Part 4 of Season 2, Episode 28: Wedding Bell Blues - THE END (of this season and my rope) IS NIGH.

DON'T MISS OUT ON ALL THE FUN: rendezvous with parts 1, 2 and 3 here, here and here, then come back to get all up in part 4's business.  Also: THIS IS IT.  Season 2 will be in the rear view after this one, and I'll begin recapping Season 3 which will eventually conclude when I'm in my mid-50s.  Something fucking depressing to look forward to, I guess.

We pan down to the ceremony already in progress: the Pink Ladies in their delicious confectionery dresses; Jackie in her tragiqué bridal Don't; Mel and David and the Probably Degenerate Rando Groomsmen in their Dream Date Ken But Make It Blindingly White suits.

It's not too late to Runaway Bride-it, Jackie: away from that catastrophic headdress (which is clearly striving to be this but failing miserably); away from Mel and his deviousness and odd, wig-like hair here; away from the David-as-a-stepson of it all.  Alas.

Don't front, Kelly.  We all know the true meaning behind those tears of stepfather-induced terror.

Cut over to a shot of a squinty Dylan, plotting Jim's murder and/or his summer fling with his girlfriend's best friend which will alter the entire trajectory of the show and piss off an entire generation of girls and boys who will carry the anguish with them well, well into adulthood.  Or something.  Just me? Yes? Oh.

We arrive at Dorkmeister Z and her Six LeMeure-coded hat and maybe? okay? dress, alongside Brandon, smug-less, thank gawd, but with that fucking Conair barrel-curled piece of forelock jutting out over his forehead which really just gives me the shakes with a side of a suddenly bile-filled trachea.  Also, while we're here, we hear the minister drone on about Mel and Jackie and their "singular devotion that time and time again has been tested." Pardon the interruption, but when has all of this testing occurred? No doubt, it's about to get real, real bad, real, real quick for these two yutzes, but thus far, it's been pretty smooth-sailing, other than all of the fucking annoying ~wAcKy~ misunderstandings that could've been cleared up but quick if these cretinous supposed "adults" had just opened their goddamn yaps and communicated with each other rather than involving their high-school age children in their non-dramatic non-problems high jinks that took place in the "And Baby Makes Five" episode. 

Zoom in on a va-va-va-VOOM Brenda...

...and then out on WHAT DYLAN AND BRENDA ARE GETTING MARRIED I DIDN'T SEE THAT COMING WHAT A TWIST.  No.  It's just Brenda's dumb daydream.  But her veil will be joining Jackie's tulle-trained Turban From Hell and Cindy's pleated denim Hammer monstrosities on their World Domination Tour.

After a cue from the minister, Fantasy Brenda and this Fantasy Dreamboat exchange their "I do"s.

You know it's all a daydream, given this shot of a teary-eyed Jim as Dylan and Brenda pledge themselves to each other, because we're very well aware the only emotions ol' Jimbo here shows toward his daughter involve misogynistic RAGE and hypocritical fuckwittery...which isn't so much an emotion as it is an abhorrent personality trait, but, WHATEVER.  SUCK IT, JIM.

 

After the minister declares, "I now pronounce you husband and wife; you may kiss the bride!" we're back in "reality" (or my very pitiful version of it) and here comes some more of that bile I was talking about, although this time it's worked its way up and out of my mouth and all over my keyboard - sounds like someone needs to take their gag reflex in for a tune up!

Okay, this was funny/semi-dorkishly charming: everyone starts clapping for the newlyweds (after swallowing back their own ejecta, I assume) and then AHHHHHHNdrea goes to stand up, out of like, a goonish sense of joy for the couple or something, and Brandon sweetly reins her back down to her seat and who the fuck knows - it's the final recap of the last quarter of the last episode of the season and I'm feeling generous and also sleepy.

Wanted to include this shot of Baby Denise Richards and her AMAZING eyebrows.  We'll come back to her, because she will unfortunately have the supreme displeasure of being temporarily sucked into the vortex of Steve's ringletted mullet in a few short moments.

It's here that Jackie turns around to her guests and exclaims, "Let's party!" and we all know what Our Jackie means by that:

1) Fringed pubic mounds.

2) Fringed tit-tays.

3) Exceptionally strong cocktails, emphasis on cock, waka-waka.

4) Contributing to the delinquency of a minor, probably.

