TV LEGEND: Aaron Spelling threatened to sue another Fox TV show for mocking Beverly Hills 90210, including an incest joke involving Brandon and Brenda Walsh.
As I noted in an old TV Legends Revealed discussing whether Aaron Spelling nicked the idea for Beverly Hills, 90210 from Degrassi Junior High, launching in the fall of 1990, Beverly Hills 90210 followed twin siblings Brandon and Brenda Walsh (Jason Priestley and Shannen Doherty, respectively), who moved to Beverly Hills with their parents from Minnesota, and had to deal with the major culture shock of their new environment, both the drastically different weather, but also, of course, the different lifestyle that their fellow Beverly Hills classmates were used to, coming from mostly affluent households. The love triangle between Brenda and her new friend, Kelly Taylor (Jennie Garth), over teen heartthrob Dylan Walsh (played by Luke Perry, who Aaron Spellling was so confident would be a big star that he actually paid Perry’s salary out of his own pocket at first when Fox wouldn’t spring for another cast member. Spelling did so for the first TWO seasons of the show!) was a major factor in the show’s success. The series actually wasn’t a big hit right away, but Fox cleverly scheduled the second season to premiere in the Summer of 1991, while all the other network shows were in reruns, and the «Summer Season» of Beverly Hills 90210 became a cultural sensation, and the actors on the series all became instant teen idols, and the show rose to being in the Top 50 shows on network TV (Fox’s shows were always very poorly rated compared to the other three networks. Beverly Hills 90210 was only the second Fox show to ever crack the Top 50, with The Simpsons being the first).
Naturally, when a show becomes a cultural phenomenon like Beverly Hills 90210, it is bound to be parodied, and 90210 was no exception. However, when the Fox series, The Edge, went for a particularly brutal parody of Beverly Hills 90210 in 1992, Aaron Spelling did NOT take it well, to the point where he threatened a lawsuit over it!
What was The Edge?
As I noted in an old TV Legends Revealed about The Edge, David Mirkin was a longtime sitcom writer who became the showrunner on the hit series, Newhart, in the 1980s, earning his first Emmy Award nomination in 1987 for the episode, «Co-Hostess Twinkie.» Mirkin’s interests, though, were not really in the multi-camera format, and he left Newhart in 1988, freelance writing for single camera series like It’s Garry Shandling’s Show and The Tracey Ullman Show. In 1990, Mirkin launched the surrealistic comedy series, Get a Life, with Chris Elliott, for Fox (one of the most notable «cult classic» sitcoms of all-time). Someone out there obviously felt that Mirkin’s distinctive sense of humor would mesh with the comedy of Julie Brown, the comedian best known at the time for her «valley girl» comedy songs, and her parodies of Madonna.
Mirkin co-created The Julie Show in 1991 with Brown (and Brown’s longtime collaborator, Charlie Coffey), but the series was not picked up by NBC. NBC liked Mirkin and Brown (who had actually started dating at the time), though, so the network commissioned a concept for a sketch comedy series by Mirkin, starring Brown. NBC ended up passing on the concept, but Fox picked it up, and The Edge debuted on Fox in 1992.
The concept behind The Edge was to do, well, you know, edgy sketch comedy (I’ll write a future legend about one sketch in particular that was TOO edgy for a major TV creator), while also moving at a very fast pace, constantly moving from sketch to sketch. The talent on the show was amazing. Brown was the star, but the cast included a pre-Spongebob Squarepants Tom Kenny, a pre-Mr. Show Jill Talley, a pre-Seinfeld Wayne Knight, a pre-blockbuster movie director Paul Feig, plus, of course, a pre-Friends Jennifer Aniston.
That previous TV Legend was about how The Edge would open every show with the cast being KILLED in a variety of gruesome and absurd ways! It’s amazing to look back at a show that showed Jennifer Aniston being killed every week. So you know the show was not for the faint of heart, but that «edge,» as it were, caused problems with a sketch in the show’s second ever episode.
The Edge‘s second episode contained a two-part parody of Beverly Hills 90210 (then in its third season). The sketch mocked the moralizing of 90210 (with Brenda, played by Julie Brown, talking directly to the audience about how underage drinking, drug use, and unprotected sex were all very dangerous, and not at all cool! Aniston’s Kelly repeated it, as well), then it mocked the sex appeal of Brandon (played by Tom Kenny) and Dylan (played by a post-Ferris Bueller’s Day Off/pre-Succession Alan Ruck, who wasn’t an official cast member, but would appear in a number of episodes), with them ripping their shirts off as soon as they’re in the scene. It also mocked the hairdos of Brandon and Dylan, and Dylan’s sensitive nature. Then, with Carol Rosenthal’s Tori Spelling, it mocked the fact that Spelling’s daughter was one of the stars of the show, with Tori telling the others that she can do whatever she wants (including slapping Brenda and kneeing Dylan in the groin) because it was «my daddy’s show.»
