Beverly Hills, 90210 - Season 1, Episode 10

"No one thought to bring beer, so
I made this delicious fruit
punch."

"B.Y.OB."
Original airdate: 1/10/1991

Episode summary: Brenda and Brandon have a house party while their parents are out of town, and Brandon gets arrested for driving while schnockered.

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Recap: West Beverly High. Donna's parents have left for a vacation in Cabo San Lucas, and there's going to be a "blow-out" party at her house that evening. Donna, Kelly, and Brenda agree that it will be strictly A-list. Brenda spots Dylan at his locker and goes over to invite him to be her party date, but he's already made plans to surf in Baja all weekend. Plus, he hates parties. However, he does promise to be completely at her disposal next weekend.

Brandon's bedroom. Brandon is lying in bed, tossing around his basketball and looking bored. Brenda really really wants him to go with her to Donna's party, but he's not interested. She reminds him that he's been complaining about being in a rut, and finally pesters him into submission.


The Walsh's master bedroom. Jim is excited about the luxury hotel he and Cindy will be staying at during a corporate retreat in Palm Springs next weekend. They get a bit amorous with each other, but stop when Brenda and Brandon suddenly appear in the doorway. Jim tells the kids about their upcoming trip and asks them if they would be disappointed if he and their mother left them alone for an entire weekend. What would you assume, Jim? Brenda shares a smirky, knowing look with Brandon, and I'm sure we can guess where the party's going to be next weekend.


Donna's house. The exterior of the Martin abode is different than the one used in future episodes, and this one doesn't look nearly as mansiony or luxurious. The festivities are full swing when Brenda and Brandon arrive. I don't know what awful thing Brenda did to her hair, but she's wearing it in a strange looking, upswept 'do that does not flatter. Steve is behind the bar, making margaritas with a blender, and that's what all the partygoers seem to be drinking. I'm surprised there's no beer. Steve hands Brandon a drink, but he turns it down and asks for a coke instead. Steve looks slightly bemused, but then offers to make him a virgin margarita instead. Also sitting at the bar is Donna, who vapidly tells her friends that they can take whatever they want from the stocked bar since her parents will never notice. I find it funny when rich kids are overly generous with stuff they didn't work for, or have to pay for themselves.


Some random guy, who appears to be Donna's date, complains to Steve that the non-alcohol drinking Brandon is a "major buzz crusher". Insecure much, Random Guy? What do you care if Brandon drinks or not? Steve, who is rarely burdened with good judgement, uses this complaint as an incentive to spike Brandon's drink with a dose of hard liquor.


Across the room, Brandon is picking at a vegetable plate and notices a girl staring at him appreciatively. He smiles back, but doesn't make a move. Steve walks over to him and hands him his spiked margarita. Brandon compliments him on the drink, clearly unaware that it has alcohol in it.


A bunch of the kids start slow-dancing and Brenda looks lonely as she surveys the room. Through the windows she spots Brandon standing on the terrace by himself and goes outside to talk to him. She tells him that a girl named Feena Ferris has been eying him. I'll assume Feena was the ogler from the previous scene. Brandon isn't really flattered by that, and remarks that Feena has been eying lots of people. He's pretty bored by the party and checks his watch, telling Brenda that he wants to leave in half an hour. She agrees, but in the meantime urges him to loosen up. Perhaps another of Steve's "virgin" margaritas might do the trick..?


Inside, Kelly looks drunk, and Brenda sort of does too. Steve brings over another pitcher of margaritas, and Brandon asks if it's the stuff from his virgin batch. Steve smirks, and then he and Random Guy burst out laughing. The jig is up. Brandon now realizes that his drink was spiked, and he gets angry and tells Brenda he wants to leave. Steve apologizes, insisting that he only wanted Brandon to have some fun. Donna and Kelly also urge him to stay. Random Guy, however, wants Brandon to leave because of his preference for non-alcoholic beverages...which is somehow ruining the party for him. The mood is tense and the rest of the partygoers look on nervously. Will Brandon stay and enjoy another spiked margarita...or will he continue his major buzz crushing? He decides to...STAY! And just to show that he's now completely cool with having alcohol in his margarita, he downs his drink in one gulp. Hurray - the party can continue! Steve happily declares Brandon a Party Animal!


Brenda looks lonely again as she wanders around. She's surprised when she notices Kelly and Steve going upstairs to find a room in which they can doink. Brandon is dancing with Feena, and his awkward lack of rhythm is no doubt the reason he eventually becomes very self-conscious about people watching him boogie. As well he should...he's funny looking on the dance floor.


