Again With This: Beverly Hills, 90210

After the Christmas party massacre, Kelly continues dealing with Dr. Monahan's retaliation against her -- which is lucky for Brandon, because now that he's finally had sex with Emma, she's decided it's her turn to get up his ass, constantly dropping obvious references to their illicit coitus which Brandon makes all the more obvious by tensing up about them. How far is Emma willing to go to get Brandon away from Kelly? Further than anyone else who's ever boned him could possibly imagine. The Val/David/Donna/Noah love quadrangle continues to irritate everyone in it (plus the rest of us), and relations between Noah and Val aren't likely to get any friendlier once Nat's old frenemy Duke returns with a new face and a new plan to make money off the After Dark's Sports Night. Finally, production costs have apparently required downsizing to the tune of Carly's house, so Carly and Zack move into the good old beach apartment, where Zack gets right to work improving upon Donna's fashion designs. We take you through in o

Marvel at the fidelity of Brandon Walsh: it's taken him two and a half episodes of flirting with Emma to lower his defenses...and pants: yes, Emma finally succeeds in seducing Brandon -- although, really, is "succeed" the right word here? Brandon is consumed with guilt, but Kelly still has no idea, perhaps because Kelly's still dealing with Dr. Monahan and his roving Monahands. With Kelly's time at the Clinic Clinic winding down and her attempt to address Dr. Monahan directly regarding his harassment, she tries to raise the matter with a superior at the Foundation Foundation; will right win out over rape culture? The answer won't surprise you. David continues intervening with his work colleague Ben, trying to reunite him with his estranged parents for the holidays and even listening well enough to Ben to figure out when he's making shit up to try to be noble (and escape David's attempts to fix his life). Donna -- truly Santa's brightest and orangest little elf -- does her best to get Noah into the Christmas s

Kelly has so much going on, you guys! She's still 50% of the workforce at the Clinic Clinic, still fending off advances and innuendoes from Dr. Creep -- and now, on top of all that, she's also coming out of retirement to model for Donna! She's just so busy that she doesn't notice how much Brandon and Emma are flirting with each other, and how little they're bothering to hide it! Oh well. One of Val's new initiatives for the club turns out to be a comedy night, and apparently the venue has such a bad reputation that even in one of the country's comedy capitals, the talent is so thin that Noah and Val have to recruit Steve to perform. Speaking of performing: Val's putting in a bravura turn as someone who wants to bone David, achieving the desired result of making Donna and Noah jealous. When not helping Val slam her bed frame into the wall, David starts his shameful car wash job, simultaneously starting his career as a homeless gay kid's guardian angel. We discuss it all in the latest Again With This podcast!

David having stomped out of the club in a fit of pique and left Noah to deal with it, Noah gives himself a one-night trial run and decides that he sucks and hates it and that despite his differences with Val, he should take her up on her offer to return as manager. This complicates things for him and Donna, since Donna's not trying to get into another relationship with someone Val will be constantly needling her about -- though she's also sick of David's trifling ass freeloading all over her apartment eating her food and screwing up his new job at Khaki Nation. Brandon and Kelly are busy working on their relationships with new people: Kelly with Dr. Monahan at the Clinic Clinic, who's maybe not quite the saint she thought when he first met him; and Brandon with Emma Bennett, a hot new freelancer he's trying to recruit for the Beat. With Steve's paternity drama behind him, he can resume trying to have sex with Carly, though the demands on Carly's time are about to increase, meaning her availability for nooners

David's mood dramatically improves as soon as he decides that his mysterious loan shark angel must be Donna...and predictably darkens when Val returns from her low-cut sweater-clad recon mission to tell David that the person he actually owes his fingers to is Noah. Then he tosses one of his hobo rags onto a space heater in his office and starts a fire, so things are bound to get better from there. Somewhere in the midst of his ongoing crisis, he finds time to try to drive a wedge between Noah and Donna by telling her that he's actually loaded, because you know how much people hate it when they're starting a relationship with someone and then find out they have a lot of money. ADA Mills continues putting pressure on Brandon to reveal the source of his article on Riggs, and Erica's finally warmed up to him enough to suggest a cunning plan. Steve continues impatiently enduring the wait for the results of his paternity test, with Rush eventually joining Carly in promising Steve that parenthood isn't as terrible a