Things got even darker, though, in the second half of the parody, which appeared later in the episode.
Here, the show parodied the chemistry that Jason Priestley and Shannen Doherty had as twins on the show by having their relationship turn romantic, as the twins begin making out in Brenda’s bedroom. Their mother interrupts them, and she is fine with it, as she notes, women in her age demographic all go for Brandon. Even when Dylan discovers them, he tells them that he can relate, as he has sisters. As you might imagine, the show was NOT well-received by Aaron Spelling!
What was Aaron Spelling's reaction to the 90210 parody?
Spelling sent a letter to Tristar Studios, the producers of The Edge, threatening a lawsuit unless he received a public apology and a promise to never do it again. As reported at the time by the Tampa Bay Times:
TV producer Aaron Spelling, upset at the way a new Fox TV show parodied his hit Fox series Beverly Hills, 90210, is threatening to sue the producers unless they make a public apology and promise never to do it again.In an unusual twist of events that puts the Fox network in the embarrassing position of having offended its top program supplier, Spelling says that a Sept. 26 episode of the sketch comedy program The Edge contained a «tasteless take-off» of 90210 that depicted «acts of incest» among the characters.
Spelling produces 90210 and two other Fox series, Melrose Place and The Heights; 90210 also stars his daughter, Tori Spelling. The threats came in a letter sent by an attorney for Spelling to John Feltheimer, president of TriStar Television, the company that produces The Edge. Fox has ordered 13 episodes of the series. Specifically, Spelling charges in the letter that the Edge spoof constituted trademark infringement and was meant to «cause confusion and deception among the viewing public concerning the source and sponsorship of your take-off.»
Tristar, naturally, argued that it was allowed to parody any show it wanted, adding that in that same episode, it also parodied Designing Women, a show that it also produced! Mirkin responded to Spelling in the Los Angeles Times, noting, “The thing about these parodies is they don’t hurt a show. It’s only cross-promotion. The viewers who like the show always come back the next week. What’s upsetting to me is it shows absolutely that Mr. Spelling has no sense of humor.”
Mirkin would leave The Edge before the first season ended, which a number of people attributed to the controversy surrounding Spelling (who, of course, WAS producing three different shows for Fox at the time). Mirkin gave HIS reasons for why he left the show years later, which was very difficult for him as the show was his first hit on his own:
For the first time I experienced the feeling of having a hit that I created. It just kept building and growing. It was so very difficult to get that perfect combination – it’s like the combination on a safe — everything has to click in place for it to come together in terms of casting, time slot, material, network support. All of that was happening. It also happened to be the time, around 1992, that Sony was falling apart financially and Sony was our studio. Originally it was New World but Sony had bought New World, and they were panicking. So some bright accountant determined that a sketch show would never earn any money in syndication, which was an insane fallacy, but they all decided to pretend it was true. So just as I was getting my back 13 order, they came to me and said, “By the way, you have to do it for this enormous budget cut.” Not a pay cut for me – my salary was unchanged, but the whole production budget was going to be cut down anywhere from a third to a half. I was already directing at twice the speed; I was directing two episodes of material a week to try and save the company money. And now, even in success, they were coming to me and telling me that they were going to slash our budget. I explained to them that it was not possible to produce a show of network quality for that amount of money. But they said they had to do it and I said, if that was the case, I would have to leave. That was definitely a low point and one of the toughest decisions I ever made because I had to walk away from a sweet, talented cast I loved, great writers and a show that was my longtime dream.
Of course, Mirkin landed right on his feet, being hired right away by The Simpsons to become the showrunner of Season 5-6, two of the most beloved seasons in the show’s history. He later returned to work as a consultant on the show for many, many years.
Amusingly, a couple of years after the incident, Julie Brown was a guest on The Tonight Show where the other guest was none other than Jason Priestley!
Jason Priestley noted that he had enjoyed the parody, and he and Julie even did some «making out» in their chairs, as well.
Obviously, Spelling’s lawsuit threats never went anywhere, and I don’t believe Tristar ever apologized. Spelling was a bit of a litigious guy. He later sued a nurse that had worked for him and her lawyer for defamation and breach of a confidentiality agreement when she accused him of sexual harassment, and the lawyer had sent out letters to actors who ahd worked with Spelling to ask if they had been harassed by the producer. The lawsuit was eventually thrown out after Spelling’s death (his estate continued the suit, but eventually lost, and the verdict was upheld on appeal).
The legend is…
STATUS: True
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