Brenda and Brandon drive home, raving about how much fun they had at the party. Brandon jokes that Mama Walsh will probably be sitting in the living room, pretending to read when she's really waiting up for them. Sure enough, when they enter the house, there she is with a gigantic book in her lap. Brandon immediately heads upstairs, while Brenda kisses her mother goodnight and unwittingly gives her a noseful of her liquor laden breath. Cindy immediately goes into high alert and hustles upstairs to wake Jim and tell him about her suspicions. She wants to have a talk with Brenda right away, but sleepy Jim says they'll talk about it in the morning, and promptly nods off.


The Walsh kitchen. The next morning, Jim and Cindy have dressed themselves in matching sweaters for their confrontation with Brenda about her drinking. Brenda tells them she only had one sip of someone else's margarita. Oh Brenda, only liars who get caught red-handed with something claim that it belonged to "someone else". Jim is shocked that alcohol was available at the party, and Brenda snarks to her parents that they're making a big deal out of nothing. Cindy argues that it is a big deal, and then Brenda snappishly retorts, "Fine. Point made. Sorry." God she's a prickly troll.


Brandon enters the kitchen after Brenda has stomped off. Jim gets on Brandon's case about Brenda's drinking, and reminds him that they're going to be on their own next weekend. He's counting on Brandon to hold down the fort and keep tabs on his boozy sister. After they leave, Brenda's standing in the kitchen doorway, glaring at Brandon. He looks suitably shamefaced and concedes to Brenda that he owes her one for not blowing the whistle on his drunkenness.


Days later, Jim and Cindy are about to leave for their boondoggle to Palm Springs. Mama Walsh goes over all of the emergency numbers with the kids and reminds them to follow the rules. Her naivete is adorable.


West Beverly High. Kelly, Donna, and Brenda are walking together when Steve passes Kelly and orders her to call him. Kelly makes a blech face and whines to Brenda and Donna that he's been bugging her all week. Oh Kelly. Did you really think there would be no consequences for spending those sixty seconds under Steve? Brenda shares with them that Mama and Papa Walsh have left town for Palm Springs, and will be away for several days. Kelly and Donna immediately lobby for a party at Casa Walsh, which Brenda is totally up for. Her only worry is that Brandon might stand in the way with his usual stick-in-the-mud-ness.


Palm Springs. Cindy is flitting around the hotel room, thrilled about the matching terry cloth robes and toiletries she found in the bathroom. She doesn't get out much. Jim is mostly excited about the bed, and soon the two are kissing and cuddling. Cindy scampers over to the door to put up the "do-not-disturb" sign on the knob when suddenly a strange couple enters their room through the door of an adjoining suite. As if that would ever happen. And if it did ever happen, an immediate phone call to the hotel manager would swiftly remedy this potentially dangerous security breach. The offending couple, Bob and Trudy, are from Houston. Trudy has big Texas helmet hair, and is the overly familiar, chatty type who obviously hasn't been properly socialized with other humans. Well mannered people do not consider it appropriate to barge uninvited into a hotel room that is occupied by complete strangers.


The Walsh house. Brenda is microwaving TV dinners but they don't turn out very good, so she and Brandon make themselves sandwiches for dinner instead. While they're eating, Brenda brings up the idea of having a party over the weekend. Brandon isn't wild about the idea because he doesn't want to get into trouble, but Brenda easily changes his mind by promising that the party will be strictly A-list, she'll clean up afterwards, and that it's guaranteed to put them "on the map". Or, more likely, on the road to hell. Brandon admits that he's tired of always trying so hard to do the right thing, so this weekend he's going to shake things up and do some really wrong shit that could potentially screw up the rest of his life.


Palm Springs. Cindy and Jim have just finished getting dressed for dinner when Bob and Trudy come barging in again - this time with a bottle of champagne. Jim remarks in a low voice to Cindy that he thought the lock on the door had been fixed. They stand there mutely while Trudy babbles on and on about her tendency to babble on and on, along with her need to be liked by everyone. She then invites herself and her stout husband to visit Jim and Cindy at their home in Beverly Hills after the retreat. Instead of giving then a firm no and then calling the hotel manager to get that damn lock fixed, Jim and Cindy just laugh nervously and look at each other in bewilderment. Whaddup with the spineless passivity, Walshes?