5) Backless pleather dresses from Brandie Melville's Cougar Collection. 

6) Runaway faux-pearl earrings, the twin of which wisely bounced earlier in the evening.

7) Plastic-bottled vodka handles.

8) Slept-in rock-star eye makeup that gives you that certain mottled grease-bag look, natch.

9) Waking up in a puddle of your own sick.

10) Heart-rending role-reversal with your despondent child.

11) Bedside spaceship launchpads.

12) And most importantly: the sweet Lady Caine.  I am so down.

Reception.  There's no turning back now, Jackie, you stupid slag.

On the sidelines: these two observe the festivities while Steve is dressed as the floor manager of a Dish Network call center, though I feel badly for both of the generationally-traumatized assholes after he tells her, "I bet it'll be nice to have a dad around." Thanks for bringing down the mood, Steve-O.  Especially when you consider the dad-that's-going-to-be-around in question is debauched Cream of Wheat in Doctor of Dental Surgery form, one Mel "Gross!" Silver.

Steve then goes all the way in on Jake, referring to him as "Joke" and YES STEVE WE ARE THE SAME REEEEEEEEAD HIM.  Then call the cops.  But of course I don't stay on the curly bastard's side of things for very long, because he squeamishly professes to Kelly that, "Seeing you [and Jake] together the other night made me realize something very important: we're not getting back together," and Captain Obvious phoned for you earlier, Steve, and guess what? He's going to bludgeon you to death because you are a complete nitwit and that angora goat pelt atop your head has undeniably breached your skull and meninges and blanketed your already-smooth brain in a downy coat.  Overlooking the absolute atrocity that was your mercifully brief reunion in "B.Y.O.B.," Kelly has rejected your advances time and time and time again, so, please; I beg of you: move on, and also please get a new wardrobe, personality, license plate, and zip code.  We'll all be better off.

In another dispatch from the Kelly Can't Catch a Fucking Break department (a recurring theme on this show until the END OF TIME) David appears from the hedge/shadows and asks her if she wants to dance, because feeling her pubescent-voiced stepbrother's partial erection against her upper-thigh is Kelly's idea of a good time.  But dance, they do - terribly, I can only fathom - as Steve zeroes in on:

RUN BABY DENISE RUUUUUUN.

These Hot Sluts.  They discuss Jim's suckage, which is perfectly encapsulated by:

This shot of him having a micro-conniption while hawk-eyeing Brenda and Dylan as they dance.  I urge this sad, sad man to: 1) get several hobbies; 2) find a competent therapist; and 3) pick up some extra shifts at the accounting factory, so that he can maybe, possibly, one day move on from his spooky fixation on his daughter's dating life.

Dylan recounts to Brenda his terrible tête-à-tête with Jim from earlier in the day, saying that, "Only one person's ever made me feel that bad.  He's in jail now," and as they embrace and Brenda stares off into the middle-distance over his shoulder, I determine that what Dylan's getting at is that, à la the McKay Patriarch, Jim should be imprisoned, a sentiment with which I wholeheartedly hard agree.

Back over to the freshly-minted Steps.  They talk about what a geek David fucking is and will be until the END OF MAN used to be.  Kelly calls him "kinda cool," and I long for about a season-and-a-half from now when David is hardcore addicted to meth for approximately four episodes.  It's the only time in the series I will care about him, and that's mostly because his descent into illegal drug dependency includes wearing a backwards proto-Kangol hat.

Though I would take hours of watching David do this - which, TBH, already has a starring role as my sleep paralysis demon on the reg - over this slab of predatory beef, come to How Jake Got His Groom Back all over Kelly and her psyche.
  

Rather than sticking around and protecting his new sister from this VERY OBVIOUSLY 35 YEAR OLD wedding-crashing chisel-chin, David bounces, leaving Kelly and Jake to have a conversation that has changed me on like, a cellular level.  To wit:

Jake: I realize that dropping outta your life is not gonna be that easy.

[Ed. note: Because you've already been indicted and the trial will be starting soon and Kelly along with several other teenaged girls will obviously be called as witnesses?] 

Jake: You're a very dangerous girl, Kelly.

[Ed. note: I couldn't bleed from my ears more if I tried.] 

Kelly: Why am I dangerous? 

Jake: 'Cause I don't think I should be feeling what I'm feeling.    

Kelly: I'm not a kid.

[Ed. note: YES YOU ARE.]

