Sonia wants to buy a dress, but doesn't have the money so she asks Donna if she can put it on layaway and Donna agrees. A few days later Sonia comes back to the boutique with the other girls and one of the girls says, "Sonia isn't going to pay for your dress! It's ruined!" And another one says, "Yeah, show her, Sonia!" and Sonia takes out a knife and rips the dress. A woman in the shop leaves when she sees the knife, which I don't blame her for, but it was pretty funny how random it was. Sonia later apoligzies to Donna in private and to make it up to her, she works at the store to pay off the dress....which cost like only $20. I laughed so hard when Sonia gasped at the price. Are you serious? Was twenty bucks really a lot of money in 1998? Donna catches Sonia and her boyfriend sleeping in her shop when she opens it up one morning because they have nowhere else to stay. One night the store is robbed and Sonia and her gang are the main suspects, but Sonia says it was the security guard. We never see anything more with this story. The gang girls disappear. We don't know what happened to Sonia, we don't see what happened to the security guard.
Donna and her mother are going to an event where JFK Jr. will be (and Felice ends up going with Gina since Gina pitted Donna and her mother against each other). This episode was aired in January 1999 and I was thinking, they better enjoy meeting JFK Jr. because he's going to be dead in six months!
Gina and her mom plan a scam on Donna's mother, Felice, because she was the one who was in charge of Gina's money when she was an ice skater and Gina's mother took some money out and Felice tells Gina she gave her mom the money because she said it was for an emergency, but offers to pay Gina back after she admits she should have never let her sister have the money. We find out that this was a planned scheme hatched by Gina and her mother, but we never hear about it anymore after that. Hopefully it will come up in the next season, but this show is notorious for dropping storylines.
Donna cheats on Noah with a guy she's using as a model for her clothes. Noah finds out and is pissed.
Yawn...this season was boring. I'm kinda glad there's only one left!
