DVD Review: Beverly Hills 90210 Season Five
The Pretty Bunch is Back for a Fifth Season --- Sans Doherty
Sep 19, 2008
When Season Four had ended, millions of fans both gushed and rejoiced, at the sight of enfant terrible Shannen Doherty's Brenda Walsh boarding a plane bound for London, where she allegedly goes off to study her favorite passion -- drama.
Not that there wasn't enough behind-the-scenes drama on the set of Beverly Hills, 90210, but this pivotal departure after four adventurous seasons, gave a chance for the showrunners to play a bit more creatively with its cast members, in order to shake up what was previously more of a formulaic concept of isolated, one-hour storylines of the week.
Overview of Season Five, Beverly Hills, 90210
As mentioned before, Brenda Walsh moved away, which leaves somewhat of an available spot within the Walsh household. From Buffalo N.Y., comes old family friend Valerie Malone (Tiffani Amber Thiessen), a seemingly nice girl, full of niceties, who needed a change of scenery, having just lived through her father's suicide. The show wastes no time in showing her to be a two-faced schemer, with many bad girl traits, including smoking up in Brenda's old room. During the course of the season, she goes on to seduce most of the male cast of the show, thus deserving the "bad girl" label the network was looking to have in order to spice up the format.
Meanwhile, having been swindled out of most of his fortune, perpetually glum Dylan McKay (Luke Perry) has decided to run off to Mexico for a few months (or in TV world, the summer hiatus), on a drinking binge. Upon his return, he finds out his one true love Kelly (Jennie Garth) is now dating his best friend/show's shining beacon of righteousness Brandon (Jason Priestley). Unsurprisingly, he broods some more.
Brandon's college career goes forward, as he decides to further his pedigree, and get elected for (fictitious) California Univerity's student council. Through a series of dramatic (and somewhat overly soap-operatic) moments, he does grab the seat, making him the focal point for further episodes' social conflicts on campus (be it the acceptance of a teacher/suspected cult leader, handling behavioural problems from troublemaking fraternities, and other "issues of the week").
The ever so perfect Kelly spends most of this season having insecurity issues about her looks, especially after she suffers second degree burns during a housefire (said housefire mangling another girl in the same room, but leaving Kelly's hair and makeup impeccably fabulous), during a frat party from hell.
This and other minor characters' misadventures in love and life comprise what made for a definite change from previous seasons, as this considerable run of 32 episodes made for bigger, larger than life storylines in the daytime soap drama vein, compared to tamer one-off plots of previous years. This continued onto later seasons, and may have contributed to the decline in the show's ratings as it ended its run 5 years later.
The most notable episode reviewed in this lenghty season, is Episode 16 entitled "Sentenced to Life", where constant party brat Steve Sanders (Ian Ziering) gets sentenced to community service as a result of his negligence in organizing a frat party in an unsafe house. Part of his community service is spent in a rest home, where he must look after an aging retired TV star (played by Mr. Television himself, Milton Berle). Where most shows would play this for star appeal, the episode allows Ziering to bring out very powerful facets of the Steve Sanders character the audience had never seen before.
Overall DVD Analysis of Berverly Hills, 90210 Fifth Season
As far as box sets go, this item is remarkably bare-bones. There's little to none of the exciting type of "where are they now?" interviews often seen on other TV series being released on DVD. Also, it appears much of the music originally heard on television was replaced by generic episodic music, which makes for awkward transitions, for fans who'd followed this show in its original airdate period.
The video quality of these episodes are questionable, as if the image quality transfer was incomplete. This may be due to inadequate original footage dating to late 90's, or just a technical shortcoming. Wh's to know.
Given its low-key presentation, and it's average video quality, this is only recommended for those who can't do without. Sadly, much more obscure shows have received much better quality rendering, for their own trip to the DVD shelf.
6 out of 10, for poor DVD transfer, yet provides hours of old schlocky fun
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