Jake: No...and you're not an adult, either.  You're very bright...you're extremely sexy, and I should probably be arrested for thinkin' what I'm thinkin' right now.  

[Ed. note: MEDIC.  Also: props?? to Jake for the self-awareness?? Green flag king.]

Kelly: Well, I won't call the cops.  I have a few fantasies of my own.  You tell me yours, I'll tell you mine.

[Ed. note: NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOoooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo.]

Jake: I'm not talkin' about fantasies.  I'm here, and I'm real.  And the truth is, you don't know anything about me.  

Kelly: I think I do.  

Jake: No, you know that I paint houses.  Beyond that, you have absolutely no idea what you're getting yourself into.

[Ed note: That last line was also burned on my brain at the age of 12.]  

Kelly: Well, I'm willing to take my chances.  

Jake: Brave girl.

[Ed. note: Pass me that pile of benzos, would you?]

And then this bullshit is allowed to happen...

...and much like Brenda and Dylan before them, they start, like, pre-fucking right there, in front of all of the High Society Reprobates of Beverly Hills.  And of course he's like, death gripping the back of her neck like a true rapist, and while I'm obviously not a fan of what happens in the forthcoming episodes, I cannot wait to Silkwood scrub-down my brain and memory and eyeballs of this soul-destroying grotesquerie.

If I had to accidentally pause it at this exact moment and see this, so do you.

That's not how this works, Jake.  And: WHAT A FUCKING UNCOMFORTABLE SCENE TO FILM.

Over in the buffet line, as Baby Denise Richards loads up her plate, Steve hits on Totally Early '90s Babe, who straight laughs in his Business in the Front and walks away.

He turns his luscious corkscrews toward Baby Denise and she proves to the world that she's truly always been an idiot.  And then they probably go pre-fuck on the dance floor in front of a bunch of the elderly, too.

LORD SMUGGINGTON HAS RETURNED.  I knew he couldn't stay away for too long.  Anyway, these two talk about, you know, whatever.  It's just more of AHHHHHHNdrea feeling sorry for herself and then Brandon reassuring/breadcrumbing her, and then AHHHHHHHHHNdrea doofusly falling for it and believing Brandon's Little Minnesota is within her reach, which in turn really gets his rocks off, and rinse, repeat, rinse, repeat, forever and ever and ever until time bends inward and then ceases to exist and we're all vaporized by the Texas-sized asteroid from the movie Armageddon.  The end. 

But before that, AHHHHHHHHNdrea asks him to dance and they burst into a thousand guffaws, because they both remember the last time Brandon danced:

Truly a cursed event.

Inside, the just-marrieds head upstairs to consummate their doomed union atop Jim and Cindy's sensible bedspread, but probably not before Mel decides now is a fantastic time to tell Jackie that he wants an open marriage, not unlike Shiv's saucy suggestion to Tom on their matrimonial eve on Succession.  But really, it's here that David gifts them with the pair of earrings he bought them to share (remember that? Yeah, me neither).  Snooze? Yes, definitely.

Fade to nighttime on the HoW.  Of course that's their limo.  Of course.  Perhaps the sign should footnote the dark-sided luggage that comes with this merger: wanton drug and alcohol abuse and serial philandering.  Ah, true love.

Out back, these two clichés have a Bad Boy Showdown, wherein Jake accuses Dylan of hitting the sauce (don't fret; it's a Coke) and Dylan bemoans the fact that all of the parental figures in his life are trash heaps and that he hopes to be a transient like Jake here someday and keeping interpersonal connections at bay.  He also warns Jake about fucking over Kelly and boooooring time to head on back to the pilot of your own show, Joke.  It'll only be a ten-minute ride on that penis-extension of a motorcycle that appears to make up about 85% of your personality.

Back inside.  Jim is being...a dumb bitch, I don't know.  I hate him.

Brenda does the Brenda Stomp into the room and pulls her father aside, dragging him to filth about having never seen Dylan so upset following his failed détente with Jim earlier in the day, and how the Walshes are Dylan's only family and if that's the case, it's a tremendously grim reality for Our Dylan, like, he may need to reevaluate his entire existence upon that proclamation, what, with all the incest cosplay and blatant sexism running unchecked in the sinister HoW.  Jim, cowed in the face of his daughter's fierce awesomeness and stunning dress, concedes, "Maybe I did overreact a bit." Eat so many dicks, Jim.  Brenda demands that he find Dylan, PRONTO, to makes amends and he scurries away to do just that because he knows Brenda is the true Boss Bitch of this entire operation.

