Valerie Malone

Valerie Malone is a principal character on Beverly Hills, 90210. She is portrayed by Tiffani Thiessen.

Character
Valerie is a cunning, smart, daring and strong woman, who is very capable, but suffered sexual abuse by her father and has trouble trusting people. Valerie moves to Beverly Hills after her father dies, to live with her old family friends the Walshes. She deals with this trauma by manipulating situations and people, alienating them in the process all the while, in reality, she looks for comfort and security in her life. Though she considers Brandon a close friend, she never tells him what happened to her and has trouble making friends in Beverly Hills, except when it comes to Steve Sanders.

sophomores
The Walshes welcome Valerie Malone, a young and charming family friend from Buffalo, who moves into Brenda's room after she leaves for England. Unbeknownst to the remaining Walshes that Valerie is secretly a manipulative, cynical, and callous woman with a taste for drugs and hard liquor. Later, Valerie decides to pursue Dylan after finding Brenda's mementos of him in the Walsh garage, and begins hanging out at the pool hall where Dylan also drinks and hangs out. Valerie continues pursuing Dylan who lays out some ground rules that their clandestine relationship is based purely on sex. All while Valerie continues her "good girl" charade in front of Steve and everyone else. Eventually Kelly grows to be suspicious of Valerie's true unwholesome colors when she catches her smoking pot and she naturally makes a big fuss about it. But to Kelly's surprise, she cannot get a sympathetic ear. Even Brandon tells Kelly to give Valerie the benefit of a doubt.

However, Donna doesn't seem to care and tells Kelly that what Valerie does in her spare time is none of their business. Later when Kelly sees Valerie at the Peach Pit drinking and flirting with Dylan, she immediately tells Steve. But when they both confront her, Valerie convinces Steve that it was Dylan who made a pass at her. Later, Valerie discovers Dylan has been stealing money from the Peach Pit to support himself. Valerie helps Steve, Kelly, and fellow KEG members Griffin and Muntz, plan the theft of a rival college's mascot, a huge stuffed bear, during homecoming weekend. Whereas Dylan forces Valerie to keep his financial situation a secret. But when Valerie later walks in on Dylan cheating on her with a local prostitute, she vows revenge. Valerie, still seething with both anger and pity after catching Dylan cheating on her, confesses to them that Dylan is bankrupt. Jim then offers Dylan some financial assistance. But the growingly misanthropic Dylan is too far gone to accept any sympathy and rudely blows off Jim.

After being shunned by the Walshes and the rest of the gang, Valerie considers moving back to Buffalo, but decides to stay after learning that her mother has suffered a nervous breakdown. Steve unfairly blames Dylan for having a tryst with Valerie, and breaks his business agreement with the Peach Pit After Dark. Valerie also fails to bewitch Dylan who's sinking deeper into depravity with hard drugs, while Brandon reacts coldly towards Valerie after finding out that she skipped out on Steve's frat party to be with Dylan after she promised everyone to stay away from him. Dylan enters a rehab center after all of his friends conduct an intervention. Valerie and Clare, who were left out of the intervention, spend the day shopping and bonding with each other. But after one day, Dylan runs away from the clinic with a little bit of Valerie's help. Dylan then alienates Valerie more with his continuing drug use and attitude in which she walks out on him for good.

When Dylan is put in a coma after a car accident while driving under the influence of heroin, he has some bizarre near-death dreams. All of which has fight for life with the likes of his drug dealer, his high school principal Mrs. Teasley, Kevin Weaver, Suzanne Steele, Erica, Valerie, the Walshes, and his own long-dead father, Jack McKay. Dylan and Valerie agree to stop seeing each other, as he doesn't want to involve her in his problems. Valerie helps them out in the hopes of getting back in Steve's good graces. David and Clare accidentally post the notice about the event on a computer bulletin board for lesbians, who constitute most of the guests. The house has very poor wiring and continually blows fuses. Griffin uses too much electricity, and the house catches on fire. Ray rescues Steve and Valerie, who were fooling around in one of the bedrooms. Kelly and a girl named Allison are trapped in a downstairs bathroom with no means of escape. The firefighters try to reach them as they are engulfed by flames.

