Beverly Hills, 90210
The Complete Second Season

Review By: Rocco Passafuime
RoccoPassafuime@TheCinemaSource.com

In 1990, the conceptually groundbreaking teen drama Beverly Hills 90210 premiered on Fox. While it was a modest success in the U.S., it slowly built a cult following and was starting to reach a level of phenomenal proportions internationally.

Realizing the potential of such a unique show with a unique target audience, Fox made a rather unorthodox move for the time and decided to start the second season during the usually vacant period of the summer. Almost instantaneously, 90210 not only became a hit for the network, but a worldwide pop culture phenomenon. Now, the second season is available on DVD.

After finishing their first year of high school in their new home of Beverly Hills, Minnesota-native twins Brandon (Jason Priestley) and Brenda (Shannon Doherty) find themselves often dealing with moments of great turbulence as the summer and, later on, subsequent school year looms.

Brandon deals with having to leave his comfy Peach Pit job for a summer job as a beach club cabana boy to save up money to buy a car. He ends up buying a Ford Mustang, but finds himself having to deal with problems that occur with the car from the get-go.

His biggest challenge occurs when he becomes involved with wild new student Emily Valentine (Christine Elise). He soon discovers a dark and very obsessive side emerge with Emily, after she gets him drugged with an Ecstasy-like substance at an underground club.

After a pregnancy scare and a stint in drama class in summer school, sister Brenda deals with a very rocky on and off relationship with the emotionally detached and equally troubled Dylan McKay (Luke Perry). She also often butts heads with father Jim (James Eckhouse), whose trust of Dylan is shaky at best as he continues to battle alcoholism.

Brandon and Brenda’s friends also deal with plenty of changes. Early in the school year, David Silver (Brian Austin Green) loses longtime best friend Scott (Douglas Emerson) to a gun-related tragedy. However, he soon gains not only greater respect with the gang, but a stepsister in former crush Kelly Taylor (Jennie Garth) and a girlfriend in Donna Martin (Tori Spelling).

Kelly deals with her mother’s upcoming remarriage in often a less than supportive fashion, but soon finds herself in the throes of a romance with the much older house painter Jake Hanson (Grant Show). Meanwhile, her ex-boyfriend Steve Sanders (Ian Ziering) not only wrestles with finding out who his birth mother is, but often his still strong feelings for Kelly.

If the first season was more of an introduction to most of the characters, the second season continues that. It also begins to flesh out the up-to-now more comical and secondary characters like Steve, David, and Donna.

The second season begins to show signs of a transition into the more continual soap operatic style of later years. A few episodes start to often bleed their stories into the next, however, for the most part, they are still predominantly self-contained.

Much of the ...