Written by: Noah Sanders

 

When I was 14, I had a huge crush on a girl named Laura Rupp, who was way too hot for me, and by the time I had shook her hand for the first time had already decided that I was never going to touch any part of her.  Being 14, I was still idealistic about this sort of thing, and spent two and half years of my life secretly trying to get in to her pants.  Though it didn't work, one of my methods was to become 'one of the girls' every Wednesday night and sit down and indulge in the pure beauty of a mega-popular show called 'Beverly Hills: 90210'.  Time passed, and slowly I realized Laura Rupp would never be touching my pee-pee, so I moved on from her, but still continued to sort of, er, obsessively watch the trashy show.

 

Thus I've constructed a list a few reasons (there's countless) as to why 'Beverly Hills: 90210' was the best show that ever came out of the mid-1990s.   

 

1. The Theme Song

 

Probably the most memorable guitar wailing early-90s theme song ever created.  Think about it, the huge guitar bump that kicks it off, the hair-metal guitar wail that rips in ten seconds in and just shreds like only lukewarm early-90s guitar can, the slow, smooth breakdown that lulls you in, calming your soul, preparing you for the next hour of soap-operatic bliss.  It was a gonorrhea-catchy little pop ditty, that, to this day, will stick in your brain like a pulsating tumor. 

 

The song had become so iconic by the end of the show's run a local DJ in my area actually spent a considerable portion of his show each week seeing which caller could best imitate the guitar solo with their mouth.  Strangely, most of the callers were men, and almost all of them knew it pretty f'n well ... ... almost too well. 

 

2.  Babes, Big-Haired Horny Babes

 

'90210' was the place to look in the early-90s for hot chicks.  Sure, 'Melrose Place' had it's fair share of dirtily hot scheming skanks, but to my 14-year old brain, they were old and used.  Kelly Taylor's big blonde beauty, the bitchy good-looks of Brenda Walsh, troubled socialite Clare Arnold, Dylan's murdered wife Antonia Marchette, old-but-still-hot Andrea Zuckerman, Steve's Japanese lady Janet Sosna, and list goes on and on and on and on.  Pretty much, every female face (aside from the Walsh kid's old mom and, well, Donna Martin a.k.a. Horseface the Plastic Surgery Clown) that ever appeared on the show was completely and totally doable.  At the beginning of the show, yes, fashion dictated frumpy sweaters, stretch pants, and front-butt sportin' acid-washed jeans dumbed down the smoking hot curves of the female stars, but the deeper the show got in to the 1990s, all of sudden it was an f'n skin parade.  A veritable march of nearly off-the-chart women squeezed in to a variety of skimpy duds.  Noah likee the skimpy duds!

 

And the cherry on top?  Each and every hot, hot young lady on 90210 progressively over the course of the show, as moral values declined, became a bigger and bigger slut.  Hardly an episode would go by without one of the buxom lasses stripping down to their underbits and getting all freaky-deaky on one of the show's sensitive males.  Well, you know, every lady except for homely prude Donna Martin, but I've got a whole entry for that one.

 

3.  Valerie Malone

 

Take the stunning good looks of clean-as-uncut-coke Kelly Taylor from 'Saved by the Bell', inject maybe twenty pounds on to her frame, throw on a pair of C, maybe, D fake tatas, stir in healthy helping of nymphomania coupled with a some intense, intense daddy issues, and, hell, you may have the perfect woman, but you most certainly have resident '90210' troublesome sex-pot, Valerie Malone.  Over the course of her seven seasons on the show, not only did she sleep with every male to cross her path, she admitted to a background rife with not so hot molestation and even a little molestation-based patricide.  Malone's only problem was that for the first two seasons I swear to god, her left breast was twice the size of the right.  Be it a weird weight distribution, or the fumbly hands of a discount boob doctor, her rack looked like a watermelon and kiwi.  Somehow, somewhere (should we thank the costume designer?) the problem was fixed and distractions no longer plagued the character's arc of screwing and screwing over anyone and anything she could get her labia around.

 

Suffice to say, when Thessin bailed the show in 2000 for 'greener pastures' the show got noticeably less hot, and noticeably less entertaining to ogle, er, watch.