Brandon is left alone to care for the recovering Kelly when Jim and Cindy leave town to visit Brenda in England and Valerie leaves to visit her mother in Buffalo. Elsewhere, Nat hosts a special holiday feed-the-homeless dinner at the Peach Pit. Valerie returns to Beverly Hills after spending a sunny Christmas vacation in the Caribbean, instead of visiting her mother in Buffalo, which prompts a cold response from Kelly who openly admits to everyone that she despises Valerie and doesn't trust her for a second.

Dylan recruits Valerie to help him and Jonesy pull off a caper in Punta Brava, Mexico to reclaim his lost money after they find Kevin and Suzanne. Jones and Valerie pose as a couple at a resort hotel where they befriend Kevin and Suzanne (aka: Karl and Kitty Cavendish) in order to get to know more about where they keep Dylan's stolen money. But when Dylan wants to rescue his sister Erica, Jones backs out, leaving Dylan and Valerie to carry on a rash rescue attempt alone.

Valerie seeks a reward for helping Dylan recover his money and asks both him and Jones to cut her in on a large share. Valerie comes onto Ray who's having problems with Donna and pressures him into an affair. Ray's mother, LuAnn, figures out that Ray cheated on Donna when he doesn't come home after that night, and covers for him when Donna comes calling asking for Ray's whereabouts. Valerie refuses to accept a "no" from Ray in response to a relationship with him. An unseen figure creates a crime wave on the CU campus which includes the rape of a girl student which worries everyone. Meanwhile, Ray decides to leave town after Valerie buys the Peach Pit After Dark from Steve's father for her own use. Unfortunately, Dylan is tempted by Valerie to fall off the wagon again. Seeking answers to his path in life, Dylan tracks down and finds his rehab friend Charlie Rollins, a motel owner, where Charlie tells him his idea of writing a movie screenplay to make money and asks Dylan for a little help.

Valerie asks Steve to help secure the rock group "The Flaming Lips" after she cancels Ray's bookings, and Donna wrongly blames David for Ray's departure after Valerie lies to her that David is the one responsible for Ray leaving town. Valerie moves back in with the Walshes after being evicted from her hotel suite. Meanwhile, Dylan helps Charlie work on a movie screenplay and more help comes from Valerie who repeatedly tempts Dylan. Valerie then flies to Reno, Nevada to ask Ray to come back to the After Dark when Donna lobbies for his return. Valerie turns her sights on Brandon who is hoping to be re-elected student body president. But Brandon runs into all kinds of problems when news of college tuition for undergraduates is announced to be increased. He is criticized for not looking after the students' best interests.

In Palm Springs, things get even worse for Brandon after he's arrested for driving Valerie's car when he's pulled over by a traffic policeman, who finds Valerie's marijuana stash in it. Donna decides to give the possessive Ray a second chance, and rudely blows off Valerie in which Donna reveals that she's figured out that Valerie seduced Ray. When Valerie comes home to Beverly Hills and sees Brandon in the living room watching a video of a young Brandon, Brenda, and Valerie at a birthday party, Brandon starts kissing Valerie.

juniors
Valerie welcomes Ginger LaMonica, a visiting friend of hers from Buffalo who's as wild and devious as she is, and has an eye for Brandon. The gang helps Brandon repair the Walsh house after it falls out of escrow, and Steve decides to move in with him and Valerie. Ray becomes the prime suspect in the theft of money and several jewelry items from Donna's parents and others. But Valerie exposes Ginger as the culprit which at the end is revealed to be a scam for the gang to get to like Valerie again. Valerie sees Colin and reveals that they have known each other from a teen Europe trip years ago, which bothers Kelly.

