Today in TV History: The Bride Wore Blood Red on ‘Beverly Hills, 90210’

Of all the great things about television, the greatest is that it’s on every single day. TV history is being made, day in and day out, in ways big and small. In an effort to better appreciate this history, we’re taking a look back, every day, at one particular TV milestone. 

IMPORTANT DATE IN TV HISTORY: November 8, 1995

PROGRAM ORIGINALLY AIRED ON THIS DATE: Beverly Hills, 90210, “One Wedding and a Funeral” (season 6, episode 10). [Stream on Hulu.]

WHY IT’S IMPORTANT: Dylan McKay sure did get put through the wringer on Beverly Hills, 90210. I mean, when he wasn’t two-timing his high-school girlfriends and heading off on a bender, that is. But Dylan watching his dad blow up in a car bomb right before his eyes was easily the most harrowing moment of the Beverly Hills 90210 high school years.

Once 90210 entered its college phase — and in particular when it had the success of its soapier sister show Melrose Place staring back at it from across the dial — they really started to step things up with the tragedy and mortal danger. Deadly house fires, traumatic kidnappings, domestic abuse, cults, cocaine, heroin … things got bad. But things got the worst for Dylan. And it all came when it seemed like things were going the best for him. He’d gotten his money back, sobered up, seemingly had gotten past his hangups with Kelly. He’d even met a girl, the Noxeema-ly beautiful Toni Marchette. Of course, there was a dark cloud over that: Toni’s father was the mobster who was responsible for Dylan’s dad’s death. Initially, Dylan started dating his daughter as an act of revenge. But like all TV romances that begin as acts of revenge, Dylan and Toni’s turned to something genuine and real before long.

The word had made it to the press that Luke Perry would be leaving 90210 mid-season, and riding off into the sunset with his fresh(ly scrubbed)-faced new bride seemed like it made sense. But then Toni had to go start off the wedding episode talking to Kelly and Donna about them being there for each other “for the rest of our lives.” Oh, Toni. You in danger, girl.

What’s interesting about “One Wedding and a Funeral” is how upfront it is about its intentions. Somebody is going to die. There’s no surprise car bomb here. Papa Marchette orders the hit on camera in the first 10 minutes. The hitmen go on kind of a workaday cruise around Dylan’s neighborhood, waiting for him to get home so they can whack him. Even the title of the episode announced itself. I guess the idea is that we were supposed to assume that Dylan would die, and that would be his exit. Oh how wrong we were.

Even knowing what was going to happen, even in horrible low-quality YouTube (get it together, internet), it is a brutal scene to watch. Toni tumbling dead out of the driver’s-side door, into a screaming Dylan’s arms, in the pouring rain. It’s easily the closest that 90210 got to the heights of Melrose Place‘s life-or-death melodrama.

In the end, Dylan left Beverly Hills a broken widower, ready to walk the earth like Samuel L. Jackson at the end of Pulp Fiction. (Until he came back years later, but let’s not.)

[You can stream Beverly Hills 90210‘s “One Wedding and a Funeral” on Hulu.]