Andrea fights with the school board to lead a campaign to have condoms distributed at West Beverly. But not all of the gang and their parents are happy about it since Donna's uptight, influential, and fiercely conservative mother, Felice, is opposed to any sex education in schools and has the PTA rally around her for her own self-serving support. Meanwhile, Brenda writes a term paper about her experiences with her pregnancy scare, which upsets Dylan who feels his privacy should be kept private. Also, David wants to plan a special evening with Donna.

David leads Brenda, Kelly and Donna to the Bel Age Hotel on a mission to meet the pop group 'Color Me Badd' when they come to town. But only Kelly gets to meet the band, while David and Brenda get stuck in the hotel stairwell, and Donna sees her mother, Felice, at the hotel with a man other than her father. Meanwhile, Brandon, Dylan and Steve, left alone at the Walsh House, hire an exotic dancer to ease their boredom. But they end up seeing very little of her when Andrea shows up for a surprise visit and won't leave.

Brenda and Brandon are dateless for the Senior Prom. A school announcement is made that any student caught at Senior Prom drinking, intoxicated or with illicit drugs will be suspended from school and prevented from graduating. Footballer Tony Miller asks Brenda to prom on the day of the event, and Andrea asks Brandon at the last moment after her date, Jordan Bonner, gets ill. Steve takes Celeste Lundey, while Dylan naturally goes with Kelly. Donna doesn't eat all day so that she will fit into her prom dress. She is hit harder by pre-prom champagne than the rest of the gang, appears to be drunk at prom, and ends up collapsing in front of Mrs Teasley.

Following a little advice from Gil Meyers, Brandon and the rest of Donna's friends join forces to help her in a major school protest when she is suspended from school and is threatened with not graduating for getting drunk on Senior Prom night.

Donna is afraid to tell her mother about David living with her and Kelly at their new beach front house. Kelly tells Donna about her troubles with Dylan during their stay in France with both trying to make each other jealous. Dylan returns from Europe to reconcile with Kelly who admits he was faithful to her. Meanwhile, Brandon tries to get close to Jill who wants to take things slow, and it unwittingly creates jealousy with Steve. In Minnesota, Brenda gets homesick for the warmth of Beverly Hills while trying to adjust to college life and her brash roommate Darla Hanson.

Strange dreams contemplate Donna to fulfill David's dream to sleep with her on their second anniversary together, until her parents show up for a surprise visit. Meanwhile, Brandon returns from San Francisco where he learns about the Steve's botch break-in, who finds himself left in cold after Mike Ryan and the rest of the frat members reject him. Only John Sears remains sympathetic to Steve and tries to help. But when Brandon learns and relays to Steve that the campus police were anonymously tipped off to Steve's break-in, Steve realizes that Sears had set him up. In the meantime, Brandon plays hardball with the corrupt Professor Randall to drop the break-in charges against Steve by threatening to go public about him rigging test scores for D'Shawn and other basketball stars to they can play basketball for the university. Elsewhere, Andrea falls deeply in love with Jesse. Also, John Sears continued wooing of Kelly only pushes her back to Dylan.

Donna announces to the gang that she has decided to move to Houston to be a débutante. But Kelly eventually learns that Donna still emotionally fragile since her breakup with David and she's hiding behind her mother just to avoid running into him. Dylan also finds out that his entire bank account is cleaned out by Kevin and Suzanne's scam, but alienated with life and embarrassed and ashamed at himself for what happened, Dylan keeps his financial problem to himself. Meanwhile, Brandon decides to tell Dylan about him and Kelly, but chickens out after seeing him drinking again. Later, at a banquet for Donna's, Dylan crashes the party and creates an ugly scene after being inadvertently tipped off by Nat about Brandon and Kelly. Dylan then goes to a nightclub where Jesse is bar-tending and tries to get a drink, but Jesse turns him away, and Dylan also picks up a prostitute at the bar. When Kelly comes over to Dylan's out to talk to him, she finds him with the scantly clad prostitute. When Donna's mother criticizes her behavior by accepting a dance with D'Shawn, she decides to face up to Felice and stay in Beverly Hills. The university's day-care program leaves Andrea wanting to spend more time with her baby. Also, Brandon is reunited with Josh Richland who offers him a chance to run with him for campus office.