Kelly becomes jealous when Colin attends the Rose Ball with Valerie and calls her a bitch, but Valerie makes it clear she is not interested in Colin, and Kelly backs off a little on her paranoia. After David's mother attempts to kill herself, it turns him into a recluse and it brings back bad memories for Valerie over her father's suicide. Valerie then bonds with David over their fear and panic, and helps him recover enough that he's able to rationally deal with his mother's situation. Kelly, Donna, and Clare decide to take a "just girls" road trip where Valerie is invited along to Kelly's dismay. Soon, the trip becomes unpleasant when secrets from their pasts come into the light with Valerie admitting that she has feelings for David, and that she seduced Ray months earlier for no reason aside from the ultimate thrill of it. Donna becomes angry at Valerie. In a turn of events, the four of them end up stranded for the night in a convent after their car breaks down. Valerie also convinces Donna to break up with Ray knowing that he is physically abusive.

Valerie can't decide what to do when a professor sexually harasses her because of her bad reputation as a compulsive, pathological liar. When the professor gives Valerie a 'D' in her term paper after she refuses his advances, David tries to persuade her to press charges, while Susan tries to get Brandon's help to find dirt on the professor for her latest news story. Valerie finally decides to press charges and is gratified to learn that that professor is a longtime sexual harasser of various students and is about to get fired for it. At a Halloween party at the Peach Pit After Dark, a mysterious woman named Madame Raven shows up, from which David buys a love potion from her to increase his growing relationship with Valerie, but Steve and Clare accidentally get it instead and end up having a very sordid night together.

Bounty hunter Jay J. Jones returns and asks Valerie for help in a divorce case he has by posing as a prostitute in a sting operation to catch the husband in the act. It does not work for them and he arrests both of them. Valerie calls David to bail her out of the jail. David asks Valerie why she called him, not Nat, Brandon, or Steve. Valerie says she was embarrassed and she and David finally make love. Valerie continues to be unable to avoid conflict with Kelly, whether it's deserved or not.

Valerie pretends to be Colin's agent to an art collector who is interested in buying some of Colin's paintings, hoping she will get a share of the money, and that he will quit drugs. But Valerie becomes discouraged when after she sells two of his paintings, Colin vows to continue using drugs because he claims that being under the influence is part of his creative process. Valerie's old friend, Ginger LaMonica, inconspicuously returns to Beverly Hills and breaks her deal by blackmailing Valerie with revealing the jewelry theft scam, lest Valerie pay Ginger. Valerie refuses to pay, until Ginger offers another option: a sordid night with David. Valerie sets Jonathan up with Ginger to keep her away from David, but her plan fails and when David learns the truth about Ginger and that Valerie will do anything to keep her secret, he leaves Valerie for good.

With Colin in jail, Valerie tries to arrange bail for him. Valerie brings Colin to a party, when he is out of prison on bail and facing an uncertain legal future. Valerie tries to get Colin to make up with his long-estranged, blind, Vietnam veteran father who comes for a visit. Tara continues to be obsessed with assuming Kelly's identity and causes renewed hostilities between Kelly and Valerie as part of her plan. Valerie is left hanging when Colin gets a surprising two years minimum jail sentence and jumps bail. Meanwhile, Colin prepares to flee the country while Valerie asks Brandon and a reluctant Kelly to help her in finding him. They come close but are not able to track him down on their own.

Valerie gets help from an FBI agent named Richard Ballen, who formerly worked with Jonesy, to find Colin. Colin is in the area trying to get access to a ship. He is trying to get to South America. Colin is trying to get the necessary papers and identity to leave the country, but is finally caught. He tells Valerie that he is sorry, but she doesn't believe him, and she tells him to have a nice life whenever his time in prison is over.

seniors
At the start of her senior year, Valerie seeks financial help from Kenny Bannerman, one of Jim Walsh's former coworkers, to revamp business for the Peach Pit After Dark. At a reunion party at the Beverly Hills Beach Club, Kenny puts a social spin on his business with Valerie, who once again throws romantic common sense to the wind.

