Mais Oui! Cervelle De Veau!

In the later (crappier) seasons of Beverly Hills, 90210, much effort went into selling one gigantic lie: that Tori Spelling was a gifted comedienne.

In fact, Spelling's character, Donna, went through several phases over the course of the season. Very early on, reference was made to Donna's sexually liberated attitude -- an attitude she shed in the show's second season, when she informed her new boyfriend David (Brian Austin Green) that she intended to remain a virgin until marriage. For most of the first two seasons, if Donna had a line, it was so she could say something dumb (GUM ISN'T FOOD, DONNA) -- until, that is, the episode when she was revealed to be a stock-picking phenom, who used her newly discovered gift as a cudgel against Steve (Ian Ziering) and Kelly (Jennie Garth), ordering them never to call her stupid again. (We can probably safely assume that Donna's virginity was Spelling's father's note, and that the evolution of her character into a financial genius came from Tori herself.)

The attempt to turn Donna into our generation's Lucy Ricardo was probably a natural evolution of what anyone can observe watching Spelling onscreen: she's gangly, and goofy, and as long as Spelling is constitutionally incapable of selling a crying scene, producers might as well try to harness her natural awkwardness into physical comedy. I would say -- kindly -- that this effort mostly didn't work for me. But today's second SOAPnet rerun featured my single favourite Donna moment from the series as a whole, and yes, that includes the time Ray (Jamie Walters) threw her down some stairs.

We're in the third episode of the show's third season. Kelly has just bailed on a planned six-week French immersion course in Paris so that she can spend the summer bonding with her newborn sister Erin -- and, pretty soon, fighting and ultimately relenting to the simmering sexual tension between herself and Dylan (Luke Perry); Dylan is still technically with Brenda (Shannen Doherty), but since Brenda has recently clashed with her parents over her sneaking around with him against their wishes, they have punished her by...sending her to Paris in Kelly's place.

So in this episode, Brenda and Donna have arrived in the City of Lights, spent a day touristing around, and wound up in a fancy restaurant, where the all-French menu has challenged their limited knowledge of the language. Finding "cervelle de veau," Brenda looks up the last word in her pocket dictionary and determines that it's veal, so both girls order it. But when it arrives, it seems kind of weird and chewy. Curiously, Brenda looks up "cervelle," and when she shares her findings with Donna, Spelling responds with -- and I mean this with 100% sincerity -- perfect comic timing.

I'm so glad I got my esteemed colleague David T. Cole to GIF this moment so that I can treasure it forever.