Gee, things on 90210 sure are hotting up – like last week, when that person did that thing to that person? Wow.

OK, we admit it. We haven’t watched any of 90210, and nobody else has either. But that’s all about to change, because 90210‘s knight in shining armour is charging over the horizon to resurrect its ratings – that’s right, Shannen Doherty is returning to the show!

According to the woman herself, Shannen Doherty is set to appear in the 90210 season finale. Finally, someone with enough star power to hold down a supporting part in a 2007 made-for-TV Christmas movie. You’re saved, 90210! Saved!

When it was announced that Beverly Hills 90210 was being developed into a spin-off, everybody knew that it could go one of two ways – it could either do a Battlestar Galactica and become a deadly serious space opera full of impenetrable allegories to the Iraq war, or it’d be a sort of shitty OC rip-off full of relentlessly braying knobends who all appear to think that the universe revolves around them even though their all-time life highpoint is bound to be involve acting in a Clearasil commercial.

Needless to say, it turned out to be the latter.

However, that’s not to say that 90210 is all bad. In fact, it performs an important social function by keeping some of the original Beverly Hills 90210 cast in gainful employment. If 90210 hadn’t given Tori Spelling a minor recurring role, there’s a fairly strong chance that she’d currently be pushed up against the outside of a restaurant window awkwardly begging diners for scraps.

As for Jennie Garth, well let’s just say that 90210 has probably stopped her from joining the human trafficking trade.

And then there’s Shannen Doherty. Shannen Doherty was the beating heart of Beverly Hills 90210 – albeit the obnoxiously bratty beating heart who seemed to hate every minute of it – and, after one headline-grabbing appearance on the 90210 spin-off, she’s decided to make her glorious return during the show’s finale. But only because she likes the show. It hasn’t got anything to do with her film career imploding more than a decade ago, you hear? The Press Association reports:

Shannen Doherty has revealed she’s returning to the Beverly Hills 90210 spin-off. The actress reprised the role of Brenda Walsh for a few early episodes of the series, 90210, and has now confirmed the character will be back for the season finale. She told E!: “You’re the first people I’ve told. It is the finale, so you can probably expect a lot of drama.”

Yes, you read that right – Shannen Doherty is going to bring a lot of drama to the 90210 finale. We don’t think she means onscreen by the way, since just about the most dramatic thing to happen in the show so far involves a girl having the hots for the editor of the school paper.

But Shannen Doherty is definitely going to bring the drama offscreen, where she plans to kick over a craft services table and pin a chef to a wall by his throat because the sandwiches have been cut into rectangles instead of triangles.

But will Shannen Doherty’s return make us watch 90210? No. And the reason is simple – the show’s title hasn’t been abbreviated enough. Going from Beverly Hills 90210 to 90210 is just lazy. Call us when it’s called 9021, or Ni- and then we’ll think about it.

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