 

4.  Donna Martin

 

If you look back at the first two seasons of the show, Tori Spelling's character Donna Martin, is a barely a glimmer.  A dorky, flat-chested, nobody who flits around on the edge of storylines, leaving the faintest of impressions.  Somewhere along the line though, uber-powerful daddykins Aaron Spelling got his panties in a bunch that his unattractive spawn (again, one of two whoever cursed the show) wasn't getting enough screen time, and all of sudden prudish, horse-woman Donna Martin was a main character.   What followed was like watching Frankenstein being built from scratch, horrifying yet morbidly fascinating.  As Donna Martin cock-teased David Silver for nearly five seasons, Tori Spelling began a long quest to force her unresponsive body into being hot.  Slowly parts of her nose and face were chiseled away, next came, had to be, who knows, three boob jobs (creating a valley in between her jug-a-lugs larger than Mar's Mariner Valley) and a string of haircuts worse than Cher's wig closet.  

 

Her storylines were always tame (as if Daddykins Spelling didn't want his little princess getting a bad rep for herself) at worst involving a prescription pill addiction and the wussiest abusive boyfriend ever shown on television.  In the end Horseface Martin tied the knot with former-methhead David Silver, continuing the show's narrative them that women, no matter how equine looking they are, can be married happily if they are very, very, very rich.  

 

5.  Dylan McKay

 

Ninety-five percent of the people who watched this show (all school-girls, tittering amidst a Slurpee-fueled sugar high) watched this show for one reason: Luke Perry a.k.a. Dylan Walsh, '90210's' resident sensitive bad boy.  The character the no matter how often he screwed up (be it heroin addiction, gun addiction, sex addiction, being-a-dumbass addiction, etc., etc.) he always proved himself to be the beating heart of the show.  The imperfect savior, always sticking his neck out to save Brandon, banging every chick on the show (seriously, he must have screwed every female star, on and off the set, during his tenure), purchasing the Peach Pit: After Dark to save it from financial ruin, blah blah blah.  Dylan's troubled ass always had the best, seediest stories on the show including the best story to ever run on the show, this one (please read along in a breathless fashion:

 

Dylan's father dies in a mob contracted car explosions.  Angry Dylan seeks to find and kill the mob boss who killed his father.  The mob boss who killed Dylan's father has a daughter.  Dylan hopes to use the mob -boss-who-killed-his-father's daugter to get in to the inner sanctum.  Dylan falls in love with mob-boss-who-killed-his-father's daughter, and instead of using her to kill her father, he asks her marry him.  They wed.  On their wedding night the mob-boss-who-killed-his-father sends a group of goons to kill Dylan.  Sadly, his new wife (mob-boss-who-killed-his-father's daughter) goes out in the pouring rain instead of Dylan.  Driving his car, and wearing a dark, hooded sweatshirt, Dylan's wife is mistaken for him and mob-boss-who-killed-his-father's thugs kill her instead.  Dylan, heartbroken, leaves town but comes back a year later, only to learn that his father faked his death and entered the witness protection program.  

 

Seriously, that is how amazingly convoluted every single storyline Dylan McKay ever had was.  Thinking back now, that's how convoluted every single story on the show was ... ... and that's probably why it still stands as one of the greatest shows ... EVER.

 

6.  Everything else ... ...

 

Frat-boy comedic character Steve Sanders; hot mom Andrea Zuckerman; goodie-goodie turned gambling-addict Brandon Walsh; Nat and the Peach Pit; Brenda Walsh until she moved back to Minnesota; David Silver's meth addiction; David Silver's rap career; Donna walking in on David Silver banging some chick in a limo; David Silver witnessing his bestfriend shoot himself in the head with a shotgun; every storyline involving David Silver; Brandan and Dylan's trip to the mountains; Garret Slan's unhealthy beastiality love for Donna; Ray Pruitt and his silver-laced falsetto; Valerie Malone's killing of her own father; everyone banging everyone; everyone hating everyone at some point; the sheer amount of melodrama force fed in to the show, and how it only made it juicier, and all the other cheese and sap and sex and drugs and promiscuous teenagers and drinking and deaths that made this show so gloriously trashy and fun to watch. 

 

Thanks for reading.