Donna having kicked his ass out of the beach apartment over his cheque fraud, David decides he might as well also confess his financial idiocy to his father. Or, rather, to confess most of it: while Mel swiftly recommends filing bankruptcy for the sake of David's creditors and even gives David the money to replace what he stole from Donna, there's no line item in Mel's plan for paying back David's loan shark. And yet David is extremely blasé about keeping all his fingers intact, finding time to pack up his shit when his repayment is already a day late, and taking a morning off to go down to Donna's job and pick a fight over Val's report that she spotted Donna and Noah on the Martins' boat, K-I-S-S-I-N-G. Brandon and Kelly resume looking for Erica now that she's stolen everything of value from the Walsh house and fled back to the streets, but things get more complicated when (a) they meet her roommate and fellow sex worker Julie, who may have problems so big even they can't solve them; and (b) Brandon publishe

The show that not only can't get back the opening-credits cast members for very occasional cameos but can barely even remember the characters they played ever existed is, in its eighth season, reallyimposing on the viewer's patience by bringing back Dylan............'s sister Eric for the first time since Season 5. And she's gone through some changes! Like, she's changed into a completely different actor! Also she's a streetwalker now. (Did Noley "Original Erica" Thornton quit the biz? Did her parents refuse to let her play a sex worker? Did the show just fail to meet her quote? We don't know; if you do, please tell us.) After Brandon and Kelly have a chance encounter with her at her corner, they embark upon a mission to rescue her from the life, whether or not she's actually ready or willing to go along with their plans. David still can't work money: literally at the moment Donna's opening her bank statement and discovering that her boyfriend embezzled from her, said boyfriend is at dinner with a loan shark

You know how David's been having money issues all season? Well, it turns out solutions like closing down the club for a week and trying to make a racist band happen haven't actually helped, and now shit's really dire: he's at immediate risk of eviction, which somehow doesn't induce a bank to give him the loan he's applied for! Noticing the corner he's painted himself into, David gets really desperate, and makes a decision that's really dumb. He also skips a big fundraising ball Kelly's Foundation Foundation has thrown, but it's probably just as well: no one there has much fun -- particularly not Val, when both her beaux show up, and this time she can't wriggle out of their finding out about each other. Donna manages to line up a new client who's less interested in having Donna shop for her and instead sets her to organizing a séance. Also, Kelly and Brandon can't stop boning in public and we are furious about it. JOIN THE AWT CLUB

As Kelly heads out to start her job at the Foundation Foundation instead of taking several more weeks off to think about how she betrayed Brandon by failing to corroborate his pick at the police lineup, Brandon continues riding Detective Woods about the single biggest crime in Los Angeles for which justice has yet to be served: the case of no one making Brandon feel better. And when he's not on the phone, he's having more flashbacks about his failure to prevent Kelly from getting shot. He's a lot of fun! Speaking of fun: Donna still hasn't backed down on her judgment of David's bigoted clients, including when they attract the interest of a record label A&R guy who's ready to sign them to a five-figure contract. What better time for the band to escalate from conversational racism to songs that advocate full-on race war? Donna can't focus entirely on David's problems, though, since she has to deal with the fact that she's lost all her clients...or is it that Val's stolen them? Donna gets revenge the best wa

When Brandon, the august editor of the Beverly Beat, finds out that his developing story on sweatshop labour at a local apparel company implicates the former owner of his publication and its current publisher's father, he reaches out to a colleague at another publication to cover it without being accused of a conflict of interest. Just kidding! He sends Steve, not a journalist, to get the truth out of Rush. Fortunately for everyone, Donna's source is able to stop by the office to speak to someone about her experience, and crying women are Steve's Kryptonite. Elsewhere, David is having a harder and harder time ignoring how racist the band he's managing is; Val and Noah are still being extremely annoying in whatever passes for a relationship between them; and when Kelly fails to identify Brandon's shooter at a police lineup, Brandon is extremely understanding about it, jk lol he's a bitch about it. JOIN THE AWT CLUB

Donna's publicist David will be the first to tell you that Donna graduated at the top of her class at CU with a degree in Fashion Marketing. And yet at no point in her four years of college did it ever come up, in any of her classes, that the fashion industry is built on unethical -- indeed, immoral -- labour practices...or so we must surmise based on her naïve reactions to everything going on at Soho Mix & Match. Did the non-native English speaker protecting her boss from accusations about its apparently underage employees know she's entitled to earn a minimum wage in this country??!!?!? Since Donna doesn't get very far, it's up to the Beverly Beat to break this story -- something everyone who works there is extremely qualified to do. Elsewhere, Val gets possessive about Noah while blowing off a guy she knows to be a millionaire, and Kelly tries to force herself to love Brandon the way everyone keeps telling her she should. We discuss it all! JOIN THE AWT CLUB

