worldsnakreem

Boomers. That's what the parents of the 90210 kids were, the term a reference to the "baby boom" that ensued in the US in the wake of the end of World War II. Theirs was the era of the Summer of Love, protest marches, peace marches, hippies and afros and psychedelic bell-bottom jeans, tune in, turn on, drop out. Vietnam. Civil Rights. Kent State.

In reality of course, only a relatively small percentage of Baby Boomers did any of those things. While Jim Walsh had been opposed to the war in VietNam, and Iris McKay was a classic child of the upper-middle class whose embrace of sixties counterculture never quite loosened, for the most part, the 90210 parents were rooted pretty soundly in that "Silent Majority" segment of the Boom.

Without the parents, we wouldn't have the 90210 kids. Actually, that's not true. It would have been entirely possible to do the entire show without even so much as a parental walk-on, let the whole gang have invisible parents. Andrea had invisible parents, and only a very occasional sprinkling of grandmother, and I have yet to hear anyone complain that the development of the character suffered for it.

But the 90210 producers didn't just "show" the parents. The parents, with the subplots of their own lives, form an integral thread in the fabric of the story as a whole. Almost all of them are recurring-to-regular enough so that we get to know them, just as we get to know the kids. We follow their dramas and struggles, we love them, we hate them, we agree or disagree with their choices, their parenting, their clothes and hair.

The show is not just about Brandon and Brenda adjusting to life in Beverly Hills, not just about the coming of age of a group of high school pals. It's about families, and telling the parents' stories ensured that the show would also be for families, watched by families, discussed by families.

You can comb the annals of all television history, and nowhere will you find a more Mon and Dadder Mom and Dad than Jim and Cindy Walsh. James Eckhouse and Carol Potter are perfectly cast, and do such a superb job in their roles as Mom and Dad of twins Brenda and Brandon, that even if you lived through the sixties too, Jim and Cindy still seem like Mom and Dad.

And what a Mom and Dad they were! With a preternatural sense of when to back off and when to step up, they seemed to hit that ideal balance between too much rope and not enough, all the while gently imparting all those stolid middle class values of honesty and integrity and hard work and caring that seemed so quaint to those Beverly Hills chlidren of privilege and decadance.

Cindy and Jim maintained that sense of identity, of family, as they made their new home into their Real Home, bringing all that wholesome Walshness to the land of swimmin' pools and movie stars - and lavish mansions churning with tragedy and heartache, secrets and lies.

The rest of the gang are all children of divorce, with the exception of Donna, whose parents are miserable, and Andrea, whose parents are invisible.

Kelly's mother, Jackie is a beautiful ex-fashion model who eventually Reforms and emerges as a loving mother, but only after her struggle with substance abuse has eaten her daughter's childhood and self-esteem. Kelly's suffering is compounded by absent father Bill, who says he will and then doesn't, whatever the occasion. Bill is a mysterious fly-by-night businessman of some sort. It is never clear, at least to me, exactly what his business is, something about investments, but whatever it is, he eventually gets perp-walked out of Kelly's graduation party by the FBI.

Steve, the result of an affair between his father and a small town girl who dies before Steve is old enough to go look for her, was adopted as an infant by Samantha Sanders, a famous TV sitcom actress who in typical stereotypical Hollywood fashion, tries to show her love by lavishing him with gifts and luxuries since the demands of her career preclude her lavishing him with much of herself. Rush, another long-gone father of nebulous but apparently well-compensated occupation, sees Steve occasionally, and on those occasions invariably puts him down and makes him feel inadequate and incompetent. Rush, who is presented initially as Steve's adopted father, is later revealed to have actually purchased Steve and presented him to Samantha without revealing that Steve is his biological son. Or something.

David's mother has manic depressive disorder. Since his parent's divorce, he lives with his loving but bumbling father Mel Silver, noted dentist and serial philanderer. Mel eventually marries then splits, then reunites with Kelly's mother Jackie, to raise the daughter they produced early in the relationship. Sheila's illness causes her to hit bottom, but she is rescued by David and Mel. (showing us that he is basically a good man who just sucks at monogamy) David persuades her to get treatment, she recovers, and when the disease threatens David, Sheila rushes to his side and persuades him to seek treatment, as he had done for her.

Donna, the only one (with the exception of the Walsh twins) whose parents are still married and living together, is kept on a short leash by her mother Felice, the most unlikeable character in the show's voluminous dramatis personae. An almost cartoonish social climber, martinet and bigot, Felice is inexplicably and somewhat incongruously paired with, and unfaithful to, the long-suffering Dr John Martin, a noted cardiologist and loving and functional father. Why he stays with, or ever married Felice in the first place is never explained, and whatever the reason, he takes it to his tomb as he dies from a heart attack before the show ends.

Dylan's mother Iris is my personal favorite of all the parents. Classically and congenitally unsuited for parenthood, she at least loves Dylan enough not to attempt it, and spends her days finding her center at one ashram or another. Iris favors flowy white clothing and pronounces "erase" "e-raze." I love her. Dylan's father, noted white collar criminal Jack McKay, just couldn't live with her. But in all fairness, who could?

