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 1 of Season 3, Episode 2: The Twins, the Trustee and the Very Big Trip - A better title would be An Exhaustive Analysis of Why Every Man on This Show Should be Caged

They're all deeply unwell.  Let's dive in and point and laugh at them.

We begin here: inside David's camera view (filthy), panning through a hospital window into a nursery where a nurse is doing nurse-like things with soon-to-be nursing babies.  Nurse.  And then David's Voice Over starts up and ruins everything, as always: "There were hundreds of babies born in Los Angeles County two days ago.  Black babies, white babies, big babies, and small babies.  But only one baby so special that she'll go through life with the name..."

...and then an RN who's just trying to do her goddamn job - i.e. take care of the progeny of the wealthy and disrespectful - blocks David's shot of Baby [a 32-year-old SPOILER ALERT for anyone who cares, which is no one] Erin in her bassinet and he whines, "Damn it lady, get outta there!" something he's most likely heard Mel shout in their home many, many times, at various dental hygienists in the wee morning hours, probably following an evening of scaling and root planing their vaginas.

Cut to Kelly, David and David's predatory video camera standing at the window.  He bitches, "I gotta do it one more time!" and Kelly reminds him that the baby will be home the next day and that, "At this point, the only way anybody can tell it's a girl is because they wrap it in a pink blanket." She fails to add that he's a fucking plague upon film-making in general and the world specifically.

The latter of which he proves by, in the tradition of true pig-slop deviants everywhere, smirking and saying, "I got news for you, Kel.  That's not the only way they can tell it's a girl." THAT'S YOUR SISTER YOU SWINE.  I guess it's just in keeping with the interbred overtones this show loves to spotlight, and the depravity of the City of Beverly Hills on the whole.

Walsh, House of.

In the Lair, standing at a mirror, Jim straightens his tie and puts the finishing touches on his daily sartorial tribute to one Gordon Gekko; Cindy musses with her hair and wishes she were dead because guess what her clinically insane husband is going on about at 7 a.m.: "What we've got here is a manipulative little girl who is spoiled rotten to the core!"  As someone who also suffers from obsessive compulsive disorder, I implore Jim to seek out some sort of weekly behavioral therapy sessions and maybe a hero's dose worth of daily Zoloft and Buspirone.  Before Cowardly Lion-ing herself out of the French doors and over the balcony's edge, Cindy speaks the gospel: "I can't listen to this anymore!"

So will Jim, most certainly the Treasurer and Co-VP of the Beverly Hills Men's Rights Activists' Association, take heed and calm the fuck down and maybe listen to his wife for once? OF COURSE NOT.  Take it away, Jim!: "Honey, I don't blame you!  If anything, I blame myself.  All those years, she was 'Daddy's little bunnyfish.'  Whatever Brenda wanted, Brenda got.  Kisses and hugs.  No questions asked.  No wonder she has no respect for parental authority.  She's out of control, OUT OF CONTROL!!!!" I'd say the person currently shrieking "OUT OF CONTROL" in his wife's face is, perhaps, the only one "out of control" here, and also, this is a man who is undeniably emotionally ill-equipped to continue whatever high-powered CPA job he currently holds and his employer should be alerted immediately.

But unfortunately, Cindy believes that trying to reason with a brick wall works: "She is in perfect control! And she has been ever since you decided to go to war with Dylan McKay.  Stomping around the house, threatening to use the full extent of the law, that's not gonna bring our family back together again!" Preach, lady.

Jim, however, CONSUMED with thoughts of his daughter's segggs-ual relations, can only reply with, "I just can't sit back and do nothing, knowing that she's shacked up with that guy." Cindy, who has far more patience than I, asks, "What do you propose we do about it? Lock her in a chastity belt, keep her in her room until we're ready to become grandparents?" Jim responds, "For starters." James Eckhouse seems like a likable person so he almost sold that line and made me laugh with his delivery there.  Anyway, they're going to give the stalemate a few more days to see how it shakes out and I'm sure Cindy is looking forward to at least a few more mental collapses and spittle-drenched tirades from Jim in the meantime.

Part 4 of Season 3, Episode 1: Misery Loves Company - Want to cry along with me each and every time Shannen Doherty appears on-screen? LET'S GO.

Part Un.

Part Deux.

Part Trois.

Back at it.

Inside, in a real move-the-needle moment, Steve busses and Brandon chides him about missing a spot.  I'd seriously rather spend the evening with The Zuck and her non-entity of a boyf than have to endure much more of this brainless rich-dunderhead-works-at-restaurant / is-a-total-failure / morally-superior-friend-has-the-last-laugh absurdity.

Worthless Nat emerges from the kitchen carrying approximately all the eggs.  He calls out to Steve to help him in the backroom, and we're about to slip into some Imbecile Breaks Eggs Waka Waka Comedy (truly the lowest form of comedy) so buckle up.

Brandon scolds, "You better hurry, Stevie.  Don't want to tick off the boss man." Steve spouts off some delusions about Nat loving him: "This is working out great!" I'm sure his barber also said, "This is working out great!" as he spun Steve's salon chair around after putting the finishing touches on the in-hibernation frillback pigeon slumbering on the back of his cranium, so I don't know how much stock I'd put into his words here.

As Steve scurries back to the kitchen, he puts Brandon in a non-fatal chokehold and the gang just laughs and laughs while also dying on the insides at having to feign delight at the low-rent clownery of two mega-chodes.

Nat apparates table-side as if from nowhere, and scares the ever-loving shit out of me, not unlike something something Steve's hair something something every time that sun-bleached steel wool bastard appears on screen something.  He asks to speak to Brandon in private...

...and then takes him two feet away to sit at the counter.  Worthless Nat: a true Virtuoso of Subterfuge.  He tells Brandon that he's going to fire Steve, GASP, saying, "I don't know how to break it to him."

Brandon, nothing but a simpering, skeevy snake with a good head of hair, smirks and fires up the ol' gaslight: "Maybe you should just tell him the truth.  I'm sure he can take it." Nat ponders, "I can't even figure out why he wants this job.  It's not like he needs the money.  It's like he's got something to prove, ya know?" I hope when all is said and done, Nat finds out everything and goes all Laney Boggs StyleZ, "Am I bet? Am I a BET?? AM I FUCKING BET????"  And then beats Brandon to near-death with his fucking precious spatula, the handle of which is currently lodged in Steve's pubes.

Whatever whatever, Brandon seems to feel a bit of remorse and tells Nat to give Steve another chance and then there's clinging and clanging and crashing from the kitchen and, in the grand tradition of the iconic Chandler Bing, someone should really ask Steve on the daily, "How do you not fall down more?"

Nat hurries back to hopefully kick half-witted Steve's half-witted perm as Brandon chortles and ambles back to the table, asking everyone, "Omelets, anyone?" My sides? Decidedly not splitting.