Part 4 of Season 3, Episode 7: A Song of Myself - Things are going great. Except that they're not. So let's discuss 1992 teen soap opera dramzzz while the world burns.

Missed Part 1? Well, here you go.  Bypassed Part 2 because you've been a little too preoccupied re: the fall of democracy? Same; totally understandable; and you can catch up here whenever you need a moment of reprieve from coordinating next steps after the insurrection has been declared.  Sidestepped Part 3? Lucky! Because it was a big fat snooze, but if you must: have at it.  And now, onward to Part 4.

Another day? The same day? Who knows.

Steve descends the stairs...

...and spots this scene playing out below: three cartoonish goons tossing Herbert's briefcase back and forth as he stands helplessly in the middle of them, trying in vain to get it back.  One of the goons? Oh, just Tony Miller.  You know: the blood-thirsty, anabolic steroid-abusing menace from last season, who will NON-SPOILER escort Brenda to the prom at the end of this season and NO ONE - not her brother, none of her friends, zero - will have a problem with it, like, good luck, Bren! Hope he doesn't throw you up against a wall in a juiced-up fit of rage.

But that's a rant for another time.  Steve shakes his head and approaches, miraculously coming to Herbert's sort of? rescue?

After he asks, "What's goin' on?" Tony smirks and tosses the briefcase his way, calling their bullying merely "a little healthy hazing." You know a fraternity currently on academic restriction hates to see this guy coming next fall.

Steve catches the case and hands it back to Herbert...

...and the three 32-year-old men post up and shoot Steve their nearest approximation of "mean-mugging" as Tony demands, "What's your problem, Sanders?" Maybe it's the fact that you've violently thrown him up against a chain link fence within the last seven months? Just a thought.

Steve informs these clods, "You can pick on all the freshmen you want, just not my freshmen, okay?" How...nice? But also, poor Herbert, being claimed by Steve "Continental Cut" Sanders in such a way.

After Herbert thanks Steve followed with a "sir," the meatheads chortle in their brain-dead way, and then they're off, probably to go score some rohypnol for their ruckus Friday evenings ahead.  Brenda's a lucky, lucky lady.

Steve turns back to Herbert and scolds, "You really are a nerd, aren't you? Don't call me 'sir'."

But Herbert gives it right back: "Fine.  As long as you don't call me 'Hubert'."

A laughing Steve takes that to mean that he can inappropriately grab Herbert around the upper torso and lead him away and all of these people need to take a crash course in personal space and physical boundaries.

Part 3 of Season 3, Episode 7: A Song of Myself - Brandon has zero lines in this one! YAY. Gil has far too many and they're all TRASH, just like his blotchy beard and floppy hair and I hate him so, so hard. BOO.

I'm tired and sad and maybe the teensiest bit hopeful? We'll see how long that last one holds out.  In other news: another week, another Gil-involved scene in which to channel my feminine rage.

Nighttime at the Peach Pit.

Inside, Steve and the golden mold spores cascading down his neck unpack a box of 45s that contain some of the worst music you'll ever lay your ears upon, i.e. some David "Funky but Decidedly not Fresh" Silver Originals.  David asks the obvious for humans living in 1992 and beyond: "Who plays 45s anymore?"

Steve takes offense to David daring to question his non-genius and nongenuity (rim shot?), picks up the cursed box and walks it over to the juke: "Get with the program, David.  I'm gonna put these in jukeboxes.  I'm gonna have this puppy playing in every diner in town."  Los Angeles should've declared an immediate state of emergency after that terroristic threat was uttered.

What follows is nefarious on a few levels: David asks Steve not to play the record at the Pit, because Donna thinks she's the first person to ever have the displeasure of hearing it, and Nikki thinks she's the first person to ever have the displeasure of hearing it, and he doesn't want high jinks or cat fights to ensue if either of them were ever to discover the truth.

Ian Ziering gets a great line delivery here with, "You told me I was the first person who heard the song."

But the baseness continues as David frets about coming clean to Donna about his summer atrocity with Nikki, and Steve, one of Donna's oldest friends and a completely disloyal pig-man, insists that David doesn't have to tell Donna anything; that Nikki only wants to break David and Donna up so that she can have that DJ DS dong all to herself; and that what David should actually do is keep Nikki as a "little side dish." What a terrible day for me to have the ability to hear things because: what a massive pile.

 

David further agonizes about his fear that Nikki will tell Donna herself: "Ya know, the two of them have gotten pretty tight"...in three days...or five days...or whatever the hell timeline this episode has portrayed.

Despite Steve's above rhetoric, Mr. Ziering manages to make me laugh again with the following: "Let me tell you three words of advice that have always worked for me: deny, deny, deny."

Part 2 of Season 3, Episode 7: A Song of Myself - Andrea wears a great dress! And has a spine! And tells Brandon to go fuck himself! And Steve's mullet for sure has its own pretty substantial gravitational pull!