Andrea's parents are said to be married to each other and living together, but they are never seen. Perhaps to compensate for this, Andrea's Grandma Rose is played by two different actresses during the course of the show. Lainie Kazan was by far the best Grandma Rose. Not to bash Bess Meisler, who played the later Grandma Rose - it would be unfair to compare anybody to Lainie Kazan! Comparison would also be sort of non-applicable, because in one of the show's few dissonances and total continuity breakdowns, the two actresses were playing two completely different roles. The Grandma Rose we came to know and love in the very first season, played by Lainie Kazan, was loud, annoying and fabulous. But when we saw Grandma Rose again, she was not only played by a different actress, but by a different actress playing the part of a completely different person. Suddenly Grandma Rose was a sweet and kindly little old lady. It was, well, jarring. I'm sure there is a story behind that, maybe someone knows and can tell us - what happened to the real Grandma Rose?

Although technically not a parent, Peach Pit owner and operator Nat Bussichio was enough of one in all the ways that count that in the series finale, when Donna walks down the aisle to marry her David, it is on Nat's arm that she walks, Nat who gives her away. About the only time that Brandon ever got himself into any really serious trouble, it was Nat who saved him. And that was Brandon, who had the parents of all parents. For some of the kids, he was one of the few constants in lives where the people they should have been able to depend on most failed them, or simply weren't there. Nat was always there, always caring, always providing, in the Peach Pit, an emotional home that did not break.

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Note: I'm sure that the above contains all kinds of errors and omissions. For example, if Andrea's parents ever were visible and I just didn't see that episode or don't remember it, please set me straight. I am very conscious that I am in the company of major experts here, and I will appreciate your help!

Thanks to the Wizardry for allowing me the honor of starting this thread, and special thanks to Miss Ruby_Slippers for all her help and guidance.

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Now some Questions and a Call For Opinions!

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Here is a list of the parents and the actors who played them:

Jim Walsh - James Eckhouse
Cindy Walsh - Carol Potter

Jackie Taylor - Ann Gillespie
Bill Taylor - John Reilly

Mel Silver - Matthew Laurance
Sheila Silver - Caroline Lagerfelt

Samantha Sanders - Christine Belford
Rush Sanders - Jed Allan

Felice Martin - Katherine Cannon
John Martin - Michael Durrell

Iris McKay - Stephanie Beacham
Jack McKay - Josh Taylor

Nat Bussichio - Joe E. Tata

Rose Zuckerman - Lainie Kazan/Bess Meisler

KellAndSteve4Ever

Hey! I am so happy you made this thread! I've always thought the parents needed a thread! Ok now for my opinion...


Which of the parents do you like most? Least?

That is such a hard question. I think my favorite parent would have to be Cindy Walsh. She was a very reasonable mom and kept her husband in line. She would always try to help her kids when Jim was being unreasonable. Least, hmmm well I think Felice Martin takes the trophy here. Wy? Because of the way she treated Donna. I mean, especially throughout the whole prom drinking fiasco she was being very unreasonable.

Did you follow the stories of the parents as closely as those of the kids, or did you go get a sandwich during the parent dramas?

You know I'd have to say I went to get a sandwitcch during the parent parts, because they really weren't as important as the kids storylines. I guess I watched it a bit but no where near as much as the kids. A good example is "20 Year itch" Season one. I followed the Brenda/Brandon parts then the Cindy/Jim/whats his name triangle.

Did you watch the show alone, with your parents, with friends?

I watch it alone.

Which one of the characters do you think was most affected by the choices their parents made?

Oh Kelly definitly. I mean when we're first introduced to Jackie she is definitly no Cindy Walsh. She was a drinker, a heavy drinker. I mean in "Perfect Mom" Season One we see her having trouble at the mother daughter pagent, aside from the fact that she just broke up with someone she was an adict, period. Then in season 2 we see the Mel thing. I guess what I'm saying is the Jackie/Kelly relationship was one that was followed very closely on the show.

satisfy the crave

I'm not going to close this because I think this a great idea. So yeah...

Gah, I love the Walshes. Hehe!

playgroundDiaries

Actually, they were visible for one episode, "Scared Very Straight", S4. It's Andrea's wedding.
Really? I mean, I know they were like a Norman Rockwell painting, but you're taking into account all that aired in the 1950's and 60's too? And hey, what about the Cosbys, Keatons, and Bradys?

Heh. Well said. I love Nat. Somehow, he's become a reference point in pop culture for determining 'how into' 90210 you are. Countless times, I'll see something produced where if the person interviewed knows who Joe E. Tata is, they are verified as a fanatic. Of course, I'm always watching like , 'How the heck could any long-time viewer not know who Nat is? He even made the credits (paradoxically, at exactly the time his relevance faded).' But anyway ...

I, too, miss the 'loud, annoying, and fabulous' version of Grandma Rose. I don't know the story behind the switch, but the latter-day woman reminded me too much of Yoda. Quiet and timid, dispensing age-old wisdom to her relatives -- presumably, everything relating back to her having lived through the Holocaust.

Which of the parents do you like most? Least?

Mm. Well if you really want to be complete, I suppose Anthony Marchette/Bruno, Abby Malone, and Chancellor Arnold can be added to the list (I'm gonna forget Luann Pruitt and Noah's dad even existed, hehe). This only helps me answer the question slightly, however. Abby and Sheila would fall to the bottom two. I didn't know them that well and, if you think about it, we were never given a clear impression as to where their sense of humor lies. Of course, this can in part be attributed to the dreary contexts in which they appeared -- being depressed to the point of numbness and throwing off fits of angsty denial.

