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Revisiting ‘Wedding Bell Blues’, the Season 2 Finale of Beverly Hills 90210

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Fact: Brenda and Kelly were frenemies. Now, call me perverse, but some of my favourite episodes of Beverly Hills 90210 involved when they fell out with each other. Remember when Brenda caught Kelly and Dylan out on a date and Kelly defended herself when Brenda called her a bimbo? Brenda’s classic comeback was one of the best lines from the whole ten years of Beverly Hills 90210 put together: “Well Kelly, I was always taught that if it looks like a duck and walks like a duck…” Oh-may-zing.

Well, this season two finale is also a bit of a doozy. Get set for when frenemies, father issues, two Aaron Spelling dramas, a bottle of alcohol and a wall collide. Da na na na, da na na na!

 

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A Melrose Place Cross-Over and a Mexican Stand-Off
The episode opens with Brenda and Dylan stuck on the wrong side of the Mexican border after Brenda forgets her license. She and Dylan have been in Baja and she’s lied about it to Jim and Cindy, telling them she was with Kelly all weekend. Brenda’s flipping out because border control have called Jim Walsh and he is mad. He yet again forbids Brenda from seeing Dylan (how many times has he done that already?) and Dylan acts like a bit of an indignant douche when he kisses Brenda and telling her he’ll see her at school… tomorrow. Methinks the issue spreads a little deeper than the trip to Mexico, but we’ll tug at that thread later!

Meanwhile, Kelly’s been busy having it off with Jake Hanson from Melrose Place, who’s been hired to construct a wedding canopy for the impending nuptials of Kelly’s knocked-up mum Jackie and David Silver’s father Mel. That’s right, folks, this episode is one of the cross-over episodes used to introduce us to Beverly Hills 90210’s sister show Melrose Place. Anyway, for a 17-year-old girl, Kelly is pretty confident with her sex banter, telling Jake it’s “looking good”… and she’s not talking about the canopy. I still can’t talk to men like that, and I’m 31. Has that what my life’s become? Envying the scripted flirting on an early ‘90s teen drama? Anyway, moving on…

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Jackie storms out to the backyard wearing what has to be the loudest, most conspicuous maternity dress I’ve ever seen. She rips Kelly a new one for lying to Cindy Walsh about Brenda’s whereabouts and Kelly’s embarrassed that she now looks like a kid in front of Jake. She has a go at Brenda the next day at school, but Brenda doesn’t seem to care too much about that, asking, “What does Jake have to do with this anyway?”, to which Kelly replies, “Brenda, I do have a life”. Remember that – it sows the seeds for a showdown between the long-standing frenemies later in the episode, so stay tuned…

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Madonna Celebrate: The Erotica Ball

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I have a memory from when I was about 11 years old of buying my best friend the Erotica album and green hair mascara for her birthday. Hair mascara may not have stood the test of time, but Erotica did. In fact, the album’s turning 21 and there’s going to be a celebration in London on Sunday 18 August.

Madonna Celebrate and Madonnalicious (The UK’s No.1 fan site) are hosting this Madonna party in aid of St Stephen’s AIDS Trust at Jerusalem Bar (33–34 Rathbone Place, London, W1T 1JN) from 6pm.

Hosted by Chrissy Darling, the organisers promise dazzling burlesque, drag, erotica, side shows, iconic visuals, art installations, cabaret, DJs and lots more.

There’s also an “Erotica” fancy dress code – Burlesque, Top Hat and Tails, Drag, S&M, Showgirl, Leather & Latex, Rubber, Glamour and Fantasy. Use your imagination!

Strictly limited £10 tickets are on sale and only from www.ticketweb.co.uk.

I’ve been to these Madonna parties before and loved them, so if you’re in London, don’t miss out!

www.madonnacelebrate.co.uk
www.madonnalicious.com
www.ssat.org.uk

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When Sex and the City Went ‘Splat’

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Cynthia Nixon recently admitted to the New York Times that while she’s proud of what Sex and the City did for women, she didn’t like how the first movie linked love and money when Big bought Carrie a penthouse apartment with a customised walk-in closet and, worse, when the audience cheered.

“I remember when we screened the first movie in London, when Mr. Big shows Carrie the closet he’s built for her and the entire audience clapped”, she told the Times. “I found that devastating. Maybe that’s a strong word, but I was disheartened. Because I thought, ‘Is this what women in the audience think true love is? A man who has enough money to buy you a walk-in closet?’”

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Now that Cynthia’s opened the floor to criticism of Sex and the City, I’d like to take the opportunity to talk about how I felt the last few episodes of the series did a massive disservice to all the work the previous seasons did to champion single women and how I, as one of those single women in her late teens/early 20s at the time the show aired, felt betrayed by how the series ended. It is a view I rarely share with others due to the fact that the series finale regularly tops ‘best of’ SATC countdowns and because of a conversation I had with someone years ago who asked me, ‘What? Don’t you like happy endings?’ Yes, of course I like happy endings in general, but why does a happy ending have to be synonymous with a conventional happily-ever-after?

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Best 80s Makeover Movies

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Giving Teen Witch the Recognition it Deserves.

First off, I want to thank a now defunct video store on Shepherd’s Way in Perth, Western Australia for stocking an array of teen movies on VHS without which my childhood might have been slightly different. To quote a writer I recently discovered during my internet travels, Robin Hardwick, who recapped an episode of Family Ties for Culture Brats in which Jennifer throws a party, “As a youngster, I was fascinated with any episode show that included (1) a makeover (2) someone getting to be in the popular crowd and (3) awesome outfits. Let’s face it, I was a shallow kid”. Robin, that article spoke to me. Read the article here.

As we celebrate another New Year – that heady mix of nostalgia and the new, where we look back on what we’ve done with our lives at the same time as we plot our fresh start and a different hairstyle – it seems like the perfect excuse for an 80s makeover movie countdown!

She’s Out of Control
Way before She’s All That and the piss-take that was Not Another Teen Movie, geek girl Ami Dolenz made the bold move to take off her glasses. She then went from being head of the class and re-enacting Flashdance’s ‘She’s a Maniac’ in her bedroom to being pursued by boys of all shapes and sizes – we’re talking punks, nerds, a guy in a sailor costume, you name it. The most sinister of all the guys was a pre-Friends Matthew Perry, aka the “wolf in sheep’s clothing”. The one glaring omission from this film was the cool girl clique. I mean, what did everyone at school say when Ami Dolenz basically showed up as a different person? I want answers.

Best outfit: The new Ami’s debut outfit – sheer white knee-highs, a white ra-ra skirt and a frizzy half up-half down do, backlit to full angelic effect. It was an ethereal outfit choice for her slow motion descent of the living room stairs to the sounds of Frankie Avalon’s ‘Venus’.

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