No-no-NoTORIous

I watched So Notorious for the first time last night, and it occurred to me, among other things, that Donna Martin is 90210’s most lasting character. If you watch the Brenda years (which are playing daily on Soapnet, my crack channel, for the next few weeks), you’ll be reminded of how highly improbable that is. For the first two years of 90210, up until the summer Donna and David performed a scene from Shakespeare, all Tori Spelling ever did was stand around looking awkward— there because her daddy said she had to be, but too narrow-faced and weird looking to be given anything to do.
But from those humble beginnings… Donna Martin is responsible for 90210’s most memorable line (“Donna Martin graduates” of course, even though she didn’t say it. The only other quotable line I can remember is Kelly’s lame-ass “I choose me” from the Dylan-Brandon triangle of later years, which, it turns out, was ganked from Moonlighting anyway) and is its most original character creation.
Just about every teen show has got a requisite Dylan McKay bad boy, and also, the good, yet hot, Brandon Walsh type (Ryan from The OC being both at once, the two male leads on One Tree Hill taking turns with each, the Veronica Mars boys sticking with one or the other). The crappy, but troubled best friend, a la Kelly Taylor, has appeared in Felicity, OTH, and Dawson’s Creek. Brenda, the character, isn’t original, just the lead, and her boundary pushing, good-girl, bad-girl antics have been a component of every young adult show before or since. Even Steve Sanders, 90210’s other most original creation (also an accident), has oddly been reincarnated, as, wait for it, Seth Cohen (because though they always pretended Steve was some popular kid, he was really just the biggest goof-ball of all time, a fact which became more and more obvious as the series went on. No, he’s not as funny or as cute as Seth Cohen/ Adam Brody sometimes is, but they have a similar vibe. Seriously. Don’t get bogged down in the hipster thing.) But there aren’t many allegedly religious virgins with the clothes of a whore and hair the color of fluorescent light prancing around network TV these days.
It’s not that virgins and their virginity don’t figure in as major plot points on television shows—they just don’t figure for over seven years. Party of Five’s Julia did it, so did Felicity, and so will Everwood’s Hannah. There was a 20-something virgin who was the lead of Kevin Williamson’s short lived Wasteland (what happened to that guy?), but chances are she would have given it up to Brad Rowe pretty quickly. In this time of red and blue states, and all the ‘trend pieces’ on born again virgins and abstinence clubs, you’d figure the long-term virgin would be due for a comeback.
Especially since, to judge from Donna, the virginity thing wasn’t particularly limiting plot-wise. The girl didn’t have a problem finding boyfriends willing to be forever blue-balled and she didn’t bore anyone talking about her spiritual beliefs—she didn’t seem to have any. Donna was a virgin because, either, Aaron Spelling insisted or the writer’s were coyly (and kind of hysterically) trying to avoid squeeing out their boss. It was just this quirky fact about her, like being allergic to peanuts or having six toes.
So, Donna Martin is known for being a virgin, but virginity was not actually all that relevant to Donna Martin-ness. You might wonder, then, what was relevant to Donna Martin-ness? And having seen So Notorious I can tell you: the only relevant thing about Donna Martin is Tori Spelling. In the show, Tori Spelling plays “Tori Spelling,” who also starred as Donna Martin on 90210 and is now a struggling actress. “Tori,” (and by implication, also the real Tori) are incredibly similar to Donna, if Donna had existed in a comedy and not a soap opera. Sure, “Tori” makes dirty jokes that Donna wouldn’t, has gay friends, which Donna didn’t, and tries really hard to sleep around (and like early Donna, can’t actually get any.) But “Tori” and Donna are both sweet and goofy, though “Tori” doesn’t bashfully look down at her toes and purse her lips as often, thank god. In one of the episodes opening scenes, Tori’s on a blind date with a guy who begs for an audition for her father’s new show. She’s aghast, thinks it’s rude, and then, because she can’t be mean, says she’ll see what she can do. So Donna.
“Tori” has to deal with the spectre of Donna often. Men want to date her so they can “pop Donna Martin’s cherry” and people appear out of nowhere chanting “Donna Martin Graduates.” She goes out to a stand-up show on a first date, and gets reamed by the comedian. In the eyes of everyone else, “Tori” might as well be Donna. The way people feel about and remember Donna actively effects how they interact with her. The lore of Donna and Tori have merged into one-- ask someone what they know about Donna Martin, and they will say, she was a virgin, who dated David, and whose father created the show. It’s all mixed up.
It gets even weirder when you factor in the existence of the real Tori Spelling and start to wonder how similar she actually is to “Tori” and Donna. You have to figure a lot, not only because she is the actress behind them, but because 90210 and Donna must follow her around everywhere. All this boils down to: So Notorious is a 90210 spin-off. Sweet.