Brandon has trouble coping with Josh's sudden death in a car accident, which is a challenge to his political position when he's forced to fill Josh's shoes. Meanwhile, Donna finds a new man for herself, a KEG member named Griffin Stone, who her mother wants her to date. David meets Clare for the first time, and they, too, become close. Also, Valerie continues pursuing Dylan, who lays out ground rules that their clandestine relationship is based purely on sex, while Valerie continues her "good girl" charade in front of Steve and everyone else.

Dylan enters a rehab center after all of his friends conduct an intervention. Valerie and Clare, 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 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. Kelly gets a modeling offer from Seventeen magazine. Meanwhile, Ray has dinner with Donna's wary parents Felice and John. Also, David and Clare's homemade video of their lovemaking disappears and turns up in the home of Donna's parents.

Donna's snobbish mother, Felice, puts Ray's feelings for her daughter to a test by offering him money to stop seeing her, while Ray's alcoholic, chain-smoking, redneck mother, LuAnn, goes Christmas shopping with Donna. Differing family traditions cause tension between the Catholic Jesse and the Jewish Andrea. Clare introduces David to her father during a faculty Christmas party who finds common ground with him over their love of music. Meanwhile, Dylan goes to his old friend, Christine Pettit, from the FBI to help him find his stolen money. Unable to help Dylan, Christine then contacts an alcoholic, former FBI agent-turned-bounty hunter/private investigator, named Jay J. Jones (Jonesy), who contacts Dylan on Christmas Day and offers to track down his money in exchange for getting a full share of it. 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. Also, Nat hosts a special holiday feed-the-homeless dinner at the Peach Pit.

Brandon, Kelly, Donna and Steve appear in Clare and David's cinema verity project which ends up revealing truths from their pasts to each other. 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 temps Dylan. After visiting a therapist, Andrea considers telling Jesse about her affair. But she is unprepared when Jesse has a confession of his own for her.

The gang goes to Palm Springs for the national KEG/ALPHA fraternity/sorority convention, where Steve tries to find the perfect woman for himself after he rejects the blind date his father sets him up with. But Steve gets more than he bargained for when he meets a shady women named Elle. Kelly spends a day shopping with Alison in which David and Clare misinterpret their relationship as something else. Jim and Cindy put their house up for sale before moving away to Hong Kong. Meanwhile, Donna brings Ray along to make up with him, but later regrets it when he injures her during a fight, while he manages to stay on the good side of her mother. In another part of town, Dylan and Charlie meet with Tom Rose, a mobster-type businessman as a potential backer for their film who agrees to finance their movie, but only if Tom's beautiful, but untalented mistress, gets the lead role.

In Palm Springs, Brandon reacts coldly to Kelly after mistakenly thinking that she and Allison are more than friends; he considers surrendering to Valerie's advances toward him. 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. Meanwhile, Steve finally learns Elle's secret of being "more than a woman." Donna decides to give the possessive Ray a second chance, and rudely blows off Valerie, revealing she's figured out that Valerie seduced Ray. Also, Tom Rose and his thugs threaten Dylan with death when they catch him phoning agent Christine Pettit to make a background check of Mr. Rose, for they know something about Dylan's father's murder. This prompts Dylan to terminate his partnership with Charlie and return to Beverly Hills, determined more than ever to find the mobster who ordered his father's killing.

Brandon returns to Beverly Hills from his summer job in Boston and at Steve's advice, he helps set up a destructive rave party in his parents vacant house. Valerie welcomes Ginger LaMonica, a visiting friend of hers from Buffalo who's as wild and devious as she, and has an eye for Brandon. Meanwhile, Kelly returns to Beverly Hills with a new boyfriend named Colin Robins, a young artist whom she met while modeling in New York City. Donna hosts a party on her parents yacht, while trying to hide her doubts about her future relationship with Ray. Also, Dylan becomes more and more obsessed with avenging his father's death when he visits his family's storage locker and talks with his father's former prison cell mate.