Not that I don't like to see denial on-screen, though. I, in fact, love it. And seriously, I loved all the parents. Steve's and Dylan's the best. I usually pick Jack McKay as my favorite, over Iris, cause we got to see him and feel his effects right up until the end, but ... no. Iris is just such a riot. She probably beats even him out by now. She also had more emotional range. When I imagine Dylan's POV in any scene with her, I have to smile. Especially in S5, of all times. "Yes, I think it's a very good sign. Though I'm not sure about the room number. We need to get you into a 4 ..." Dylan rolls over in his hospital bed, suddenly wishing he had died.

Did you follow the stories of the parents as closely as those of the kids, or did you go get a sandwich during the parent dramas?

No sandwiches for me. I was glued. The thing about the parents, especially, is that they are so well-defined. They're so ... Rush. So ... Felice. They say and do things that only their characters would, and that's a great thing. The main characters - the kids - grew up over time and, depending on the writing team, sometimes went backwards in development or started acting in ways not true to form. The parents were predictable, but still always entertaining because there was nothing lukewarm about the way their characters were drawn. And I'm sorry, but how is Cindy and Jackie reading, 'Mid-life: Now what?', not hilarious?



For those who watched the show originally as teens, when you watch it today, in reruns, do you feel that your perception of the parents has changed?

I started watching when I was 9 (during the original run), which is perhaps an age too early to judge. I felt sorry for Kelly having to take care of her drug-addled, self-abusing mother, but if she was ready to forgive her so was I. Likewise, I was every bit as wary and hopeful as Dylan was when Jack was released in S3. Today, I'm amazed I didn't see the car bomb coming, but that's about it. Oh, and that Suzanne would end up ripping him off (especially with the last name, Steele). Pulled the wool right over me.

Despite having a liberal father myself, I never criticized Jim's semi-conservative parenting skills, so there goes that as well. Uh ... no, I guess my impression hasn't changed, then. Which is funny, cause it does for the kids as I get older. This doesn't mean I thought the best of them, though. When Iris leaves Dylan again in S2, I didn't trust her official statement to her son; I knew she was copping out of motherhood. And what a mother Felice was not to appeal, but rather see Donna held back in school.

Did you watch the show alone, with your parents, with friends?

Ha! I'm totally gonna throw the curve, here. I didn't watch with any of my friends. They all hated the show (still do). I watched with my father (9 of the 10 years, cause then I had to go to College), and I got full reign to record every syndicated rerun for many, many years. He was saturated in the show and, though he claimed to have little respect for it, would always ask for a play-by-play if he missed an episode. I'd say his favorite characters were Steve and Valerie. No idea who he was a fan of couple-wise, but I need to ask. Anyway, I can still watch the show (now, always by myself) and remember what points he laughed at, etc. There were no 'afterschool special-esque' conversations following the episodes, though. Not like the media claims happened with everybody. And I was young, too ... My dad is also the reason I started watching. He heard about it's premiere, he told me about it, he put the pilot episode on. It's all his fault. All of it.

Which one of the characters do you think was most affected by the choices their parents made?

Dylan. There isn't a single aspect to his story/viewpoint/actions that can't be traced back to Jack McKay or Iris. I feel like people underestimate this greatly. But I may be biased in my selection, what with him being such a favorite character. No doubt, though, his parental context was "extraordinary".

worldsnakreem

Thanks! I thought so, too! Maybe because I am old..

And thanks to those who replied, and to any and/or all who actually read it all, and thanks again to the Wizardry for allowing me to make it.

It was a pretty long post, and I think I may have put my acknowledgements in a very light font color, but I did ask several days in advance and was most graciously granted, permission to make the thread.
I would really have liked to know a little more Jim and Cindy backstory. For the prominence of the roles, their characters were in some ways, the least "fleshed out."

I never really got a clear enough sense of who they were as people as opposed to parents - how did they get to where they were when we met them, how did they get to be the kind of people - and therefore parents - that they were.

At the beginning of the show it seemed like they might be making some attempt, the incident you mention with Cindy and the old boyfriend photographer, for example. But that whole story line ended up just being sort of dissonant to me, Cindy had not, at least to me, been established or developed much at all at that point, and what had been done just did not make the idea of her paired with a globe-trotting photographer - 20 years ago or now - believeable.

And whether it was intentional or not, Carol Potter played the whole thing as so totally entrenched in Cindy the Mom that the idea of her being tempted, or nostalgic, or the guy being so interested - none of it worked. Maybe it was a a lack of chemistry between her and the actor who played the photographer, I don't know. But I just never felt any of that sense of passion or temptation, and the idea of Cindy ever having thought of doing anything but marrying Jim and raising kids just seemed preposterous.

The closest thing we ever got to a glimpse into her youth was an admission that she had hitchhiked across her university campus, and I believe she did that just once.

I guess I just never felt that I knew who Cindy is, where she was coming from. She was the absolute all time Mommest Mom in all TV, but that is about all she was.

With Jim, they threw us a crumb or two, but not much else. We know that he was opposed to the US invasion of Southeast Asia, and "stood up to" his father, who was in favor of it.

And there was a reference to him having done some underage beer drinking, and if I am not mistaken, had written for his school paper, and there was some indication that he had renouned his writing ambitions in favor of being an accountant out of some sort of pragmatism, although the idea of a career writing for a local newspaper in Minnesota does not, at least in my mind, really compare to say, dreams of being a rock star in terms of a goal so improbable that one might feel the need to "have something to fall back on," so that never really made much sense to me.