Let's not mince words: things are bad.  So for a few minutes, reminisce and laugh and take a load off with the following ridiculousness.  But first: if you haven't yet, here's Part 1 for your reading pleasure. 

Kicky Drums play us back to school the next day.

At a tree, a young girl has been cornered by a 43-year-old man who has apparently wandered onto campus to strike fear and loathing in the hearts of all females and anyone with fashion sense and a good head of hair in the school.  The girl has the telltale stiff smile all women learn to plaster across their face when confronted with some unfuckable weirdo who wants to suck the life-force out of them with flirting-disguised-as-inane banter, as Steve demonstrates here: "Well, if you ever need a ride home, I've got a 'Vette." Just say you have a micro penis and move along, dude.

Herbert! - who, unbeknownst to him, is now this poor girl's lord and savior - jogs toward them, calling out, "Excuse me, Steve!" in a very friendly manner that Steve absolutely does not deserve.

Steve tells his hostage, "This'll just take a minute"...

...then walks toward Herbert with a grimace on his face, calls him by the wrong name again and demands, "Make it quick." Herbert wants to know the location of the computer lab; Steve gives it to him as if he knows where anything involving education or learning is, and for cruel measure, adds, "Just follow the dweeb droppings."

Also: LOOK AT THE SIZE OF THAT MULLET.  That thing resides in a separate zip code and stars in its own show called Beverly Hills, 90211.  The tail end of it enters a room a good 5 minutes after the front of it does.  That thing is a wholly hostile entity hellbent on toppling societies and overthrowing governments.

It also clearly scared the bejesus out of the girl Steve was victimizing after she caught a glimpse of it from behind because when he turns back around from speaking with Herbert, she's vamoosed, probably into the welcoming arms of the Witness Protection Program and a safehouse where Steve nor his hair can't hurt her ever again.

Part 1 of Season 3, Episode 7: A Song of Myself - SEPTEMBER HATH RISEN, IRL and in this very episode. Also: yet another Terrible Man© has been unleashed to torment the females and add to my ever-present and all-consuming agita.

Noted philosopher Scheana Shay once declared, "It's all happening." And indeed it is: it's senior year! We're headed into a stretch of episodes that altered my genetic code in fundamental and irreversible ways.  As much as I can get excited these days - which is to say: hardly at all - I'm excited.  Away we go.

FUCKING FINALLY, we're back at West Bev.

As Horn-and-Cowbell-Heavy Synth plays, we pan down from the tip-tops of the palm trees to an empty courtyard...

...which gradually fills up with students...

...and then I'm sadly reminded that this is the episode where we're introduced to the only person to ever rival Brandon in terms of Smarm Douchery: Gil Meyers.  Pity.

The camera lands here with Brenda, Dylan and Brandon.  Brenda looks TREMENDOUS in a shorts suit-type look.

Brandon, all unnecessarily swaggery WHAT'S NEW, asks, "Am I the only person that missed this place?" and then launches into The Hymn of Brandon, He Who Works at a Diner Ten Hours a Week MAX Toils in a Coal Mine: "All I know is that for the last three years, I've been workin' and studying my butt off.  This year, somethin's gotta give.  I gotta have some fun." He walks off and I pluck my eyeballs out of their sockets and roll them on the floor because rolling them inside of my skull isn't enough.

Brenda and Dylan stay behind; he says, "I thought that's what we been doin'?" and then proceeds to eat her face off.  Please stop.

These two.  VISIONS in white.  Donna's baseball-stitch dress is one of my all-time favorites, and her giant, Suzanne Sugarbaker hair here is the stuff of my dreams, I love it so much.

Donna queries, in reference to Brenda/Dylan, "How long do you think those two can really last?" Kelly, a giant bitch when she really has no place to be one, snoots, "I don't know, I'm not an astrologer, Donna." Donna adds that some people end up marrying their high school sweethearts, and then the familiar nasal of her high school sweetheart who she's SPOILER dismally going to marry in about seven years' time pierces through the air via the P.A. system: "Good morning, West Beverly.  This is your conscience speaking"...

Part 4 of Season 3, Episode 6: Castles in the Sand - Pour one out for summer episodes; the Beverly Hills Beach Club; Worthless Henry; and the time in your life before you heard David Silver whisper-sing the words "I love to touch."

(Before devouring Part 4, catch all the way up with Part 1; Part 2; and Part 3.)

Just as within the show, in real life, I'm done with summer.  It's been one of the worst I've known, for myriad reasons, and I'm ready to turn the page...mostly away from the weather season itself but also away from recapping these things and being subjected to seeing Steve in minimal-coverage attire.  So let's take one last look at the final Summer Episode of Beverly Hills, 90210.  EVER.  We'll miss you, Worthless Henry.  Promise you'll write.

We come up on the clambake of the CENTURY underway: some randoms mill about; others wait in a line for food.

Over to a table where Kelly, David and Donna sit (Donna wearing one of her All Time Bests©), eating...