West Beverly High. Brenda confirms to Kelly that the party is on. Brandon has agreed to it as long as there's less than twenty-five people. Kelly's like "Whatever", since her sole concern is a high quota of hot guys. David Silver, who's been eavesdropping on the conversation, tells Scott he needs to be at that party so he can continue to salivate over Kelly during his off-school time.


Ahn-drea walks down the hallway with Brandon and asks him what he's doing this weekend. She has an extra ticket to the theater and wants to know if he's free to come. Wait - did Ahn-drea just ask Brandon out on a date? OMG, she totally did! Brandon looks very weirded out by the invitation, but then mightily relieved to have his party as an excuse to avoid a date or anything resembling a date with Ahn-drea Zuckerman. He does throw her a bone, though, and invites her to the party when the theater show is over.


The Walsh house. Brandon is putting out snacks for the guests, and Brenda comes downstairs sporting a curly party hairdo that looks even worse than her last party hairdo. Why doesn't she just wear it straight like she does for school? It looks much nicer that way. Once guests start arriving, the house quickly fills up, but mostly with non A-listers. Even un-invitees like David and Scott are seen milling around. Scott delivers the best line of the night when he remarks to David that the same people who ignore him at school can now ignore him at this party. Haha! He may be a bumpkin, but at least he's self-aware.


Steve is making the rounds with a large pitcher of spiked red Kool-aid. He's trying to ply Kelly with however much booze it's going to take for her to find him attractive enough to diddle with again. Brenda, however, is annoyed by Kelly's drinking and irritably tells her that she and Brandon made a pact to stay sober. She then spots Brandon across the room, spiritedly guzzling alcoholic Kool-aid from Steve's pitcher. Brenda immediately considers the pact dissolved.


A plate gets smashed in the kitchen, and Brenda rushes over to sweep up the mess. But while she's doing that, the phone rings and Kelly stupidly answers it saying, "Party hotline!" Naturally it's Mama Walsh. Brenda throws down the broom and the pieces of broken dish and runs over to the phone. Somehow she convinces Mama Walsh that all the noise she's hearing in the background is really just the stereo.


Brandon and Steve are getting sloshed and making drunken toasts to beautiful women everywhere. Brenda goes over to Brandon and snipes at him for getting drunk, so he complains that he can't win with her. When he doesn't drink, she gets annoyed and calls him a stick-in-the-mud...and when he does drink, she gets angry and judgmental. That's actually a fair point, but there's no time to pursue this argument further because two cops have just appeared at the front door. Apparently, the neighbors called to complain about the excessive noise.


Brenda and Dylan, both of whom are sober, answer the door. They're careful to keep the authorities from discovering that the house is filled with underage drinkers. Since the chief complaint is the noise, Dylan assures them he'll turn the music down. Once the officers have left, Dylan takes Brandon aside and strongly urges him to stop drinking and instead have some coffee...but Brandon opts to keep the party going with more drinking. Incidentally, it doesn't sound like anyone's turned down the stereo yet.


Ahn-drea arrives at the party. Brandon greets her and offers her a sip from a terrible tasting drink. He then asks her to dance, which is solid proof that his drinking has impaired his judgement and all of his good sense.


Palm Springs. Jim and Cindy are relaxing together in a hot tub. Yikes - Jim has more hair on his chest than is on his head. Bob and Trudy suddenly appear wearing white bathrobes, and make it clear that they want to hot tub with the Walshes and swap partners. Ew. Jim makes a feeble attempt to climb out of the hot tub and make a break for it, but he's no match for Trudy's frisky resolve to go around the "goosey goosey ducky ducky" with him. I have no idea what that means. Bob creepily drawls, "How are you tonight, Cindy?" The sound of his voice made all the skin crawl off my body. The situation irreversibly deteriorates when Bob and Trudy take off their robes and proudly reveal themselves to the Walshes in all of their lumpy glory.


The Walsh house. Steve is bugging Kelly to go upstairs with him to one of the bedrooms. Yuck and ew, Steve. That's just rude and unsanitary. Go home and have sex in your own bed. Fortunately though, Kelly's not into it and defiantly grabs weeny David Silver and forces him to dance with her. David is an even worse dancer than Brandon, who appears to be showcasing his fun-tastic dance moves with Ahn-drea. In a moment of drunken oblivion, he completely loses all sense and kisses her...and she gets all huffy that he only kissed her because he's drunk. Well duh, Ahn-drea. Brandon isn't going to kiss you when he's in his right mind. And since he's such a straight arrow most of the time, you should enjoy these fleeting opportunities whenever they present themselves to you.