They may have been the Mommest Mom and the Daddest Dad in all television, they may have set the example of ideal parenting of teens for a generation to a culture in transition, but ironically in a show for whom character development reached new heights, Jim and Cindy, separately and together, were a great big twofer one enigma.
I guess Jackie was the first of the "contrast and compare" parenthood dishes that was set before us. Kelly is the first of the kids that we see drawn to the Walshes, not just to her new friend Brenda, but to the family as a whole.

It was a good way, I think to mirror the whole thing of the Walshes watching this whole new world open up around them, they opened up a whole new world to all the kids - beginning with Kelly.

The Jackie story also served as a reflection of a very real phenomenon of the time - and not just in Beverly Hills: Baby boomers whose youthful fun with recreational drug use escalated to the level of abuse, and never simmered back down, even after they had grown up and had grown-up responsibilities. There were a lot of Kelly Taylors in that sense, a lot of Jackies.

Unlike Cindy Walsh, Jackie was not such a big enigma. We got a lot better sense of who she was, how she got there. Maybe I feel that way only because we know she had been a fashion model, and of course that evokes a world where drugs are not only available, but literally lying around on the table at parties, against the backdrop of grueling schedules and 18 hour days. So it was relatively easy to envision Jackie's story...

Aha! Thank You! Even as I hurled repeated accusations of invisibility at them, I had a feeling that not even once in ten years would be unlikely!
Yes. I am saying that Jim and Cindy were more Mom and Dadder than Jim and Margaret in Father Knows Best, Ward and June in Leave it to Beaver. Those two were their closest competition, those '80s parents you mention don't even come close!
You know, I debated how far to go with listing parents, technically, I guess, I should have done Marchette and Ben and Michelle Sosna since their kids actually married into of the original gang, thus making them original gangsters-in-law, but the post was already so long.

It's interesting though, that in some ways, I felt like we got to know Arnold Arnold better than we did some of the original gang parents, even learning how he had been a real geek in his youth, until taken on as a sort of project and molded by Clare's mother.

And we got to know more than we ever wanted to know about Abby Malone. That was one sick lady who should have been in a supervised and structured environment, and I was disappointed that with all her resourcefulness, Valerie never managed to understand that and make it happen.

Luann Pruitt was a piece of work! I wish we had gotten to see more of her. But then I wanted Christine the bus station skank to be a whole story line. If there was one thing the show needed, it was more "traditional" trash. Not that the Beverly Hills parents came up short in the trashy behavior department, on the contrary, precisely because they were so adept at it, I thought it was a missed opportunity to play that up, the rich trash vs poor trash contrast & compare thing. When we contemplate, for example, the Christine of 20 years hence, do we not find ourselves gazing at something that looks remarkably like Felice Martin?

And while I applauded the whole Ray Pruitt abuse storyline, and the good example set by Donna, I was disappointed because that meant that Ray would be out of the story, and I saw another good opportunity to examine how Ray and Kelly dealt with the same problem. I would have made the dorky ball player be the abuser and toss the whole heart defect thing, I didn't really see how that subplot did anything for the story besides provide Donna with yet another boyfriend to pack into that trunk.
If you mean when she "emancipated" Dylan, I saw that as the cessation, at long, long last, of an ongoing cop-out that had begun even before Dylan's birth!

Whether we agree with it or not, there is a very distinct societal/cultural belief that we all have "maternal instincts," and that once confronted with an actual baby, we will, unless we are of incorrigibly bad character and "selfish," step up to the plate and become all that mothers should be.

In reality, of course, this is not the case. Being a parent is the most important job in the world, and to be a good one requires a very specific set of aptitudes and personality traits, and while it is easy enough to say that no child deserves less than a good parent, having the courage to say "and I will never be one," walking that particular walk would not be easy for most young girls today, and in the time of Iris's youth, even harder.

It is against this backdrop that we have one of the story's primary Classic Morality Play Object Lessons as well as the primary key to the character of Iris McKay:

For all her "rebellion" and non-traditional "alternative" lifestyle choices, when it came to really "countering" the culture, it took her almost twenty years to get up the courage to do it!

When she finally emancipates Dylan, that is her own "coming of age."

Although among the all the parents, Iris was my hands-down favorite, I could never avoid wondering how much suffering could she have spared her son, if she had had been able to resist the understandable urge to cop out and instead had stepped up to her own plate of motherhood - by arranging to have a good home, complete with a good mother - waiting for him, even before he was born!

(And yes, I am assuming that since he was what? 15 or 16 in 1991, thus born post Roe v Wade, AND Iris had plenty of money, her decision to complete the pregnancy will have been based on a combination of the above-discussed cultural hogtie in combination with other beliefs, either religious or secular...)

playgroundDiaries

Now I'm even more curious about your age. Do you think you're the oldest 90210 fan?

What? We got more than that. Cindy's details don't paint her as someone who actively sought much freedom and independence from the role we typically see her in, but she definitely craved it. For one thing, we learn that she was offered the chance to study abroad in Paris her Junior year of college and turned the opportunity down in order to stay fully committed to Jim, whom she had just met. Like a lot of mothers I know today, she's knee deep in regret for things like that and finds her sense of purpose by inspiring her kids to do what she only intended. That's why she urges Brenda to go to Paris. When Cindy goes back to school in S4, I was (strange as it sounds) really proud of her. I don't know. There are a lot of things in S1 that look preposterous in retrospect, so her affair with that photographer just kinda camouflaged for me. But I wouldn't even call it that out of character by episode 8, given her frustrations in the first weeks we had known her. The problem is, there was no follow-up. In 40 minutes, all of Jim/Cindy's marital problems were resolved. Let's hear it for a season of self-contained episodes ...

