

Less good: when the girls mistakenly order “brains” at a French restaurant and basically barf on their plates.

The breakdown:ġ0% divine: Brenda and Donna’s summer in Paris during which Brenda absurdly masquerades as a French native to impress hunky American Rick (Dean Cain, looking real good). Season three is the last before the gang heads off to college, and it’s an odd one because 70% is nonsense (Brandon's gambling problem, ahem), but the other 30% is heaven-sent. Courtesy Everett Collection Season 3 (July 1992–May 1993) The gang graduates, including drunk Donna. I guess her real reward (or punishment) was that, after 206 episodes, her real father, 90210 creator Aaron Spelling, finally allows the character to lose her virginity to David in a blaze of candles and white lingerie. Her payment? Realizing her season-five attempted rapist is out on bail, then getting held hostage at the TV station by a new stalker. Kelly displays some alarming AIDS panic as a volunteer at a health clinic Brandon starts dating Tracy, an anchor at the campus TV station who has nothing to do but be a jealous nag and an hour is spent watching Donna trying to rescue a deer during a wildfire in the Hollywood Hills. The interior lives of the characters are replaced with outlandish scenarios, including Valerie Malone’s affair with married Kenny and a heinous arc during which she lies about being pregnant and tries to extort $100,000 for a fake abortion.

The gang starts their last year at California University, but a switch must have shorted somewhere because this shit goes off the rails.
