Growing up, TV taught me everything. How to live. How to laugh. How to love. How to look really really fashionable wearing a pair of bike shorts with an over-sized tee knotted to the side. In my life, I’ve had many TV boyfriends. The first was Michael Nesmith from the Monkees. Nickelodeon aired re-runs of the madcap 1960s sitcom about the pre-fab Beatlesque band when I was 7. While everyone else seemed to gravitate toward the impish Davy Jones, I only had eyes for Michael. I loved his stocking cap and his “aw shucks” sheepish twang. I often fantasized that I was a poor little street urchin and the Monkees found me and scooped me up into their Monkeemobile and let me live in their ramshackle beach house. The Monkees, Mike especially, thought I was fascinating and hilarious and adorable, unlike the boys in my school who just thought I was fat and weird.
I cursed mortality and the passage of time, knowing that I could never have Mike Nesmith the way I wanted him. Life was so unfair! For years I carried a torch for my bestockinged baby boy, thinking he could never be usurped. Oh, how wrong I was.
Being the telephile that I am, I had a subscription to Entertainment Weekly. Every week I pored over every article written by Owen Gleiberman and Lisa Schwarzbaum, reading up on the latest TV and Movie news. I remember a fall feature previewing the upcoming premieres of shows focused on teenagers, including Parker Lewis Can’t Lose, a small-screen adaptation of Ferris Bueller, a musical soap called Hull High, and an Aaron Spelling joint called The Class of Beverly Hills. Later renamed Beverly Hills, 90210, the Fox series centered on the exploits of Minnesota twins Brenda and Brandon Walsh (Shannen Doherty and Jason Priestley) navigating the slings and arrows of the fast-paced LA lifestyle. While those other shows are forgotten footnotes, 90210 was a cultural juggernaut, primarily for its provocative themes and captivating cast. The kids of Beverly Hills, most of whom were well beyond high school age (Gabrielle “Andrea Zuckerman” Carteris was pushing 30 when the show debuted), became my new best friends. Their joy became my joy. Their pain my pain. Brenda especially. I really identified with Brenda’s post-adolescent awkwardness. Like Brenda, I too struggled with unruly bangs. I admired her unapologetic bitchiness. And I championed her budding love affair with Dylan Michael McKay.
Dylan. Oh, Dylan. While Mike Nesmith was an approachable goof, Dylan was troubled and aloof. A comely puzzle that was begging to be solved. He had the most adorable scar on his eyebrow (Tiger Beat explained it was the result of an accident between a young Luke Perry and the corner of a bowling alley vending machine) and the biggest, wrinkliest forehead that was somehow super hot, and the most improbable pompadour. He was the most beautiful man my ten year-old eyes had ever viddied. Journalists often compared Luke Perry to James Dean, which he laughed off because he was so modest which just made him all the more attractive.
Photos of the West Beverly gang, ripped from the pages of Tiger Beat and Teen, adorned my bedroom walls. One wall was dedicated solely to pictures of Luke. My innocent childhood fantasies of meeting the Monkees were replaced with steamier make-out sessions between me-as-Brenda and Dylan in the back of his vintage Porsche, serenaded by R.E.M.’s “Losing My Religion” which was their song. It was kind of a weird choice, but whatever. Better than “Rolling with the Homies!”
Before I knew fan fiction was a thing I made up stories about Dylan and Brenda, their blossoming young love a promising blueprint for what a relationship could be. When Brenda confessed to Dylan she was a virgin, he didn’t shame her or pressure her to go all the way. He was patient and let Brenda explore her sexuality on her own terms. When she did decide to have sex for the first time, the night of the Spring Dance, he was tender and loving and he even brought a condom. And when she had that inevitable pregnancy scare, he didn’t ditch her like this asshole or this asshole.
Their love was an awesome love. Until it all came crashing down. As you might recall, Brenda and Donna (Tori Spelling) went to Paris the summer before their Senior year, leaving Dylan alone to surf and chill and choose sobriety at the Beverly Hills Beach Club. Kelly (Jennie Garth) was supposed to go to Paris too, but at the last minute she decided to stay behind in LA to help her mom Jackie take care of her new daughter. But that was all a ruse of course to steal Dylan away from her BFF. Dylan and Kelly only shared a kiss on the beach that summer, but the betrayal was as devastating as finding out you’re eating veal brains.