And, Jim. A bit more than crumbs. Now you're making me feel like an amateur viewer cause I know there are examples here that I'm not remembering, but I feel like I learned an awful lot about Jim just by hearing him argue with Brandon -- especially when it came to the Peach Pit. Those episodes alone allowed me to understand his stance on capitalism, politics, and personal responsibility. Brandon, at one point, playfully asks his dad if "he inhaled", so I know Jim tried pot too. Oh, and he's a big Rolling Stones fan.

I would have loved to hear more backstory (and there is more than has been mentioned so far) on both of them, but never felt that shortchanged.
I think Marianne Moore, Sarah 'surfer betty', and Tiffany were meant to be the primers for this. I watched the show more from the outside-the-Walsh-house-looking-in perspective.

No doubt, meant to mirror the Steve/Claire relationship. I love that his first name was Arnold too! The Chancellor was a bit goofy and oh so lovable, I thought.
Pretty much. Considering that Felice literally told Donna to find someone rich to marry and support her since she'll never amount to anything otherwise.

Interesting. I think I'll always see it linked up that way now, though there's still a ton that can be said for her relationship with Jack playing its part.

And I know she abandoned Dylan long before, at age 6, but would it have killed her to simply stay in town? She didn't have to be a full-time mom, or even a part-time mom. Just a friend. Or there in theory, at least. That's all Dylan really wanted. I think she was just that afraid of failing.

worldsnakreem

LOL No, but somebody out there is. I wonder how old they are!

I think that you, and probably many other people, may have gotten more out of what we did get. And yes, I remember the opportunity to go to Paris thing, but that to me is just not that much bigger or more revealing of Cindy as an individual than hitching a ride across the campus.

Exactly. A lot of mothers. It is the kind of thing that is so predictable, so commonplace that it doesn't tell us anything.

Now here is where things can go either way. We can either see it, as I do as Oh Cindy is an enigma, they have given me nothing whatsoever to explain even who she is, much less how she came to be this normal and typical housewife who turns out to be neither normal nor typical, but the Gold Standard of Motherhood for a culture.

Or, we can say that therein lies the kernel (or at least a kernel on the cob) of the show's genius - and why it was certain to become as wildly popular as it did - because it was in essence saying to people, all those many, many mothers who made that sacrifice, regretted it, and went on to live vicariously through their children, all those normal typical housewives, that they were that Gold Standard, they were that perfecter-than-June-Cleaver Mom of Moms!

Now with Jim, I think it's a perfectly fair argument to use all those little snippets of his quality time with Brandon as a basis for a portrait of him, but as with Cindy, I think it is all going to have so much to do with cultural context, with what the viewer gets out of it. Soapnet ran an episode today that has what I would consider a good example of that, although it takes place not at the beginning of the show, but when the kids are seniors in college. Anyway, Brandon asks his dad what he thinks about the upcoming "handover" of Hong Kong to China. Jim replies that he is terrified.

Now you could argue that this was the producers just not wanting to get too much into any sort of discussion, and so they have Jim answer as focus groups and polls indicate that the majority of the show's viewers either would answer, or believe they should answer, if in fact they did not go get a sandwich whenever the subject came up on the evening news.

Or you could argue that that was just Jim. Being middle of the road, normal, typical, an accountant who believes in capitalism, a fan of the most popular band in the world for four decades, a product of his culture whose job may have called for him to be somewhat more informed than the average viewer (and it's a good thing, too, because I was pushing poor Jim very close to the plot of a popular horror novel whose title and author I can't think of right now!) but in all probability less informed when he was Brandon's age and took his famous anti-US policy stance, even disagreeing with his father in the process.

And the main thing that I got from THAT little snippet about Jim was that he had tried that business of thinking things through and taking unpopular stands and the road less travelled and did not like it very much, found it painful, and most importantly, not pragmatic, and was very careful never to do it again.

Which is about as common among Boomers as mothers who didn't go to Paris so they could pursue relationships and/or motherhood.

The streets are not exactly filled these days with gray-headed, calloused-footed old protestors, who haven't let up since '68

Most of the folks who marched in all those marches had become Jim Walsh long before the first 90210 episode aired!

Anyway, as someone who is no stranger to being told that I see far more in this or that character than was ever intended, or even crossed the mind of anybody actually connected with the show, I am fully aware that my Grand Enigma is someone else's sharply drawn and carefully nuanced personality!

In any event, I think that all us blind folks patting our elephant can agree that hearing what is under the fingers of our neighbor is the funnest part of having an elephant to pet!

Which is probably how we were all supposed to watch it, but my problem with looking in from the outside, as I said before, in some thread, just wasn't adding up. These people were just too paragonny to be typical, and the show was just too determinedly different to sink to such old chestnuts of TV show convention as having the main characters be paragons. So I kept hanging around after everybody had left, snooping around in drawers looking for the pod or whatever it was that contained the source of the Mystical Walsh Rays.

And I have yet to find it!

