The Only Beverly Hills, 90210 Actors To Appear In Every Episode

Warning: This article includes mentions of sexual assault.

For super-producer Aaron Spelling, the man behind such preposterously entertaining television series as “Charlie’s Angels,” “The Love Boat,” and “Dynasty,” the best case scenario for the high school drama “Beverly Hills 90210” was that it would be a Thursday night counterprogramming hit. It certainly wasn’t going to win its 9 PM time slot. Though NBC was experimenting with its 9:30 spot (it eventually found a fairly decent fit in “Seinfeld”), “Cheers,” the top-rated show on television, had the front end of the slot on lockdown. But, hey, perhaps Spelling and the show’s young creator, Darren Star, could siphon off enough young viewers to convince Fox to give it a second season, preferably on a different night.

The show was barely a blip on the pop culture radar, giving Fox an easy excuse to blow millions on another hour-long block of cannon fodder to get blasted to bits by “Cheers.” Instead, it put in a rush order for a second season to be run during the summer, when every other major series was airing reruns. The beach setting and the easy-on-the-eyes cast became appointment television for kids on a Thursday night, a day before new movies hit theaters (that’s how it worked 33 years ago). Suddenly, Fox had a significant swath of the teen population debating the hotness of nice guy Brandon Walsh (Jason Priestley), bad-ish boy Dylan McKay (Luke Perry) and jock Steve Sanders (Ian Ziering). Straight guys could pretend they weren’t watching, but Brenda Walsh (Shannon Doherty) and Kelly Taylor (Jennie Garth) were an irresistible Betty/Veronica tag team.

“Beverly Hills 90210” didn’t just survive, it thrived. Amazingly, for a show with such a popular young cast, there was very little turnover at the top. But only four of the core eight appeared in every episode. Who were they?

Ziering was a sporadically employed young actor in Hollywood when, at the age of 26, he landed the role that would make him the most likably lunkheaded best friend on network television for a solid decade. Sanders was set up to be the materialistic bully who, given the area code and lax morals attributed to it by the rest of the country, probably wouldn’t be above slipping a mickey in his date’s drink if the night wasn’t going his way. But Sanders was a solid, loyal friend who’d throw down in defense of his pals if he had to, but, really, all he had on his mind was a shallow good time. Sanders was a dolt, and loved teasing the nerdy school disc jockey David Silver (Brian Austin Green), but it was all out of love. Everyone needs a good-hearted doofus like Sanders in their life.

Spelling was an easy and frequent target of the show’s myriad critics, who viewed her casting as an act of galling nepotism because, well, she really wasn’t comfortable on camera in those early seasons. It didn’t help that her Donna Martin was the airhead counterpart to Sanders, and that female materialism is often viewed as a sign of intellectual vapidity (whereas Tom Cruise zipping a sleek Porsche 928 through the streets of suburban Chicago was considered the height of Reagan-era virility). 

The show used Donna as airheaded comic relief early on, but gradually took the character through some shockingly dark alleyways. She was nearly raped, got physically abused by her construction worker boyfriend, and was used financially by Silver, her true love. “90210” wound up being the artistic peak of Spelling’s career, but once she settled into the role, she was often the most interesting character on the show (especially after Perry bolted, Priestley lost interest, and Garth’s Kelly turned into an abuse magnet). And for a season or so, there wasn’t a “90210” fan alive who didn’t know the lyrics to Jeremy Jordan’s “The Right Kind of Love” by heart.

David Silver was a dweeb. This wasn’t Green’s fault. His character had artistic ambitions, and on a show like “Beverly Hills 90210,” which was basically teen “Dynasty,” no one with genuine musical talent/integrity probably wanted to be associated with the series. So his songwriting was utterly atrocious, and responsible for some of the series’ most sustained unintentional laughs. He was also the most audacious dresser on the show, and that never worked out for him. But it wasn’t all laughs with Silver. He struggled with substance abuse and, as the series drew to a close, seemed doomed to never quite pull it together. If you consider the 2008 reboot “90210” canon (let’s not discuss the mockumentary revival), this is confirmed when we learned he’s split with Donna and is living in Japan. Actually, Silver might own the series’ most tragic arc: he only ever wanted to be popular, finally achieved his goal, and wound up being an aimless failure.

“Beverly Hills 90210” started off as a fish-out-of-water drama about a couple of Midwestern teens who move with their parents to the ritziest zip code in America, and for a time the writers managed to keep Priestley’s Brandon and Doherty’s Brenda at the center of the narrative. But Brandon was simply never believable as anything other than a level-headed teen, while Brenda just became flat-out unlikable (which, given her recent demise, is heartbreaking to consider). 

After a few seasons, it became apparent that Garth’s Kelly Taylor was the heart of the show; she was keenly aware of her attractiveness, and often seemed unnerved by being the girl. Obviously, Dylan professing his love for Kelly in the swimming pool was one of the show’s defining scenes, but it was also incredibly awkward because Kelly knew her best friend’s heart would be totally shattered. These things mattered to Kelly. And, like Silver, she dealt with her anxiety and unhappiness via drugs. The writers handled these moments with unusual sensitivity for a show like this. The same cannot be said for Kelly’s rape, which felt like a ratings-driven escalation. It was a betrayal of Garth, who, for nine seasons at this point, had given the show’s most consistently compelling performance. Garth made it to the series finale, but unlike her three aforementioned castmates, I think the show no longer deserved her.