Reunion

"But I thought I had one true friend. And when I needed him most he made me second-guess myself"

- Andrea to Brandon Reunion is the 27th episode of Season 8 of Beverly Hills, 90210.

Synopsis
Image seems to be everything at the gang's five-year high-school reunion, where Valerie creates new personas for herself and David, while Andrea Zuckerman tries to hang on to her old one; Steve gets comeuppance for a past blunder, then makes new ones with date Janet; and Valerie makes a former football hero fumble.

Recap
 West Beverly High School is having their 5-year reunion, and unlike every other high school reunion in history, it causes a lot of turmoil and a lot of lies amongst the group's former students and new members.

In short order:


 * Brandon and Kelly are thrilled that Andrea is flying into town to participate, and smile about how awesome her life is. Unfortunately, Andrea is seen having a spectacularly ugly argument with her husband Jesse over a pay phone, where she reveals he lost out on a partnership at his law firm. When Andrea is pegged by the reunion committee as the best choice for a speaker, she breaks down and tells Brandon her marriage to Jesse is over, and then gets annoyed that Brandon keeps pressing her to be honest about her life (he also admits that he is keeping his infidelity with Kelly a general secret).


 * Kelly has her own secret shame at the reunion: a jerk of a popular classmate is there with his sexy young wife, and he greets Kelly with a warm handshake...because he's forgotten, or is ignoring, that she lost her virginity to him and he proceeded to tell the entire school what a slut she was.


 * Donna is on the reunion's organizing committee and has to spend time with the Tracy Flick of the group, a Stanford Law graduate who begrudgingly admires Donna's good ideas, but what ruins her day is when she sees Noah's picture included in a local newspaper's feature of the Most Successful Bachelors in L.A. Noah doesn't see what the big deal is and they end up having an argument when another committee member unsuccessfully tries to pick up Noah herself.


 * David and Valerie are both embarrassed by their lack of great personal success, whether it's the fact that David writes silly commercial jingles or the cavalcade of horror that is Val's personal life. They both resolve to take on fake reunion personas, with David as a movie composer and Val as a relief worker who just finished helping earthquake victims in Japan.


 * Steve is eager to show up at the reunion as the ladies' man he imagines himself to be, and doesn't notice that Beat editor Janet Sosna is making it very clear she is attracted to him. While Steve does agree to take her to the reunion, he quickly ignores her in favor of hitting on an attractive woman--who turns out to be a plain Jane turned stunner with plans to get revenge for Steve's behavior years ago.

Once at the reunion, most of the group's fortunes take turns for the better. Brandon delivers a speech in Andrea's case about it being OK that the alumni have made mistakes and aren't on top of the world, with a handsome student asking Andrea to dance and talking about his own divorce. David gets cheers and applause when he plays a jingle for a condom company. Valerie humiliates the jerk who ruined Kelly's high school life, and they both destroy a tile with anti-Kelly graffiti on it. Noah shows to romance Donna, who in turn shows up her obnoxious co-committee member. Only Steve has a less than positive night: he ends up being caught naked in front of everyone via his former classmate's prank, and while he handles that with amusement, he's left sad because Janet tells him he ruined the night and she doesn't want to go out with him again.

Starring

 * Jason Priestley as Brandon Walsh
 * Jennie Garth as Kelly Taylor
 * Ian Ziering as Steve Sanders
 * Brian Austin Green as David Silver
 * Tori Spelling as Donna Martin
 * Tiffani Thiessen as Valerie Malone
 * Joe E. Tata as Nat Bussichio
 * Vincent Young as Noah Hunter


 * Special Guest Stars
 * Gabrielle Carteris as Andrea Zuckerman
 * Lindsay Price as Janet Sosna


 * Guest starring
 * Hilary Matthews as Michelle Ashley
 * Dean Cochran as Ross Webber
 * Stephanie Dicker as Rhonda "Gomer" Mogley

Trivia

 * Andrea and Jesse are splitting up
 * Brandon admits to Andrea that he cheated on Kelly
 * Among the missing graduates are Brenda, Dylan, Kyle Conners and Tony Miller from their year.