Steve tells Brandon that they've run out of snacks and liquor, and so a few of them will have to go out and buy some more. Good judgement call, Steve. What could possibly go wrong when a bunch of teens, drunk as skunks from drinking your spiked Kool-aid concoction, get behind the wheel? Brandon starts his car, pulls out of the driveway and within minutes, disaster occurs. He's driving very fast, swerving all over the road, and then loses control just before smashing head-on into a truck.


Palm Springs. Jim and Cindy are holding each other tight on the bed in their hotel room. Judging from the trauma etched across their faces, they're obviously trying not to relive the humiliating sex acts they were forced to perform with Bob and Trudy before finally being permitted to leave the hot tub. But there's no time for that anyway. The phone rings, and it's Brenda calling to deliver some very bad news. Brandon has been in a car accident, and he's now in jail for driving while schnockered.


The police station. Brandon is crouched on the floor of a dark holding cell, bruised and traumatized. Jim and Cindy are in the waiting area, dazed and freaked out. Eventually the cops bring Brandon out from his cell, and he looks sheepish and worn out. He expresses worry about his driver's license being taken away, but I think he should be a little more worried about all the people he could have injured or killed during his stupid, drunken joyride. When the three of them get home from the police station, Jim and Cindy are shocked by the post-party mess in their house, and grow furious at Brenda and Brandon for having a party where there was alcohol flowing. Jim loses it and snaps that he can't trust them. Brenda nonsensically explains that it's really not their fault because they weren't the ones who provided the alcohol - it was brought into the house by partygoers. Well...ok, maybe technically that's true, but as a defence it's pretty lame-ass. What might help more right now is if Brenda could stifle her Inner Bitch and attempt to show a little contrition since the party was her idea. But then Brandon adds more ca-ca to the pile when he claims that the only reason he got drunk at the party was because "some jerk" handed him a drink that he didn't realize was spiked. Liar liar, pants on fire. The spiked drink thing happened at Donna's house party the previous weekend.


Later that day, Brandon is tinkering with his bicycle, which will be his sole form of transportation for the foreseeable future. Brenda is displeased that Brandon bent the truth about being handed a spiked drink, which is kind of funny considering the pitiful explanation she just offered up to their parents about how alcohol found its way into their house during the party.


West Beverly High. Ahn-drea runs into Brandon and tells him she heard what happened, and wants to know if he's OK. He says yes, and apologizes for kissing her. Blech. What he should have done was assured her that such a thing would never ever happen again. Ever.


In another hallway, Brenda assures Kelly and Donna that everything's OK, except that she and Brandon are going to have to pay to get the carpets cleaned and replace all the stuff that got broken. Donna offers small comfort by declaring that the Walsh party was the best one of the year...but I can't take her seriously because it looks like she forgot to put on a top that day.


Young David Silver clearly enjoyed the party immensely, because he's in the DJ booth dedicating a song to himself and Kelly. Kelly's obvious mortification doesn't seem to diminish the bliss of the scrawny little buffoon, who's now waving and making goo-goo eyes at her in front of everyone. Actions have reactions, Kelly.


The Peach Pit. Dylan saunters in after hours to visit Brandon, who's cleaning up. Brandon whines about how he has to wait 3 weeks until he can apply to have restricted driving privileges to drive himself to and from work and school. Dylan astutely points out that he's lucky he didn't kill someone that night. My sentiments exactly. Brandon is really bummed out by the big cloud of disappointment that's currently hanging over the house, and hates how his actions have affected his parents' attitude toward him. He tells Dylan it's so stressful that it makes him want to to out and get drunk, just to show his parents he has the power to do what he wants. Um - what? Another night of drunken debauchery would only darken and thicken that cloud of disappointment, moron. Dylan rushes him over to an AA meeting, which just happens to be filled with young kids who have drinking problems. You are wise, Grasshopper Dylan.


When Brandon enters the house, Papa Walsh is waiting up to have one of those father-son heart to heart talks he's always trying to orchestrate. Brandon uses the bonding moment to come clean about the night of their party. He admits that it wasn't exactly the first time he'd ever had a drink.
Correct - I believe it was the second time he'd ever had a drink.


Fortunately, though, Papa Walsh was once a teenager himself...and he can still remember what it was like to get hammered twice in a two week period.

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