Again With This: Dawson's, Melrose, 90210

After weeks of vacillation between pushing Kelly away and letting her hook him again with her youthful feminine wiles, Jake finally decides to cut things off with her definitively. Because it's a soap, this happens not with an honest conversation and/or appeal to the criminal code, but through moderate subterfuge Kelly might just be too inexperienced to see through. When Michael has to punk out on...

Dr. and Mrs. Martin are, under some pressure from Donna, trying to integrate Gina into their lives -- which, in the immediate future, means their Christmas festivities. Of course she's invited to the family celebration on Christmas Day, but though Donna is hot for Gina to come to the Martins' big Christmas Eve party, her parents are still worried about how they'd introduce Gina to all their boring...

We're so early in the run of Melrose Place that the Mancinis are having the kind of banal problems that any married couple might have: are they past the romance phase of their relationship? Can they survive the challenges of Michael's busy schedule as a doctor and an apartment building manager? Can he really have forgotten the moment he knew he was in love with Jane? As a counterpoint to how thing...

Donna has managed to avoid telling Gina the truth about her biological parentage for days -- weeks longer than any dumb baby should be expected to -- and finally finds a quiet moment to get Gina alone and spill it. Gina is, of course, horrified; she tells Donna she hates her; tells David she wants to be alone; then tells Dylan she doesn't want to be alone. Dylan is in her room when David comes by,...

Beverly Hills, 90210's back door opens onto Melrose Place, a hip apartment complex occupied by a demographically diverse group of cool twentysomethings with gritty problems of the sort the West Beverly High gang could scarcely imagine. Jake tries his best to get rid of Kelly by telling her not that "dating" her would be a literal crime, but that he's stressed about where his next job is coming fro...

Jackie and Mel's relationship seems to be over for realsies this time, and even though our main cast are all well into their twenties, almost all of them are affected. Matt is representing Jackie in the separation and custody proceedings, so he has Kelly in his ear trying to make sure Erin is shielded, as much as possible, from the fallout. Her general bad mood also has her bristling against her n...

Everyone's in...kind of a bad mood. Kelly's pissed off that Mel's interest in exotic dancers has broken up his relationship with her mother, again, and blames Noah for putting strange breasts in Mel's eyeline. Dylan's annoyed that Andrew from the community center keeps bugging him to volunteer no matter how much money Dylan throws at him to shut him up; his attitude doesn't really improve when he...

Faith has been part of Janet's upbringing, and she wants to continue the tradition with her own future child. A laudable notion, except that she and Steve have decided their child's godparents should be Dylan and Kelly, and don't withdraw the offer even after Kelly and Dylan pretty much openly act like they think the whole idea is dumb. Still, they do agree to go to Ojai to see Steve and Janet's f...

A convicted murderer is on his last appeal -- and apparently his legal fund is down to its last dollar, because he's hired Matt to represent him and get his death sentence overturned. Kelly is very supportive of Matt's efforts of behalf of his client until she finds out the man also raped his victim before killing her, whereupon she starts taking it personally, which she was already primed to do b...

Now that Janet's finally accepted Steve's proposal, it's time for them to tackle the matter they've been putting off: telling their parents all their news. The Sosnas are even less thrilled about Steve than they were before he knocked up their daughter; Rush is only marginally happier about it, though his acceptance comes with a lot of casual racism. Things come to a head at the couple's engagemen...

Janet's "no" on Steve's shotgun marriage proposal apparently was not the last word on the matter. The guys (minus Matt) rally around Steve to try to workshop a proposal Janet will accept, while the ladies (minus Gina) urge Janet to change her mind. In the process, though, Matt reveals that he is kind of dubious about the whole institution these days, and Kelly is a bitch about it in multiple conve...

Since Now Wear This has been closed ever since that homicide Kelly inconsiderately committed in it, the time has come for a big, splashy grand reopening -- which, due to reasons we never learn, Donna and Kelly have not decided to peg to the launch of Donna's menswear line. But never mind: "the buyers" from "New York" are coming four days early, so Donna's going to have to sew like she's never sewn...