Brandon and Susan cover the Tournament of Roses Royal Court tryouts in which Kelly, Donna, and Clare are candidates. After his successful return to the stage, Ray gives a command performance to the 11-year old daughter of a record company president. Meanwhile, Toni begins to get to Dylan while he develops feelings for her. Also, Kelly becomes jealous when Colin attends the Rose Ball with Valerie, and Steve tries to find an out to his math tutoring from Clare by tapping in on an Internet dating system.

A major earthquake hits L.A. which traps Susan and Brandon in an elevator with a pregnant woman who goes into labor. Meanwhile, his friends are rocked after Dylan's announcement about his and Toni's engagement. While Donna continues to try out for Rose Queen, she finds a picture of her mother taken during a 1969 Rose competition, while at the same time, Ray's therapist warns Donna that he has a history of being abused as a child by his father and he may harm her.

Donna's mother, Felice, confesses a past indiscretion to her about her involvement in the Rose Bowl tryouts of 1969, causing Donna to question her own innocence. Meanwhile, 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. A revenge-seeking Ray charges Joe with battery over their Halloween encounter, resulting in Joe being suspended from CU's homecoming football game. Also, Steve tries to protect the CU mascot, the Golden Condor Head, from the rival college. Brandon mourns the departure of Dylan from Beverly Hills, and Susan encourages him to write a paper about Dylan's plight.

Joe's assault and battery trial begins where Donna is caught in a lie on the witness stand, and Brandon gets a national byline for his coverage of the trial. Meanwhile, the sociopath Valerie once again puts her manipulative skills in action when she tells Colin and Susan about Brandon and Kelly's romantic liaison at Thanksgiving to break them up, while Kelly sees a different and kinder side to Colin when they spend time with her sister Erin.

Steve pleads guilty to plagiarizing and avoids a hearing in front of Chancelor Arnold and the conduct council, but the corrupt and vindictive Professor Randall pursues a case against an innocent Brandon. At the last moment, Steve, with Clare's help, proves Brandon's innocence when they expose Randall for fabricating evidence against Brandon. Meanwhile, David hedges on investing in Valerie's club while Donna clashes with her uptight mother, Felice, over wanting to renew her relationship with David as part of her effort to help his mental recovery. Also, Kelly throws a surprise birthday party for Mark who becomes increasingly jealous about her and Brandon.

Valerie and Kelly are reluctantly paired in a Christmas gift exchange, where Valerie goes shopping with Tracy to find the certain gift. Kelly gets a big surprise when she meets Joy, a half-sister from her father that she never knew existed. Meanwhile, Steve and Clare find themselves playing holiday matchmakers to his mother and her father during a Christmas faculty party. Also, David tries to get on the good side of Donna's conservative and domineering mother, Felice, who offends everyone again. Elsewhere, Brandon and Tracy share their exchange of gifts.

Brandon, Steve and Dick are partnered together for a three-man basketball team at CU. But that night, Steve and Dick's marijuana habit takes a turn for the worse when Dick suggests heroin and eventually dies from an OD at the After Dark. Meanwhile, Donna wavers between David and Cliff, who try to get on the good side of her parents. Gigi Crane, a magazine writer, starts hanging out with Valerie to get a story about L.A.'s cool people. Kelly and Clare pose as Russians to do some flirting with two other guys during a weekend trip to Palm Springs.

Brandon and Tracy arrive in Hong Kong for Spring Break to visit Jim Walsh at his apartment, minus Cindy Walsh (who is supposedly visiting Brenda in England). Jim and Tracy get along fine, but he senses something off and questions Brandon about his hidden feelings for Kelly, as well as where Brandon really stands in his relationship with Tracy. Back in Beverly Hills, Donna and her uptight mother argue about what's best for Dr. Martin pending his release from the hospital; David tries to cool down the conflict. Meanwhile, 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. A lonely Kelly drowns her sorrows with hard liquor.