Valerie is frustrated when Kenny's wife suddenly shows up, disrupting their romantic plans. Valerie continues her secret affair with Kenny, who must find the time to be with her. Kenny shows Valerie his new apartment for her to live in, but Valerie becomes angry and upset when he breaks a dinner date with her in order to go out with his wife and young son whom he continues to hide his tryst from them.

Kenny tells Valerie to keep her distance from him while he is proceeding with the divorce from his wife. But when Valerie accidentally finds out that Kenny does not plan on leaving his wife, ever, out of respect for their six-year-old son, she later tells Kenny some unsettling news about her. At the reopening of the Peach Pit After Dark, Kenny does not attend, prompting Valerie to resort to her devious tricks again by asking for $100,000 so she can keep away from him.

Kelly extends an olive branch to Valerie after learning from Steve over her condition, but Valerie must keep the fact that she really isn't pregnant under wraps at any cost. Kelly takes great delight in telling Brandon about Valerie's pregnancy and abortion, and also shares her doubts about Val's story. Brandon goes to see Kenny, who portrays himself as an innocent victim caught in the web of an evil vixen. He tells Brandon that he paid Valerie $100,000 to stay away. Brandon threatens to throw Val out of the house unless she gives the money back. Valerie plans to move out, but returns the money following a talk with Tracy. She confesses to Brandon that she was never pregnant, and insists that she cannot live up to his moral expectations.

The increasingly manic-mannered David takes Valerie, Steve and Clare for a wild weekend to Las Vegas where his increased drinking and gambling threaten to turn the events bad, and Ray Pruit is performing at their hotel. David ends up picking up two prostitutes and takes them to a seedy motel where they drug and rob him. David is forced to call Donna for help who arrives in Vegas to comfort him. She yells at Steve, Clare, and Valerie for letting David get out of control.

Val displays construction skills as a result of working with her contractor father, but hints to Clare that she has few happy memories of her dad. Everyone eats Thanksgiving dinner inside the unfinished house. Valerie and Kelly are reluctantly paired in a Christmas gift exchange, where Valerie goes shopping with Tracy to find a certain gift. Valerie is surprised when Tom Miller, another old high school friend from Buffalo, comes for a visit and asks for a job at the Peach Pit After Dark.

David and Tom team up to produce a Super Bowl party at the After Dark, much to Valerie's annoyance. Despite Valerie's warning to stay away from him, Kelly decides to pursue Tom, which adds an extra dimension when he and Brandon, who still holds feelings for Kelly, face off in a hockey game. Valerie's mother, Abby, whom she can't stand, arrives in town from Buffalo for a visit and asks her for financial support, causing Valerie to become angry with her mother, Abby.

Valerie finally confronts her mother and tells her the true, long-kept facts behinds her father's suicide which are: her father killing himself on the day Valerie and Tom threatened to go to the police with the fact that he's been molesting her. Abby slaps Valerie and flies back to Buffalo and Tom soon follows suit. Gigi Crane, a magazine writer, starts hanging out with Valerie to get a story about L.A's cool people.

Valerie meets and befriends Rob Andrews, a young and new rising actor in Hollywood. Rob asks Valerie's advice on a movie script while a mutual attraction between them develops. Valerie becomes jealous after Rob's agent, Alan, pairs him with an actress/client for publicity reasons at a party that she throws at the After Dark where the rock group Barenaked Ladies are performing. Rob's new movie is released which earns great recognition for his performance, but bad reviews for the whole movie, which makes Rob wonder if the movie business is really for him, and Valerie worries that she'll lose Rob when he tells her that he wants to quit the entertainment business and move back to his hometown.