Dylan, wearing Shaq's blazer, stands at the now-empty bar as Jim approaches and says, "I was just talking to Brenda; she was telling me how you're feeling.  And I was beginning to realize that maybe I'd been a little unfair.  I let my temper get the better of me.  I'm sorry for that.  You know how we all feel about ya, Dylan."

But it's too little, too late for ol' Sideburns McKay here, who seethes, "Thought I did.  Thought there was some special thing going on between me and your family, so I trusted you.  Like a father, man.  Not just with my money, but with my feelings." Jim curtly goes all in on the whole, "Well, that trust is a two-way street...imagine how we feel when..."

But Dylan cuts him off by SHRIEKING, "I know how you feel! But at least when my dad was pissed at me, he would hit me, I could look at the bruises and know they'd go away." And then:

I guess I had forgotten that one of my favorite lines of the series followed a horrible remembrance from Dylan about Jack's physical abuse.  Yikes.

In response, Jim serves up some CPA Cuntery by pursing his lips and shaking his head.  I'm trembling.

Dylan then reaches over the bar and grabs a giant bottle of whiskey because seriously, can you blame him? I mean, beyond the whole underage-alcoholic-binge-drinking of it all?  Jim's all, "Oh, that's it.  Now you need a drink, huh?" To deal with your ass? Yes, that's exactly what's needed.

Rather than beating Jim to death with the bottle and shitting in his mouth, Dylan HURLS it against the wall...

...then sticks a finger in Jim's face and simmers, "What I don't need is you tellin' me what to do...and another thing: I want your hands off my money.  You got that?" Jim's only response is to pant heavily as Dylan stalks off, which I refuse to capture in a screenshot because that's vile.

Out front, Mel and Jackie are pelted with rice as they trot to their tacky limo that's probably taking them to some depraved post-ceremony dentists-only orgy.

They stop at the car door to smooch and provide their guests with enough nausea fuel for the rest of the week.  Jackie's wearing...that.  The blazer? is very ice-capades/Frozen adjacent and this veil-turban (vurban?) is less robust than the previous one but just as heinous.

Jackie tosses the bouquet and AHHHHHHHNdrea throws her sopping wet blanket over the festivities and catches it.  Behind the crowd, you see Brandon diving into the backseat of a cab, ordering to be taken to the BHPD to file a restraining order.  Funny, though: I think AHHHHHHHHHHNdrea will be the next character to get married on the show, right? While sporting abominable hair alongside an even more abominable life partner.

Dylan wends his way through the celebrants...

...as Brenda's hot on his heels, asking, "Did he apologize?" about her pustule of a dad.  Dylan responds with two lines that have gutted me ever since hearing them 75 years ago: "It's my fault, all right? I just got too close to all of ya." *SOB* Poor Little Rich Boy! But really: it's pretty fucking bleak.  He tells her, "I won't make that mistake again," and then RUUUUUUUUUUUNS.

We get this random shot of Brandon and his furrowed brow and fallen forelock, watching all of the draaaaaaaamz go down.

Jim appears - panting, naturally - and tells Brenda, "Let him go...you are not to see him anymore!" Brenda commands Jim to tell her what happened, but Jim just, you guessed it! PANTS in response and it's really, really attractive and not at all disgustingly off-putting.

DOOM Synth Drums start up as we see Dylan sprint across the street and LEAP into the Speedster.

A crestfallen Brenda watches from the yard.

Dylan revs the engine and flips on the headlights...

...then peeeeeeeeeeels out and speeds down the street...hopefully plowing into Jim as he goes...then reverses back and forth over Jim's almost-lifeless body a few times...then peeeeeeeeeels out again...

...as we go back to Brenda, crying, shaking her head and serving up THE MOST DRAMATIC ENDING OF A SEASON EVERRRRRRRRRRRRR.  This was peak tv, y'all.  In my sad little suburban Denver bedroom, anyway.  And also in my non-sad little Los Angeles bedroom, honestly.

THUS ENDETH SEASON 2, dear god.  Over ten years in the making.  What a...colossal waste of life.  But if it's given any of you even a little bit of a chuckle, I'll take it as a "W." Until we meet again!