As Kelly starts the slow and agonizing process of trying to recover her memory after suddenly developing amnesia, Brandon does his part by being extremely territorial about a woman who remembers zero things about him. Helpful! Elsewhere, Steve seems to think his ill-conceived plan to become a sports agent is going to impress Carly so much she drops her objections and starts dating him; and when Donna starts her job as a fashion executive's personal assistant, said executive's pooch Goliath has no choice but to run away from all her STUFF. JOIN THE AWT CLUB

Kelly got shot, which you think would consume all her very best friends' time, energy, and focus, and yet: when he's not picking Kelly's shooter out of a lineup with extreme (misplaced?) confidence, Brandon's fielding calls about job opportunities; Donna's taking interviews; Val's still hitting on Noah (but then again, it's hardly as if Val cares whether Kelly lives or dies). Don't worry, though: Kelly may say she's sick of talking about herself, but before the episode's done she'll have come up with another way of turning everyone's attention back where it belongs. JOIN THE AWT CLUB

Our remaining characters have all graduated CU. Now what? Well: everyone needs a job except for David (running the Peach Pit After Dark into the ground) and Kelly (somehow: she's going to be working at a Foundation that, let's hope, isn't actually a cult). Naturally, therefore, they all decide to join Donna for her first assignment as a fashion stylist...in Waikiki! Where they run into Brandon's ex-girlfriend Tracy, and have a marine meet-cute with fifteenth-generation Dylan photocopy Noah. Along the way, some models almost drown, Steve gets a terrible sunburn, and David slides into a lagoon and a near-death experience. Will Steve even make it home to continue witlessly hitting on single mom Carly? We discuss it all on the podcast! JOIN THE AWT CLUB

It's time for the gang to graduate from CU, but of course the path out of post-secondary education can't be smooth -- and the fact that half their parents aren't even bothering to attend (we wish we'd thought of that) is just the start. Steve attacks his trust fund-free future by...planning a senior prank and fighting with Clare; Donna once again questions whether she actually should just bone David and this time might actually mean it; and while Val panics about the loss of her life's savings, Kelly spitefully decides to make her life even worse by insisting that Brandon kick her out of his parents' house, like immediately. JOIN THE AWT CLUB

In Season 7's penultimate episode, Donna finally sits her exam for the dreaded Prof. Langely, promptly chokes, and then does a piss-poor job of asking for another chance; Steve is shocked to learn that Rush has no intention of giving him a sweetheart job as a junior partner (of/in what?) since they've never actually discussed it at any point, ever, and learning that Clare's considering moving to Paris with her dad doesn't improve his mood; and while Val continues working Parker Lewis for access to Bill Taylor -- who's now actually touched down in Los Angeles -- Kelly is shocked to learn that her dreams of biological motherhood might never come true, and barren crones Sarah and Tara try their best to empathize with her situation. JOIN THE AWT CLUB

Clare has the dead mom blues when Mother's Day rolls around; Val, David, and Donna love-triangulate again -- this time at the direction of Val's new financial advisor who is definitely totally not trying to steal all her money; and Kelly and Brandon agonize over a pregnancy scare, which is understandable given that one of them already talks like a baby. JOIN THE AWT CLUB

When Samantha and the Chancellor run into relationship trouble, Clare blames Steve, because that's reasonable; Val and Kelly get the Hawaiian flu, a side effect of which is apparently explosive retcon; and when David brings Donna for a whirlwind night in New Orleans, he finds out the hard way that he didn't need to pack condoms. (Hee hee. "The hard way.") JOIN THE AWT CLUB

While Kelly tries to mend fences with her re-boyfriend's roommate, said roommate Val is at the beach reading her journal, and there's also something about a kids' entertainer with a magic wand, and an accidentally stolen electric car, and if this all sounds like a confused mess, that's because it is. JOIN THE AWT CLUB

A KEG/Alpha talent show (yes, really) is the location both for Clare's triumph over stage fright, and for Felice to set herself up for more of Donna's disapproval; and Brandon dumps Tracy to reunite with Kelly -- though it's not going to work out if Val's schemes and an antique form of communication technology have anything to do with it. JOIN THE AWT CLUB