Steve has noticed that Janet's busting out of her bodices while also spending less time with him, and jumps to the conclusion that she's acquired some breast implants in anticipation of dumping his ass. Eventually she gets sufficiently annoyed with his hostility to admit that she's pregnant...whereupon Steve disappoints both Kelly's expectations and ours by acting like a real dick about it. It's a...

Time for the payoff of the Season 9 finale cliffhanger: yes, some of the bullets Kelly shot actually ended up in Joe, and he is dead. Everyone springs into action: Matt starts defending Kelly against possible homicide charges; Dylan starts getting defensive, somehow, about his choice to give Kelly an unlicensed, unregistered firearm that went on to be used to kill someone; and Steve and Janet star...

Kelly continues pushing down her anger and fear following her sexual assault, though it apparently helps her cope to keep the gun Dylan gave her in her purse. (And let's face it: if a mishap took out a Peach Pit After Dark patron, would it really be the worst thing?) At least Dylan and Matt are managing not to hold their pissing contests about which of them is better qualified to help her through...

A remarkable photo in the Beat draws the attention of the Chronicle's art critic. And since Steve is the photographer in question, he leans into his new status as an artist to impress Janet, ending up with more grass in his teeth than good shots on his film. Donna continues dithering between her lingering feelings of love (or obligation, depending on your perspective) for Noah and her burning lust...

As the Beverly Beat's mandate strays further and further from journalism, it seems Steve has stumbled upon a lucrative revenue stream: The Love Fisher, a computer program that matches singles with ruthless efficiency. First Janet gets curious about how much better the Love Fisher is at picking dudes for her than she is at picking them for herself; then it's Steve's turn to find out what kind of la...

It's April 1999, so Steve has finally gotten around to knowing what the Y2K bug and spectacularly overreacting with his doomsday prepping. Is this a healthy response to a possible technological meltdown or, as Janet suspects, a pretext for putting off planning for their future together? Recovering sex addict Katie decides she wants to take her relationship with David to the next level after fourte...

One of the most convoluted plotlines of the season encompasses the following: a legitimate chance encounter between Dylan and Kelly; the idiotic decision by Kelly, on the phone with Matt when Dylan rolls up, not just to say, "Oh hey, I just ran into Dylan!" and instead to say she's on her way to run errands; a tweaker trying to rob a pregnant woman in broad daylight at fucking Bristol Farms by tak...

A routine visit to her parents' house leaves Donna on the receiving end of a shocking announcement that, now that she's firmly in her mid-twenties, they feel certain she is strong enough to hear: they're getting a divorce. Like the rest of us, Donna is pretty sure it's Felice's fault, since she's been a nasty rag the entire time we've known her. But when Donna's attempts to pull a holy Parent Trap...

Last time, Noah's inability to fill the club was pushing him toward financial ruination, but now everything's fine, and he and Dylan are working together amicably to promote an upcoming show by fictional artist Cole Younger with a raffle to win a date with him -- in his hotel room, creepily? Anyway, Dylan's first act as manager of the Peach Pit After Dark is to fix the raffle and award the date to...

Since Kelly's extremely awkward relationship with Matt isn't taking up much of her time, she can seek fulfillment in other areas of her life -- like the store! Suddenly remembering that she's supposed to be in charge of business affairs, she gets the idea of hiring a publicist. Donna gets upset at the idea, nervous that taking any steps to push the business past "good" or fine" will lead to a leve...

Gina having learned that Felice is legally responsible for the theft of all her trust fund money, she takes the completely reasonable next step of pursuing legal action to recover the lost principal -- and Donna, who absolutely thought Gina should sue her trustee back when she thought the trustee was her bank, now takes it personally. (Present yet silent through all of this is Bobbi, the one who a...

The Durnings having decided they'd prefer Lauren to be schizophrenia symptom-free in the short term than alive in the long term, they're going to ill-conceived lengths to try to track down clozapine without a prescription. Kelly, veteran of the Clinic Clinic, thinks she can help solve their problem with an illicit trip south of the border, and who better to bankroll the scheme and act as her bodyg...

You may thing that "Beheading St. Valentine" will save you from any further angst in your relationship. Not in the zip! All the established couples start out cozy with a brunch at the Walsh house at which the reunited Durnings are holding forth about their marriage -- until Kelly shows up with a sleeping bag for Steve and makes everyone feel awkward because, you know, she obviously wasn't invited....