And I see her as being that sure of failing, and by the time Dylan was 6, she probably already had, even if only to have given it her best shot for 6 years and realizing that he was nearing the age of reason and therefore the age where she could really do some serious damage. I don't know how big a part Jack played in that particular aspect, I mean, I don't think that whoever Iris's babydaddy was, or if she even had a babydaddy, played a part in her own unmotherness.

Jack as a father is sort of another enigma in a way, aside from being a career criminal, what do we really know about him? Dylan mentions having happy memories of his father when he was around 6, but then I guess as the relationship between his parents began to unravel, that is where we would get the Jack McKay factor in the Iris and Baby Dylan story, yet that begins to bog down in typical-ness - what child will not remember the End of Happiness coinciding with the beginning of listening in to and understanding the Pre-Divorce fights?

Which brings us back to that impossible chicken-egg conundrum: Were the Walshes intended to be a mirror that just happened to have magical Photoshop powers? Or is there a pod hidden somewhere under Jim's neatly folded pocket squares?

playgroundDiaries

Except that she was commonplace and predictable. Which is a whole lot of something, relating to what you said here:

Those 'many mothers' still have that 'common' personality to be fleshed out on screen. Though, every comment that Cindy would make to her kids or husband that wasn't, "Dinner's ready", said something about her character, even if there was still, overall, great familiarity to her. More often than not, her dialogue was not so barren and action-driven as plain announcements like the one above. She had humor and, dare I say, even room for scorn. I guess my big enigma would be ... why was I never bored, if she was so recognizable?
I thought a few different things when I first heard that line.

1. This is their very minimal, feeble attempt to acknowledge Jim's post-S5 backstory, since the reminder that he had left Casa Walsh couldn't be more overt.

2. This was the writer's political opinion.

3. Jim is giving Brandon a flicker of hope that he might return to L.A., since Brandon's longing for a past love (Kelly) is somewhat on par with him missing his roots/family/past.

4. This is the writers giving us the impression that they might plant reasons ahead of time for why Jim is unhappy there so that if James Eckhouse is willing to return, even just for an episode or two, later, it will make more sense.

5. Jim's timid fear of his new environment is meant to mirror Brandon's timid fear of commitment in his new relationship with Tracy ... since this whole episode/section of S7 is drenched almost entirely in Brandon/Kelly pre-reunion angst.

Maybe there's really not an either/or, here, because even if I took your "focus group" theory (yet another reasonable option), it would still leave me with the impression that it is also just Jim-like to say that. I don't even have a choice. Jim said it. So it must be like Jim to say such things (barring any obvious out of character discrepancies, of course).

Well, see? That's something, even if it is in sync with Boomers. Why do they have to be so atypical? I think their job on the show was to be typical, as you've mentioned as well. I also think ... I'm not around enough Boomers for this to bother me/for me to find it to be an excess of cliche.
Yeah, I think I'm on my way to earning that badge as well ... The show's just a lot more interesting when you give the creative team the benefit of the doubt that they're being creative when they put material out there that, even if unintentional, connects so many dots to each other in a way that makes psychological sense in our non-fictional lives.
No, I definitely think we were supposed to watch from inside-the-Walsh-house-looking-out. After all, the twins were our protagonists. I identified with Brandon instead of Brenda, but only until the more interesting characters, as my opinion went at that time, were further drawn out. So, no, you watched according to intention, if you ask me.
See, now I can buy that as true. But what I meant by Jack's involvement was that he was willing to battle for custody of his son and ultimately offered Iris 6 million dollars to stay out of Dylan's life! That she didn't touch a penny of the money, but instead put it in a trust for her son, shows that she didn't actually value wealth more than she did Dylan. Now consider what a powerful and manipulative man Jack was, particularly back then. I ALWAYS got the sense that, while what we've said before may be true about Iris, she thought she had no real choice in the matter. Essentially, Jack threatened her in order to gain control. Dylan was the pawn. What she's so shaken up about when we meet her, aside from just the sheer fact of her broken relationship with her son existing, is that she didn't have the inner strength at the time to stand up to him [Jack]. "Had I been stronger ...", she even goes on to say in S2. Now, one could argue that she saw this 'deal' as the perfect opportunity to cop out of parenthood and place the blame on someone else's malice/vengefulness. But I tend to see Iris as someone who was once intimidated by Jack, gained her bearings post-divorce, and was ready for Round 2, so help her god ... After all, if what she really wanted was to be rid of Dylan, why on Earth would she show up immediately once his father was behind bars, and seek the role of 'mom' once again?

I'm not even gonna comment on Jack in this post, cause it would double in size.

There's a pod. Keep looking.

worldsnakreem

Well, you sort of hit on the crux of my dilemma, the primordial dissonance of the show: The premise is supposedly this typical family. And here we have these Xtreme Cage Match, weapons grade typical parents.

So far, so good. And they have what we have every reason to suppose are typical twins. So now we are going to take this family of typical people, and set them, oozing with normalcy, into an environment whose essential nature, every facet is AB-normal, and UN-typical, and watch hilarity ensue.

Kind of like the Beverly Hillbillies, except instead of a comedy about cartoon-quality hillbillies, it's going to be a ground-breaking nighttime serial drama about a typical middle class family dripping with all this middle class, Middle America middle of the road typicalness.

OK, sounds great. And we meet the family, and they appear, every one of them, to be as promised. Normal, typical. Middle. Everything that the people in their new environment are not. Here comes that hilarity now, it's fixin' to ensue all over the place.