...and then joining them at the next one over are Jim, Cindy, Jackie, and Mel - who really went out of his way to not dress up for the occasion, and let me be the first to advise him that no one is eager to catch a glimpse of your Degree-greased pit hair while consuming shellfish, bud - with the camera finally panning alllll the way over and up to...

...Henry.  On the phone.  Griping to some manager-type about the absentee musician he hired to play the Red Lobster-sponsored Seafood Fest at the Club.  Remember? Because Steve bought some guy off or bribed him or threatened him with the wrath of his mullet? Me, neither - I had to go back to something I wrote literally one week ago to jog my memory.

He walks up to another area of this positively sprawling deck, continuing to rant at the person on the other end of the line: "Look, I want a combo.  I don't want some guy from Pennsylvania playing some accordion." You're telling me that in alllll of Los Angeles - the entertainment capital of THE WORLD, Tinseltown herself, where you can't throw a $25 Erewhon smoothie without hitting a fame-hungry artiste who's clamoring to be onstage, any stage - only a squeeze-box playing Pennsylvanian is available as a last-minute replacement? Once again, it's just a tv show, you say? And I should be caged while I await further psychological evaluation? Roger that.

It's here that we find out the BHBC apparently doesn't have any "Employees Only" zones or locked doors or security, because Steve just appears as if from nowhere (or from the 75% off end of summer blowout clearance sale at the Beverly Connection Structure, given the blight he's changed into) as Henry shouts into the phone, "Well, just get some people over here now, okay?!" and then tries and fails to hang up the call with any amount of intimidation, seeing as it's a cordless and pressing a tiny, rubber button doesn't really have the same effect as slamming down the receiver of a regular phone.  Ah, the '90s.

Henry turns around and doesn't immediately call the cops about Steve's overt trespassing; no, rather, he confides in him: "Can you believe these guys stiffed me?"

Steve, in turn, smarms, "What can I say, Henry? There're a lot of flakes in this business."

Henry, please no: "Can your guy really sing?"

The answer to that is a resounding NO NOT AT ALL, but unfortunately, the synth tsk-tsk-tsk of "Be Be Be My Love" or whatever the fuck starts up, so we know how this turns out.  But first, oh, brother, Steve lowers his shades and rhetorically queries, "Can he sing?"

Part 3 of Season 3, Episode 6: Castles in the Sand - The satisfaction you'll feel at the end of this one far outweighs the mundanity (sand castle psychosis), the deceit (get all the way bent, Dylan and Kelly), and the stupidity (Steve cosplaying Jim while wearing a clown's wig on the back of his neck) that come with it.

In case you need to catch up on your summer reading: Part 1 is here; Part 2, right here.

Garbage Person Brooke's reign of ethnocentrism comes to a merciful conclusion, meaning our only remaining threat is the napping LaPerm cat that has annexed Steve's head as its bunk.  These perils, they are unceasing.

Oh god.  Poor Henry.  Back at the Beach Club, Steve and the outfit he pilfered from Jim's closet have velcro-ed themselves to Henry's side.  Henry's just trying to prep for the clambake, Steve!...

...by moving this potted plant from here...

...to here, two feet away.  Leave him be! He's probably picking up all of Brandon's slack, while Brandon hangs out with an awful girl with awful hair who undermined Henry's very existence and profession just a few short minutes ago.

He definitely doesn't have time for Steve's nonsense: "Look, SAUNders [and yes, he said it just like that because he can't be bothered to learn the correct pronunciation of this doofus's name], I don't have time for all this Hollywood jabber." Amen, though, as previously discussed, Steve's about twenty-seven degrees separated from even the lowest dregs of Hollywood anything, so no need to be so generous.  Obviously Steve is pestering Henry to have David play the closing? ceremonies? of the Beach Club season? later that night, and promises, "If you let David play...I promise I'll stay out of your face forever." Is this all it takes?!? Sign me up!

Henry reminds him, "I told you, I already hired a band for tonight," but Steve, a piece of shit, demands, "So fire them." The more I think about it, the more I believe Steve and Brooke are each other's true, rancid soulmates.

Henry's an actual decent human being, so he tells Steve that's he's not going to fire the band, "They've got a signed contract," and Steve, someone who's read The Art of the Deal one too many times and thinks it's a piece of non-fiction that was "penned" by someone who isn't a complete bankrupting failure in real estate, casino ownership, the presidency, and life in general, insists, "In this business, contract's are meant to be broken."

Henry is my best friend forever because he slings an arm around Steve's neck - don't get it caught in that thick, dense bramble back there, Hen! - and advises, "I guess that's why I never went into this business, babe."

As Wacky Keyboard Plinks start up, Henry gets the fuck away from Steve post haste, as one does, and I'm sad that this is our last episode with Henry.  I know he's Worthless Nat's Worthless Summer Proxy, but, much like Nat, he often serves as a nice reprieve from all the dramzzzzz.  They should've somehow kept him on the show to expand the Peach Pit with Nat (for some? fucking reason?) or to open up a a new sporting goods store in the area.