The moment Kelly and Dylan confessed their digression to Brenda is more important to me than my first kiss (ick!) or the first time a boy told me he loved me (woof!). Brenda’s indignation was mine too. I never forgave Dylan or Kelly for what they did to us. When Brenda was written off the show and Kelly became the show’s central character a world of shit came her way. She became addicted to cocaine. She got shot. She got Single White Femaled. I chalked up every atrocity wrought on Kelly to karmic retribution for breaking girl code.
After Brenda left I was still dedicated to watching 90210, however my love for Dylan fizzled out. The show took his character trajectory weird places; his dad blew up, he married the Noxzema girl and then she blew up, he ran the Peach Pit After Dark, and then he left. And then he came back, but it just wasn’t the same. Still, his legacy lived on in later teen heartthrobs like Jordan Catalano, the brooding, misunderstood illiterate from My So-Called Life, Ryan Atwood, the brooding, misunderstood ruffian from The O.C., and Chuck Bass, the brooding, misunderstood catfish from Gossip Girl.
Years after its 2000 demise, 90210 continued to be a part of my everyday life. My friend Nora gifted me an autographed photo of the OG cast as a wedding present. Each Christmas, my stepmother gave me a season of the series on DVD. My family and I would come together and spend the holiday in our PJs binge-watching episode after episode, much to the dismay of my dad and brother Justin. My sister Maddie, who is decades younger than myself, would break out in a sweat with each increasingly dramatic turn. “The stakes are so high!” she’d exclaim.
Beverly Hills, 90210 continued to be a part of the cultural zeitgeist with a just okay but ultimately inferior reboot that aired for five seasons on the CW. Although it was a whole new cast of Beverly Hillians that included Lucille Bluth, Becky from Full House and Michael Lee from The Wire, some of the old guard returned, including Donna Martin and Kelly Taylor. But more importantly, it marked the return of Brenda motherfuckin’ Walsh, who left the show all the way back in season 4. I was so fucking psyched! So psyched that when I found out the premiere coincided with a writing class I was going to take at the New School, I swiftly dropped the class so I could tune in (this was in a world before Hulu, mind you). But the show was a fucking bummer! Kelly Taylor was a sad single mom who wound up as a guidance counselor at West Beverly. Brenda Walsh was a washed-up actor who was directing a high school production of Spring Awakening at West Beverly. It’s revealed that Dylan is Kelly’s baby daddy, but he’s not in the picture. See? Bummer Fucking City. The Nu-9-0 did its beloved characters a real disservice. I was furious. Not enough to stop watching, because I am glutton for punishment, but still. I was steaming! Luckily there exists some fan fiction to rectify all these wrongs. If you’re a total fucking psycho like me, please to enjoy!
Just last week, it was announced that there would be yet another reboot, this time a Curb Your Enthusiasm-esque redux featuring most of the original cast. Neither Luke Perry nor Shannen Doherty were attached to the project. Perry was likely too busy with his role as Archie’s dad on CW’s Riverdale. But then came the news earlier this week that Perry suffered a massive stroke. The 9-0 cast has had health scares before. Jason Priestley was severely injured in a race car crash. Shannen Doherty battled breast cancer. Ian Ziering was swallowed by a shark. But they survived. I thought Perry would too. He was 52, but he was forever a teenager to me (or a 25 year-old playing a teenager at least) and teenagers are supposed to be invincible. Surely he’d pull through, I thought. But the world found out he died today. And like a lot of women (and men) my age, whose burgeoning sexuality was sparked by the likes of Luke Perry, I am devastated.
I know part of getting older is watching everyone around you get old too, and that it’s more than a little silly to mourn someone I never met, but I invited this man into my childhood bedroom, which is hallowed ground. A TV character will never again spark giddy excitement in me the way Dylan McKay did, and while that dizzy, pants-throbbing thrill of the unattainable crush is the stuff of adolescence, it is foundational to who I am and for that I am eternally grateful. So tonight, as I rewatch my favorite episodes of 9021-HO for the eleventy-zillionth time, I give thanks to Luke Perry for teaching me that men could be kind and sensitive and TOTALLY SMOKING HOT.