After Brandon breaks up with Tracy, Valerie's meddling jeopardizes his future with Kelly when Val sends Kelly a phony letter from the departed Dylan to test her true feelings for Brandon. Both Valerie and Kelly sneak a look at each other's journal, but only Valerie reads the whole thing and spreads rumors about Kelly to Clare and Donna in yet another attempt to make Kelly's life miserable. Brandon attempts to nurse a flu-stricken Kelly and Valerie back to health, who relive to each other how they became hard-core enemies two years ago which involved both of them pursuing Brandon. At the end, Valerie secretly meets with a certain Derrick Driscoll, who works for Kelly's father, to ask about a possible investment plan.

Valerie makes a pass at David as part of her latest scheme to get him to buy her share of the Peach Pit After Dark as part of a nefarious plan of hers to invest the cash in Kelly's father's business. Kelly's father, Bill, arrives in town for another visit and meets with Valerie who tells her that Derrick Driscoll is actually an embezzler who just ripped off all her money that she got to invest in.

On the day before commencement, Kelly becomes determined to oust Valerie from the Walsh house (and out of town) and pressures Brandon to do so. Valerie hears about that and decides to write a note saying goodbye to Brandon before she kills herself. On the day of graduation, a broke and lonely Valerie disrupts Kelly's plans when she takes off on a mindless spree, causing Brandon to delay the ceremony to look for her. Kelly's father, Bill, throws a post-graduation 1920's nostalgic party for the class and has the music group, After Steve and Clare broke up, Valerie and Steve hook up with each other.

Adulthood
Donna lands a job as a modeling assistant and flies to Hawaii for the photo shoot and the rest of the gang, whom include David, Brandon, Valerie, and Steve follow her there for an end-of-the summer vacation, where Valerie meets and becomes smitten with a mysterious sailor named Noah Hunter who tries to help Donna when the shoot goes bad.

After spending a torrid night with Valerie, Noah makes a quick exit and refuses to associate with her again. Valerie offers to help Donna with her job to land more clients. Valerie continues pursuing Noah who eventually tells her all about his lonely life and unwillingness to keep a relationship, while Valerie meets a wealthy heir named Cooper Hargrove. Valerie turns on her deviousness again when she begins stealing Donna's design clients for her own use and in the process lands in a quandary over being with Donna's new client, Cooper Hargrove, and Noah who wants to go back to Hawaii for a job.

Donna finally learns of Valerie's back-stabbing. So in retaliation, Donna successfully gets revenge against Valerie when she sets Cooper and Valerie up on a dinner date to a fancy new restaurant where Noah also shows up after Donna anonymously sends him a message to meet Valerie there. Steve continues to pursue Carly and asks her to a formal Autumn banquet, where Valerie's two suitors, Cooper and Noah, finally cross paths when they meet each other face-to-face for the first time and neither enjoys it prompting both Cooper and Noah to break up with her.

After breaking up with Valerie, an angry and frustrated Noah lands in jail after a drunken barroom brawl. Valerie seeks to learn who anonymously helped David pay off his loan shark and learns the truth about Noah and his wealthy background. Valerie lobbies Noah to let her manage the Peach Pit After Dark, much to Donna's suspicions and jealousy.

Valerie schemes with David to make Noah and Donna jealous by making it seem that they are having an affair, but it doesn't work due to David's lack of lying skills. In the week before Christmas, and at David's urging, a depressed Ben delivers gifts to his parents, and later he and Valerie help Ben out who's contemplating suicide. David finally admits to Donna about his relationship with Valerie being a farce, but that soon changes when Valerie admits getting feelings for him again. Valerie then has a run-in with Duke, Brandon's former bookmaker, whom she tells to stay away from the Peach Pit After Dark, until he offers her a cut of his winnings.

The greedy Valerie ignores Noah's decree to halt the betting at the After Dark, with serious consequences when they both get arrested after the police raid the place. Valerie, who is serving community service for her bookmaking, turns on her deviousness again when she is determined not to let Brandon and Kelly get back together by interfering with Brandon's phone messages.

