He was the only cast member who could look plausibly strung out. As Dylan, he was always authentically tortured, his expressive, film-noir eyes carrying the role even when the writers saddled him with trite lines in this episode, at least, they let his face do most of the acting. But Perry, who died this week at the age of fifty-two, somehow makes it work. It’s as absurd as it sounds-a dream sequence rooted in melodrama, its louche flourishes inspired by “Twin Peaks,” right down to Tori Spelling shimmying in a vinyl minidress. Then the dealer is back-he ties off Dylan’s arm and licks the spot where he’s about to plant the needle. “I’ve been with everybody in this room,” he says, laughing a vulgar laugh. His favorite pool hall becomes a Boschian hellscape, where he’s tormented by lust. I want to be Brenda, and I want to be your wife.” Later, he gets in the driver’s seat of his father’s car, where he’s blown up. At a mock wedding, his girlfriend’s voice drops several octaves as she professes to be his lost love, saying, “I am Brenda. In one dream sequence, he enjoys a chipper Thanksgiving dinner with his friends the Walshes, savoring their family’s stability so much that he believes he’s their blood relative, until serpents begin to swarm around the turkey and his dealer knocks at the door. Now, after the car wreck, he’s trapped in a coma that his doctors describe as “a battle for the boy’s soul.” The majority of the episode takes place in Dylan’s nightmares, where his drug dealer chases him, with a massive syringe, through the scenes of his greatest defeats. And a woman claiming to be an old family friend drained his trust fund and absconded to Brazil. He bought a gun on the black market and shot up his California craftsman bungalow in a drunken rage. His father, a white-collar felon, died in a fiery car-bomb explosion. Thus ensued Season 5’s “The Dreams of Dylan McKay,” one of the strangest episodes of the series-and one of Perry’s finest.ĭylan has seen plenty of hardship by this point in the show. Literally-he drove his Porsche off of a cliff. (For the record, he favored briefs.) To keep its edge, “90210” veered into more adult themes, with Perry, who played the show’s bad boy, taking the greatest swerve of all. Bush years had ceded to the bawdy Bill Clinton years the President was fielding questions about his underwear. Its characters had left high school, and the staid George H. By 1994, the show had thrown steamy love triangles into the mix, but the formula was wearing thin. BEVERLY HILLS 90210 FULLAt bottom, the show was always a venue for good-looking people kissing in nice clothes, but when it began its ten-year run, in 1990, it was geared toward a family audience, its plots full of teachable moments. One of the pleasures of “Beverly Hills, 90210” was trying to keep up with the predicaments of Dylan McKay, played by the late Luke Perry, as the show underwent its long mutation from teen drama to soap opera.
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