Dear Gossips,

Well before it became mainstream to celebrate the drama queen, before we realised the queer community is always right about bad bitches being the best, there was Brenda Walsh by Shannen Doherty.

So many of us from that generation didn’t yet have the language to articulate why it was that Brenda, who could be a brat, and Shannen, who could also be a brat, were so appealing and so vital to pop culture.

Duana wrote in the group chat yesterday that she was “inconsolable” about Shannen’s passing. I’m sure there are a lot of people of a certain vintage who feel the same way. For Duana, specifically, it’s being of the time when we first met Shannen as Brenda in Beverly Hills 90210, of course, but it also has to do with loving television, period, so much that she made writing television a career. One of the reasons why this series occupies such legendary status with a specific cohort of storytellers working today is because it was formative for the viewers who were also future creatives. They are the legacy of Beverly Hills 90210. Duana’s series Near or Far, which premiered earlier this year on CBC Gem, about two sisters growing apart right after high school, is a descendant of the Walsh twins and their time at West Beverly – one of many. And for many, Brenda Walsh was the seed of that inspiration.

We’ll never forget Brenda having sex for the first time at the Spring Dance, in that black and white dress that will always be famous!

About that episode though, the controversy onscreen was Brenda and Kelly showing up wearing the same thing. The controversy offscreen was about how Brenda lost her virginity without regret, without shame, without apologising. She was happy and excited, she wasn’t afraid…

Until some network affiliates and conservative parents lost their goddamn minds. Which is why Jim had to lose his goddamn mind the following season. For teen viewers like us though, who’d just seen Brandon have sex a few months earlier and not have to worry about it, it felt radical that Brenda could have a similar experience. At least initially. These were the envelopes that 90210 was pushing. This is the c-nt that Brenda and Shannen were serving.

Arguably her c-ntiest moment, of course, is the scene we’ll remember forever. Two lines of dialogue I, personally, will remember forever.

“I hate you both. Never talk to me again!”

An icon!

You can’t separate that scene from the season though – because at the time, 90210 was immersive in a way that could never really happen now with cult favourite shows that stream for eight or ten episodes that you binge all at once and then have to wait sometimes a year or more for the next season. Even on network television these days, a full 22-24 episode season order doesn’t happen that often anymore. Abbott Elementary might be the show that comes closest in terms of season length but it’s definitely not what it was in the time of the OG 90210.

And it was specifically the schedule that got us hooked. The show premiered in October 1990 with the first season wrapping up in May 1991. The Gulf War started in early 1991 though, and every other network was airing war coverage except for FOX because they didn’t have a news network at the time. So 90210 was counter-programming. Which is when the show really took off. And that’s when FOX made the brilliant but also devastating decision: summer episodes.

Between season one of 90210 and season two, there was only a two-month break because the summer episodes started airing in July 1991. It was at this point that Beverly Hills 90210 became a supernova. So they did it again the following summer: season two ended in May 1992 and season three started two months later, in July. This is the season Brenda and Donna went to Paris and Kelly and Dylan fell in love while she was gone, resulting in one of the most epic love triangles in television history.

It was entertaining as F-CK…but also…at this point, the show had been on the air NON-STOP for almost three years. Which is why we were so obsessed with it, which is why we have so much attachment to it – because it was literally there, all the f-cking time. And we were around-ish the same age, maybe a bit younger, so Beverly Hills 90210 basically became our entire personality. That is why we are heartbroken.

You know what’s even more heartbreaking though? That permanence in our lives, the way it embedded itself into our identities – it came at a cost. Being on the air for three years NON-STOP meant that those kids were working for almost three years NON-STOP. They were young, it was overnight and overwhelming fame. And they f-cking struggled. They struggled with exhaustion, mental health, finances because they were not prepared to manage the money and the responsibility and their lives – while trying to have some goddamn fun, because what’s the point if it’s not fun?!

Shannen, of course, ate most of the sh-t for how she reacted to the upheaval in all of their lives. She was criticised and vilified and, of course, as is the case in so much of how we engage with celebrity, culturally we collectively realised too late that she was actually a bad bitch giving c-nt. What Shannen was doing was pushing back. She was angry. She was overworked and underappreciated, probably underpaid, considering how networks took advantage of young stars at the time and in the context of what we know now about that schedule and its demands, definitely manipulated and scapegoated – and she wasn’t having it. She refused to “behave”. But also, probably, she was too young and too unsupported to be able to articulate her rage and properly represent herself and her grievances. And so she gained a “reputation”. Had all of this happened 25 years later, that reputation would have been a gold medal. Shannen Doherty, like so many bad c-nty bitches, was ahead of her time.

Join us to talk about Shannen and her legacy at The Squawk. (app link here)

Yours in gossip,

Lainey

Shannen Doherty Gossip

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