Jennie Garth Is Still Angry About That 90210 Wedding
Jennie Garth rewatched Brandon and Kelly call off their wedding and got angry all over again. In an October 16 episode of 90210MG, she put the complaint to Jason Priestley: why did Beverly Hills, 90210 take them that far, only to have them behave as though abandoning the ceremony was fine?
Priestley said marriage had been the overall plan. Then he left. It is a blunt answer to a question that Jennie Garth, and plenty of viewers, had invested rather more feeling in.
Priestley recalls an eighth season piling on comas and a surprise twin. Garth's grievance is smaller and more persuasive: the couple call off the wedding, then seem far too comfortable with what they have done.
We side with her. A breakup can be a good ending for a television romance, even one viewers have spent years rooting for. But the people involved ought to feel the loss. If a show takes its couple to the altar and sends them away smiling, it risks making the audience feel foolish for having cared.
The issue is not whether Brandon and Kelly deserved a marriage. It is whether their change of mind deserved more weight than another complication to keep the series going. A wedding closes some possibilities; cancelling it should close a few too.
Priestley's departure explains the practical problem. It cannot do the scenes' emotional work for them. You can understand why an actor wants to leave and still think a character was poorly served by the exit.
For a rewatch, go straight to the wedding at the end of season eight. You do not need to restart the entire series to revisit this argument. Watch the change of mind itself, then see whether Garth's complaint follows you into the aftermath.
Our objection is the ease of it. After all that waiting, the show owed its couple a decision that hurt, even if it was the right one.