Valerie, still working through her community service at the clinic, continues her plan to keep Brandon and Kelly apart when she sets up a scene at a restaurant so that Brandon will walk into Kelly with her date Jeff. Valerie brings in a record executive to the After Dark to hear David and the band, Jasper's Law, perform at their debut. But Valerie becomes hurt after David tells her that the love song he wrote was about Donna, not her.

The arrival of Noah's snobbish, older half-brother, Josh, brings big trouble between both of them over their different viewpoints. Things take an unexpected turn when Josh spikes Valerie's drink with a "date rape" drug so he can seduce her. But it goes wrong for Josh when Noah inadvertently takes advantage of Valerie who wakes up the next morning thinking Noah slipped her the roofie. Thus, Valerie unknowingly tells everyone that Noah did rape her.

After Noah is questioned by the police about Valerie's rape charges, he admits to Donna that he did have sex with Valerie that night at the After Dark club, but he did not know that she was drugged. The only ones that believe Valerie's date rape story are David and Brandon which divides them from their friends. Josh also takes advantage of Valerie and Noah's conflict to play them against each other and persuades Valerie to press a civil suit against Noah.

Valerie's civil lawsuit against Noah begins with her taking the witness stand testifying about that night. But Noah's attorney viciously cross-examines her by making use of Valerie's sordid past to discredit her. Then Brandon, Kelly, David, and Steve individually take the witness stand and testify against Valerie, despite her attorney who tries to put reasonable doubt on them. But the final nail is when Noah's defense receives a mortal blow when the real culprit, Josh, unexpectedly takes the witness stand and testifies against Noah with details about "his" version of what happened the Valentine's Day night with Valerie at the After Dark. Valerie struggles to get past her incident with Noah.

Valerie deals with her long-estranged mother, Abby, who arrives back in town for a visit and hits it off with Kelly's father, Bill, who has been paroled from prison. Valerie and Kelly reluctantly join forces in an attempt to keep apart Valerie's mother Abby, and Kelly's father Bill, after they announce their engagement at Valerie's birthday party. Valerie creates problems between Noah and Donna when she claims that the expensive diamond necklace that Noah gave Donna is a fake. Valerie also hooks David up with a filmmaker, named Kyle Scott, who is wanting to do a commercial with him as she handles his taxes.

Valerie creates a new persona for herself and David in order to fit in at the reunion. David also buys some things from the sex shop to revamp his sluggish sex life with Valerie. Valerie is asked by a doctor to be a bone-marrow donor for an ailing leukemia patient. Valerie is delighted with the idea, but she soon goes back on her deal when she finds out that the patient has sexually abused his teenage daughter.

Noah's close friend, Gwyneth, turns to Valerie for a little help to break up Donna and Noah by sabotaging her fashion show at the After Dark. Noah finds out about this and is angry with Valerie. David pressures Valerie to get an AIDS test after she confesses to him about her one-night stand with Johnny. But Valerie is reluctant to do so and provokes conflicts with everyone, except David whom she still has feelings for. With a few hours before Brandon and Kelly's wedding, they still become uncertain about this path in life they will take. Valerie finally decides to get an AIDS test after Johnny confesses to her that he happens to be HIV-positive, and she asks David to come along with her for emotional support.

Leaving Beverly Hills
David says Valerie would benefit from a kinder, gentler demeanor after her HIV test comes back negative, seeing as how she has a new lease on life. Valerie decides to be more honest, but when she encourages David to demand his worth by graduating from doing commercial jingles to getting a shot at a music score for Glen King, David goes along with it... and gets fired. David also notes that Valerie's rude truth-telling towards Steve, Brandon and Nat has the same goal as her previous lying: to push people away. Valerie tells David she doesn't deserve to be happy, and later reveals to him that she killed her father.

