Goodnight, You Queens Of Tight Chokers, You Princes Of Gel

Since its debut in the fall of 1990, Beverly Hills, 90210 has never not been available on TV in this country — first, of course, on Fox, its original home, but then also in syndication. Most recently, the home of the original Bev Niner has been SOAPnet, a cable network originally established to air daytime soaps in primetime, I guess for people who never figured out how to program their VCRs. But in our era of video on demand and DVRs so easy to program that even children and the elderly can do it, the practical need for SOAPnet to exist has expired, and after (a) trying to air its own original programming (both homegrown reality shows and soapy series imported from other markets, like Canada), and (b) threatening to shut it down and replace it with a kids' channel for literally years, Disney, the network's owner, is winding down SOAPnet at the end of this month. And so even though — of course — I own the first five seasons of Beverly Hills, 90210 (yes, five; despite my hardline stance against the show post-Brenda, somehow I acquired the first Val year?), the end of SOAPnet means the end of the convenience of getting to watch two back-to-back episodes at my desk each weekday. Truly, it's the end of an era...until Oxygen or We figures its shit out and snatches the show up, which they should, because how expensive can the rights to a show this old even be? I'll chip in for $20!

But hope alone won't make it happen, and so, it's time to say goodbye.

Goodbye, Andrea. Though you finally found "love" with Jesse, we all knew you really should have had your Some Kind Of Wonderful ending with Brandon, and maybe you would have if not for your portrayer's pregnancy, because lord knows the show couldn't have possibly allowed its golden boy to get a girl pregnant out of wedlock! Every time I see a hideous bolero embellished with contrast rickrack, I'll think of you.

Goodbye, Steve. I think what made you most remarkable is how, despite your life's many setbacks, you never learned — not only with regard to your wardrobe and hair (though both of those were always extremely unfortunate), but in terms of staying out of trouble Helen Keller could have seen coming. ...Oh, sorry, Steve: Helen Keller was a woman who— you know what, ask Brandon.

David, goodbye. I always liked watching you dance, and I feel that, in our current Year Of The Meth Drama, too few people give you credit for having been on the cutting edge of meth culture way before it was cool. I'm sorry that your voice never changed, but even so, you're so precious to me — to us all.

Goodbye to Lucinda Nicholson. Maybe you gave feminism a bad name for pairing it with a brand of sexual experimentation that, in the end, basically boiled down to hitting on on other women's boyfriends, but at least you helped get the word "feminism" onto TV, which still hardly even happens today. I hope someone's getting you off, wherever you are. And if it's Clare — which your very last scene on the show implied might have occurred — so much the better.

Goodbye, Donna. When you finally, belatedly, decided to give up your virginity, I hope you did it without regret that you once had a chance at D'Shawn Hardell and blew it, proving your judgment and priorities were just as screwed up as your boobs. And in case we don't talk before then: happy birthday/merry Christmas.

Goodbye, John Sears. I've hated other TV rapists since I met you, but it's never been as satisfying as it was to hate you.

Farewell, Kelly. I liked you so much more at the start of the series — when you were the kind of bitch who condescended to everyone, including Cindy Walsh — as opposed to the baby-voiced saint you became at the end. And if you never figured out what to do with the Warholesque portraits of yourself that used to hang in your bedroom, I would happily take them off your hands.

Jim and Cindy, goodbye to you both. I hope that, in time, you came to realize that your children did not turn out to be so different from one another as you thought, in the sense that they were, at bottom, a couple of selfish, insensitive jerks. Jim: you probably should have been as hard on Brandon as you were on Brenda, though then again, maybe if you had, he also would have left home as a teenager and literally never come back. And frankly, you should have had more concerns about her lack of a work ethic than you were about her pants. Cindy: you were TV's perfect mom until Tami Taylor came along, which is quite a feather in your cap, and by cap, I mean high-waisted khaki walking shorts.

Goodbye, Dylan. You gave me a lot of weird ideas about guys that, I think, I did eventually outgrow. Even though I can't see you, I know that, by now, you must have grown into your wrinkly forehead.

Goodbye to you, Brandon. Since I saw you last, what are the ways in which you've failed to empathize with the problems of people who are different from you? Who is now on the receiving end of your braying lectures? How big is your watch? You made a whole generation of boys understand how much they could get away with if they just had pretty eyes. How many boy banders are really your fault?

Brenda, goodbye, and of course I miss you most of all. You said you wouldn't be gone forever, and that turned out to be true, technically: you did come back, in time for Kelly's sister to start attending West Beverly herself. But when you went to England to study drama, you changed everyone you left behind, including me: you took a piece of me with you and I was never the same. Many would try, but no one ever occupied the bitch slot in the zip code you left as well as you did, probably because they all did it with a knowing wink, whereas your molten rage always felt as real and as scary as a real volcano's eruption. You were pure emotion, devoid of moderation or reason. You knew you were right whether you were breaking into an animal-testing lab or screwing up a playwright's show production by turning it into a farce. You made everyone dance to your tune. In my heart, I am dancing still — dancing like no one's watching me, just as, right now, no one is watching you.

Goodbye to the gang. I'm pouring a 40 of Megaburger sauce out for all of you.