Kewlness. I got my sandwich and I'm ready.

But then something happens. To begin with, the twins turn out to be not so typical. Not only do they gain the instant affection of the most popular and most Beverly Hills of their new school-mates, they almost seamlessly become part of that elite leader extracurricular activity class that all high schools have. I say almost because Andrea was skeptical of Brandon for about five minutes.

Academically, they are every parent's dream. Hardly typical.

It is as if, from the moment they set foot on the campus of West Beverly, the Mystical Walsh Rays engage and start zapping.

If that is not a pseudo-pasteurized processed Magical Realism-inspired food product enough for you, consider that as a plot device, it actually works. I gotcher pseudo-pasteurized processed Magical Realism right here! As the poor little rich children of Beverly Hills wicked city women are drawn like moths to the proverbial flame, like Paris Hilton to a stripper pole, to the Magically Realistic Casa Walsh, preferring that humble little bungalow, with those homely homespun typical middle class value-culture fruit cups served up by Cindy Walsh, Mom of All Moms, Typical Rose of Normalcy, Mother Lode of Mystical Walsh Rays.

And almost immediately, the Rays go to work, transforming those spoiled lives of decadent Entitlement and moral ennui into those irresistible basically Good Kids at hearts of typical gold, all they had needed to bring out the Hellmann's, bring out the best was a good dose of those Mystical Walsh Rays.

But, it is reasonable to ask, was that not the point? Was that not predictable, the thing that was supposed to happen, the principal Object Lesson of the Morality Play? That those wretched miserable livers of lives of shallow luxury would benefit and learn from those typical middle class family values?

Sure. But it happened so fast. I began to suspect something when, for example, there was no equally predictable initial fitting-in awkwardness, no sidelong glances and smirks at Brenda's typical middle class sense of style, no obligatory makeover, after which the popular girls sit up and take notice.

Instead, Brenda, after nothing more than typical teenaged girl agonizing over what to wear, single-handedly manages to achieve enough Beverly Hills designer style so that she is, from the beginning, "dressed like the other kids." It's the same with Brandon, of course, but Country Mouse getting the Makeover is such a TV convention for girls that its absence serves as a Sign that this is no ordinary TV show, and this typical TV family is anything but. This typical Mom and Dad have produced some very extraordinary teens.

Brenda is more ordinary than Brandon, but on her first day at school, when Kelly Taylor asks her if she is smart, Brenda replies "Yeah, sorta," And the reason Kelly is asking her this is because she has motioned Brenda to share a desk, in order to avoid sharing one with a plump girl.

And now I realize that I have written a book and still failed to express myself, and that I could write several books just on that one incident, that very first Kelly-Brenda encounter, and still not explain the significance, the hugeness of just how much is revealed in that one scene.

O playgroundDiaries, I wish I had your gift, of breaking it down into a neat numbered list, each one makes sense, each one is a groaning platter of food for thought, it's a tempting smorgasbord of insight that makes me wonder just what the per-post character limit of the forum is, even as I cringe at the very notion of how quickly I would find out, were I to succumb to the delicious urge to explore every one of those platters, first singly and then in every possible combination, and then see how it all tastes on a bed of that episode where the big company wants to build the mega-center where the Peach Pit is, and Jim's accounting firm is handling the deal - and it is with difficulty that I pull myself up sharply and set them aside in their very own text file. Another post.

And here you sound a really huge bell, one that tolls for us all, defying even the most advanced and modern of earplugs.

We cannot, no matter how hard we try, remove ourselves entirely from our own cultural context. Whether we try to watch from outside in, inside out, or omnisciently, we will inevitably be limited to some extent, not get some things, get others too much, I did tend toward inside to out, but I tried every way from Sunday, hopped around like a fluffy bunny on meth sometimes, because though I am a Boomer, the Walsh world was not mine, nor was Beverly Hills, and though I had, by the time the show aired, experienced a wide enough variety of life to have "been around" a variety of cultures, as one of those people who is equally out of place everywhere and therefore at home anywhere, my inside-out view was always going to have an element of outside-in!

And so to this day, I still hop, petting first one and then another part of the elephant, when I am lucky, a kindred spirit like you directs me to entire expanses I had, in my blindness, hopped right on past, and reminds me that it's a really good thing that the journey itself is the destination, because it is a damn big elephant in the first place, and in the second place, the elephant is Living With Continuous Expansion Syndrome.

Yes! This is why I see it as her own coming of age, coming into her own, finally getting up the cojones to counter that culture, counter Jack, and accept that although she was not, could not be a mother to Dylan, she could do what she could for him.

Just because she was never intended to be a mother doesn't mean she didn't love Dylan. She did. Although she was not strong enough to express that love as she should have at the beginning, and give him to someone who was a mother. So that was part of her growing up, accepting the responsibility for having caused Dylan to be in this awful parentless wasteland, she did what she could to make sure he had some money, and then, in her seminal coming of age moment, owned her unmotherhood and emancipated him, at the same time emancipating herself, not from Dylan, not from loving Dylan, but from those cultural expectations that had done so much damage to them both, and that included being manipulated and threatened by Jack.

And the music soars.

But it was, alas for Dylan, too little too late with regards to his own Jack-chains. He was haunted and damaged by Jack long after his emancipation, even as he slowly came to embrace what he and Iris could cobble together in the form of a loving relationship.