Valerie decides to finally tell the truth about her father's motive for his "suicide" to her visiting mother, Abby, only to meet her young fiancée Carl Schmidt, whom Valerie doesn't approve of. When Valerie finally tells her mother about the history of her father molesting her, Abby shocks Valerie by saying that she already knew and didn't take any action because he'd promised (falsely) he would stop and get help. Abby also implies rather strongly that Valerie was not a victim but a willing partner in her father's depravities.

Kelly accompanies Abby to her and Carl's wedding in Las Vegas, where maid of honor Valerie decides to make the moves on Carl to upset her mother's plans. After Carl leaves Valerie's and Kelly's hotel room, Kelly walks in to see Valerie covering herself with the sheets and instantly knows that Valerie and Carl slept together. She is disgusted at the wedding, as is Valerie, but neither of them reveal the secret to Abby.

Noah turns to Valerie instead of Donna for help after he is arrested for drunk driving, and a young lawyer, named Matt Durning, approaches him for representation for free of charge since Noah and his entire family is now broke from Noah's late father's dirty business dealings. Valerie's so-called "mistake" about seducing Carl in Las Vegas comes out when she comes clean to her mother, who then threatens to turn her in for killing her father. Carl has broken up with Abby and tries to tell Valerie that he did it so they could be together, but she tells him she has zero interest in ever spending any time with him again.

Valerie hires Matt for help in representation because she isn't sure if her mother will follow through on the threat to turn her in for killing her father. Noah takes a lonely Valerie on a tour of bad memories between both of them over the suicide of their unscrupulous, white-collared, criminal fathers. Abby tells Valerie she won't turn her in, but Valerie's relief turns to horror and sadness when Abby says she doesn't forgive her daughter at all and would like to see her arrested, but can't deal with the embarrassment of what happened and will thus keep it secret. Valerie angrily tells Abby that her father raped her repeatedly and that she cannot get over it when Abby still feels like it was her fault and something for Valerie to bear the secret blame for.

With Brandon gone, Valerie plans her own farewell party after deciding to turn herself over to the police for setting up her father's long-ago murder. Noah continues on his self-destructive path and pushes Donna away when he sees her talking to Matt, and anyone who offers him support, except Valerie whom he challenges to a dangerous road game of chicken. After David talks to her off-screen, Abby shows up at the police station where Valerie has gone to surrender and finally tells Valerie that it was Abby's fault for what Mr. Malone did, none of it was Valerie's, and that Abby forgives her daughter and begs her to forgive herself.

After Kelly finds a letter written by Valerie to Brandon saying that Brandon shouldn't marry Kelly, she is furious again at her longtime bete noir and the rest of the group is disgusted with Valerie. Donna bluntly tells her that Brandon always fixed her messes and now that he's gone, Valerie has two choices: grow up or find new friends. Kelly hijacks Valerie's plans to host Thanksgiving, and David (who is not happy with her actions but understands them) tells a stunned Kelly about Valerie's history of being molested by her father before she killed him in self-defence. Kelly is then sympathetic to Valerie and they eventually host a group Thanksgiving at Casa Walsh. Valerie tells the group she's going to move back to Buffalo and heads off to the airport when their dinner is completed.

Return
Valerie returns to Beverly Hills to attend Donna and David's wedding. At Donna's pre-wedding party, Kelly, Janet, Felice and Jackie are in attendance as well as friends from their past who include West Beverly High principal Mrs. Yvonne Teasley, as well as Andrea and even Valerie. Valerie seems much happier and more content and lets the group know that she and Abby are making progress via intensive counseling, as well as how she's fallen in love with a wonderful local guy. The day of the wedding goes without a hitch and at the end, Valerie gets in a last little jab at Kelly when she notes Matt has shown up at the wedding; Kelly rudely asks Valerie what he is doing there and Valerie coolly tells Kelly "As usual, I'm just the messenger here." Kelly huffs off, left without a chance to make Valerie look worse for her benefit, and Valerie gives an amused Dylan a hug.

