Beverly Hills, 90210/YMMV

Everything About Fiction You Never Wanted to Know.


The original series, or the overall franchise, contains:

  • Broken Base: Brenda-Dylan-Kelly-Brandon will still cause flame wars.
  • Draco in Leather Pants / Ron the Death Eater: Brenda's fans would have you believe that Kelly ruthlessly stole Dylan from her best friend while kicking puppies and laughing about it, while Brenda saved bunnies in Paris. Kelly's fans are slightly less extreme in their view of Brenda, but they do paint Kelly somewhat more sympathetically than they perhaps should.
  • Memetic Mutation: "Donna Martin Graduates!"
  • Retroactive Recognition: Matthew Perry appeared as a one-shot character in the episode "April Is The Cruelest Month". He would go on to play his famous role as Chandler Bing 3 years later.
  • They Changed It, Now It Sucks : Brenda Walsh. Also the reboot series.
  • Unfortunate Implications: During Dylan's coma dream, his male drug dealer insists that Dylan has had sex "with everyone in this room" before laughing in a very creepy way.
    • Particularly icky in light of the fact that one of the women in the room was his little sister. Furthermore, Dylan was only 19 pr 20 at the time, but the amount of women present would indicate that he'd been sexually active since about age 11 or so.

The sequel series contains:

  • Complete Monster: Jen probably qualifies. She cares about no one but herself and uses people while ruining other's lives. She not only sleeps with Liam while she is dating Ryan and Liam is dating Naomi and frames Annie (ergo setting up all of Annie's problems in season 2) probably, she also only dates Ryan so she doesn't come off as a gold digger. The one good thing she does is agree to be Naomi's guardian but that's only so she can leech off Naomi because she is broke. She also made Naomi drive a clunker that because it wouldn't start, led to her rape.
    • Her rapist Mr. Cannon is just as bad. He also tries to tend Silver against her and becomes obsessed with her.
    • Lets not forget Emily. She pretty much from the start seems keen on destroying Annie's life and turning her friends against her.
  • Creator's Pet: Annie could be considered this, particularly in the earlier seasons. In season 1, Naomi told Annie she would be uncomfortable with her dating Ethan since he was Naomi's ex. So what happens? Annie dates Ethan behind Naomi's back. The writers then expected the audience to feel sorry for her when Naomi hooks up with one of Annie's exes at her Sweet Sixteen party. The majority of fans sided with Naomi instead. Annie's Pet status continued into season 2 when she took the ENTIRE season to confess to her hit and run, but ends up only being put on house arrest for a couple of months (again, we're expected to sympathize). By the later half of season 3, the Annie hatred started to die down due to her screen time being cut significantly.
  • Designated Protagonist Syndrome: In the reboot, Annie is not exactly popular with some of the fans, though she's become slightly more liked in the 2nd season when she is no longer the central character (though the morality of her hit-and-run is questionable; some fans have pointed out that even if the writers reveal she didn't technically hit the guy she still thought she did and abandoned him on the side of the road.)
  • Ensemble Darkhorse: Mark. At least, people who comment on him consider him one of the most interesting minor characters, and have shown that they want him to appear more - maybe that's why he still is.
  • Foe Yay: Annie and Liam in Season 1. It fades over time and long before they actually start dating.
  • Hilarious in Hindsight: In Season One Naomi says if she were a lesbian, she would date Adrianna. In season 2, a lesbian does date Adrianna.
    • Also in Season One, George played Kellan Lutz is on the Lacrosse team. Lutz would later star in a movie about Lacrosse called A Warriors Heart
  • Moral Event Horizon: Many fans feel that Adrianna is irredeemable at this point. After switching out Silver's medication for Bipolar Disorder with placebos, it's going to be very hard to make Adrianna likable ever again.
  • The Woobie: Annie at the end of Season 1, leading people who previously hated the character to instantly love her. Or at least gain acceptance in the fandom. Though now it's getting rather old.
  • They Wasted a Perfectly Good Plot: They should have shown Adrianna's mom while she was dating Gia, based on Maeve Quinlan's other role. Even if she was completely supportive of it it could have been a great contrast
  • Unfortunate Implications: The treatment of fathers in the series is shockingly poor. Of the main cast two have fathers who are outright criminals (Navid and Liam), five have fathers who are Jerkasses (Naomi, Teddy, Ivy, Austin and Liam again - his step father this time) and four have fathers who are simply not in their lives much/whose absence has never been explained (Annie, Dixon, Silver and Adrianna.) In other words every single teen main character has at best a distant relationship with their father by the 4th season of the show.
  • What the Hell Casting Agency: Ryan O'Neal as Teddy's douchebag father? Considering how good of a father he is in Real Life, that is just wrong.
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