Beverly Hills 90210: The Ninth Season

You'd think by the ninth season of a prime time soap that was starting to look a little long in the tooth that things would start to get, well, boring. Not the case for the ninth season of Fox's long-running Beverly Hills 90210.

In the ninth season, the kids had left high school years before and were essentially now twentysomethings with grown-up problems. In fact, besides addiction, romantic ups and downs and even the rape of a beloved character, this is definitely no longer your high school soap!

There was also a lot of cast changes in the ninth season. Just as longtime regular Jason Priestly was finally leaving his role as good-guy Brandon Walsh (a role he'd played since the pilot!), Luke Perry was returning to the fancy Beverly Hills zipcode as bad-boy Dylan McKay. While the Kelly-Dylan tension would pop up when he returned, Dylan would first hook up with new girl Gina (daytime soap's popular Vanessa Marcil), who just happened to be the cousin of no-longer-a-virgin Donna Martin (Tori Spelling). On the periphery, David (Brian Austin Green) and Steve (Ian Ziering) were both dating around with Steve dating Janet (Lindsay Price), who he would marry and have a baby with. (See? Told ya they had grown up!)

Overall, the show actually gets a boost from the return of Perry who still knows how to give those smoldering looks but with a dependency problem, there's plenty of drama that will keep you from missing Priestly much. And, with new cast addition Daniel Cosgrove as good-guy lawyer Matt, there's still plenty of eye candy to be had if that's your cup of tea.

In the ninth season DVD, there are no extras to speak of but if the new CW incarnation isn't your cup of tea, then this edition of the 90210 series is for you.