Relationships
Brandon Walsh

Dylan McKay Dylan and Valerie begin a sexual relationship almost immediately after Valerie arrives in Beverly Hills, as she seeks him out when learning he's Brenda's ex-boyfriend. With Dylan off the wagon, their relationship is unhealthy and ill-advised, and they are never exclusive to each other. While Valerie wants a more serious commitment from Dylan (mainly due to his trust fund), in spite of his drug abuse, he is one of the few guys who sees right through her schemes from the beginning and never lets her get too close. Once Dylan enters rehab, he apologises to Valerie for how he treated her and ends their unhealthy relationship. After Dylan gets better, he aims to find his lost little sister and enlists Valerie to help him, which she does. Afterwards, Dylan is always skeptical of Valerie, although they do hook up again. When Dylan leaves Beverly Hills in 1996, they're amicable and more like friends when they see each other again at Donna and David's wedding in May 2000.

Steve Sanders

Steve asks Valerie out almost the moment she arrives in Beverly Hills. As she puts on a front for everyone, Steve believes her to just be a nice girl, while Valerie schemes to use Steve solely for his money. They go on a few dates, but Steve eventually catches her at a strung-out Dylan's house. Valerie tries to make amends with Steve, who agrees to be cordial as a favour to Brandon. When Steve starts up the After Dark and arranges parties, Valerie wants to help out, but Steve is hesitant, assuming there's a catch. Valerie admits there is: she wants another shot with Steve. He reluctantly agrees to have her help out with the party and they almost have sex there, interrupted by the fire. Following the fire, Valerie offers Steve to lie to give him an alibi and Steve ends their temporary fling. They remain cordial with Steve, but always cautious about Valerie. In their junior year, Steve moves into the Walsh house with Brandon and Valerie. He and Valerie eventually become friends, and at their college graduation party, they sleep together.

Ray Pruit One night at the After Dark, Valerie runs out the battery on Ray's car, despite not having really had any contact with him before, other than watching him perform. When Ray leaves the After Dark, Valerie follows and pretends not to know what happened, offering Ray a ride. He says he just needs cables and Valerie basically offers him sex instead, which he immediately takes her up on, as, unbeknownst to Valerie, Ray has recently sexually frustrated by not sleeping with Donna. They spend the night together in Valerie's hotel room and the next morning Valerie insinuates that she wants him to be her play toy, because she feels alone. Ray is uninterested and leaves. She proceeds to call his house, but he doesn't return her calls. Ray quickly regrets what he did and when Valerie becomes the new partial owner of the After Dark, Ray decides to leave town to avoid her. Val later finds him traveling with his band and asks him to come back to perform at the PPAD.

Colin Robbins Val had a crush on Colin when she was a child and they met on an overseas trip. She became obsessed with him when he showed up in Beverly Hills, partly because of her schoolgirl infatuation, but largely in part to the fact that he was Kelly's boyfriend and she wanted to take him away. When Kelly breaks up with Colin because of his drug use, Val stands by him, defending and protecting him and hiring lawyers for Colin when he had legal trouble. Colin jumped bail (putting the PPAD at risk) and Val ends everything with him and helps apprehend him when she discovers he went to Kelly and asked her to go on the run with him.

David Silver

David and Val had an on-again/off-again relationship from their junior year at college, but after their first relationship (ending when Val volunteered David to sleep with her former friend who was blackmailing her) they could never make it work again. They eventually become best friends until Val leaves Beverly Hills in 1998.

Trivia
BACKSTAGE
 * Brandon Walsh and Valerie Malone were best friends when they were little, and Valerie was Brandon's first kiss
 * Valerie's father molested her when she was younger. She shot him in self-defence.
 * Her sister and brother were fazed out of the series. They were the reason she had to move to Beverly Hills to begin with
 * The character of Valerie Malone was created as a 'substitute' for Brenda Walsh, after Doherty left the series.

Photos

 * Valerie Malone/Gallery