Iris may have been able to finally quit Jack, but Dylan never did, never could. He was even robbed of the luxury of eventual coming to grips with and closure of death, but doomed to live out the rest of his days knowing that Jack was alive, but forever separated from him, and this would be so no matter how much Jack might "change." He might grow into a wonderful person, fully able to love himself and his now-grown son, but Dylan would never get to have that.

And so the story ends with a Dylan who would live out his days with an unhealable wound that would inevitably shadow whatever happiness he might wrest from life. Should there be a 2070 reunion show, Dylan the great-grandfather patriarch would be just as tragic a figure as that teen jamesdeanic Dylan who so incongruously befriended Brandon the new boy on that sunny SoCal schoolday...

worldsnakreem

You know, just after I have been lavishing all this praise on Jim & Cindy, SoapNet ran a few episodes this weekend that reminded me that there was one time where Jim, especially, messed up big time in the parenting department.

When Brenda wanted to go to Baja with Dylan, Jim told her she couldn't, then finally relented, but when Brenda fell asleep watching Grapes of Wrath with Dylan and missed her curfew, Jim has a most uncharacteristic meltdown, goes way overboard, and tops it off by telling her she can't go to Baja after all.

Brenda, naturally pulls the old "sleepover at girlfriend's" caper and goes to Baja anyway, and Dylan messes up by not making sure she has ID. Now for people who live in SoCal, driving down to Baja is hardly "running off to a foreign country," as Jim puts it at one point, but it is just common sense that you don't even go to another state without some kind of ID. And one would think that even if Brenda is somehow too clueless to know this, Dylan would, but I digress.

Anyway, Jim has got a bad case of mylittlegirlsgrowingupitis, and this is one time where Cindy can't keep him in line, though she doesn't really try very hard, she feels sorry for him, I think, and he just gets like a bulldog with a bone and won't let it go, even when it is clear that he is losing his little girl way more to his own behavior than to either boyfriend or calendar, and everything wrong he can do, he does, and then some.

The result is that Brenda never really nestles back in to the family bosom. Oh, she comes back from Paris, she does her senior year, but the minute that London opportunity opens up, she is so outta there. And outta there she stays. And I mean even beyond the obvious constraints of Shannen Doherty's leaving the show.

Never, not in all the ensuing years, is there so much as a reference to Brenda having come home to visit, most of the mentions of any communication with her are from one of the other kids, and frankly, enough years pass so that it would not be completely unthinkable to re-cast another actress as Brenda. And I think that is only partly due to the extremely high identification of Shannen with the role, otherwise I think there would have been at least a couple of visits, certainly more calls and cards and later, email.

So Jim the perfect father, when he fell from his pedestal and messed up, he messed up big time, and the lesson of that particular act of our Morality Play is obvious: hold on to what you love too tight, and you squish it.

KellAndSteve4Ever

You know Jim was a very protective father and it's really hard to say he didn't have a right to be overprotective of his daughter. Dylan''s father was in prision and Jimbo didn't really like the idea of Brenda going out with him. Untill the end if season 2 Jimbo seemed ok but after Brenda and Dylan ran off to Baja together he lashed out on Dylan. Then, the begining of season 3, after Brenda moved into Dylan's house Jim threatened Dylan with money. Now the only reason Jimbo did that is because when he looked at Dylan he saw Jack, he never took a breath and saw how different Dylan was from his father. The only tine he did that was AFTER Dylan and Brenda broke up.

Ruby_Slippers

worldsnakreem , it seems like you've got an interesting conversation going. The parents are certainly an interesting topic.

KellAndSteve4Ever

awww I love that picture!

playgroundDiaries

So much to read and post on ... Must break for food. It is interesting, though.

Damn, that's a good picture of Jim and Cindy. Leave it to Jim to look so serious with a sweater still tied around his shoulders.

worldsnakreem

I would probably not think of it as a "right" to be overprotective. Protective, certainly, but for the most part, he maintained a good, even admirable balance, though you bring up that other big-time Jimbo imperfection, and one that Cindy, to her credit, did try to reason him out of, and did let him know in no uncertain terms that such notions were unacceptable, but by the time we get to Baja I think Brandon nails it when he tells them both that their real problem is not really about Dylan.

And he had, in the meantime, managed to overcome that ridiculousness about Dylan's guilt by association or criminal blood or however he saw it, and done so sufficiently to make this effectively orphaned kid feel like part of the family, and allowed him to unwisely, it turned out, latch onto Jim as some kind of pseudo-Jack, which complicated the situation.

In fairness, smarter people than Jim have developed that amnesia that seems to hit people around the time their kids hit adolescence, when they forget their own youth.

He could have, I guess, attempted to "forbid" her to have anything to do with Dylan from the get-go, but apparently his amnesia did not totally kick in until the Baja/curfew incidents, when I think it hit him - and hard - that from then on, if it were not Dylan, it would be somebody.

And that realization, it turned out, was the one parenting hurdle that tumbled Jim...

On edit - Wow, Miss Ruby, I think that is prettier than I have ever seen Carol Potter look! And yes, I think the parents are as fascinating, in their way, as the kids, and playgroudDiaries, I have NOT forgotten about that Endangered Peachpit episode, I have a lot to say about it, and in fact, I was thinking about it even in connection with this, I got so mad at Brenda's "dad right or wrong" attitude