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. Meanwhile, Donna persuades Felice to accompany her to the KEG/ALPHA spring campus talent show, where she gets increasingly worried when a former boyfriend of Felice's (from 'Things to Do on a Rainy Day') shows up to accompany her. Also, Clare takes the stage to sing her favorite song due to a suggestion from Steve, who thinks the idea's all wet when he hears her awful singing voice during rehearsals.

On Mother's Day weekend, Clare still grieves over her long-dead mother and Steve cannot figure out how to increase her spirits. Kelly must share a shocking secret with Brandon when she thinks that she may be pregnant. Meanwhile, 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 her nefarious plan to invest the cash in Kelly's father's business. Donna becomes stressed out from balancing time with David and studying for her final exams, and has another run-in with her cold-hearted business professor, Langley, who openly disapproves of Donna dating David because the professor sees him as a distraction to Donna's future.

On the day before commencement, Kelly becomes determined to oust Valerie from the Walsh house (and town) and pressures Brandon to do so. Meanwhile, Donna decides it's time to move up to a new level of romance with David after getting advice from her grandmother. Steve plans to pull the "best senior prank ever" with some help from his frat brother Muntz, as well as David.

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 1920s nostalgic post-graduation party for the class and has the The Cardigans band perform. He also tries to make up with Kelly, who continues to push him away. Steve's stepbrothers, Ryan and Austin, show up for festivities where Ryan is drawn to Kelly's half-sister, Joy. Also, Steve's plans for Clare derail due to her decision to move to Paris with Chancellor Arnold, which leads to Steve and Clare breaking up for good.

Living together begins to take its toll on Kelly and Brandon's relationship. Donna asks David to move back in with her at the beachfront apartment, but with a stipulation that they sleep in separate rooms and that he doesn't tell her parents. Meanwhile, Steve has a couple of run-ins with Carly Reynolds - a young, overprotective, sarcastic, single mother with a six-year-old boy named Zack - who Steve wants to know more about.

With Kelly recovering in hospital from a drive-by shooting in an LAX parking lot, Brandon searches for the shooter and his partner who were responsible for the car theft that Kelly witnessed. Meanwhile, Donna lands another job at a prestigious fashion company and, after much hesitation, finally tells her mother of her living arrangements with David. Steve has yet another run in with Carly and tries to help her financially by landing her a job at the Peach Pit. After spending a torrid night with Valerie, Noah makes a quick exit and refuses to associate with her again.

After parting ways with After Dark, David takes a retail job at a department store and continues to reject friendly overtures from Noah, who takes over ownership of After Dark. Meanwhile, Brandon hires Emma Bennett, an attractive young writer, for important articles at the Beverly Beat. Kelly questions the professionalism of Dr. Monahan after he makes a pass at her. Valerie lobbies Noah to let her manage the Peach Pit After Dark, much to Donna's suspicions and jealousy. Elsewhere, Steve and Carly search for time alone together, while Donna's mother disapproves of her dating Noah.

Donna's grandmother is hospitalized after telling Donna that her soulmate is David, who moves out of the Valerie's room at the Walsh house and into Carly's vacant house until he can afford a more inexpensive place. Meanwhile, Kelly alerts Brandon to a potential story about a recently paroled ex-con who explains to Brandon about the mistakes he made that changed his life, which Brandon realizes parallel his own. Steve coaxes Brandon into a double date with two women who he ran into at the Peach Pit, unaware that the women are not who they appear to be. Valerie brings a record executive to the After Dark to hear David and the band, Jasper's Legend, perform their debut. But Valerie is hurt after David tells her that the love song he wrote was about Donna, not her.

Kelly accompanies Valerie's mother, 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. Back in Los Angeles, Noah's and Donna's relationship is on the rocks as he continues to mourn over his father's recent suicide over his failed business, and the fact when IRS agents show up to confiscate everything of Mr. Hunter's for income tax fraud. Meanwhile, Donna is done in by another back-stabbing designer, Carrie, who gets a job after taking credit for Donna's clothing designs. Brandon learns something about Noah's father when he goes for an interview for a job at the L.A. Bureau of The New York Times. Also, Steve invents a date to make Sophie jealous while she continues to make the moves on David after he gets a job on a radio show.

Steve decides to market his pick-up techniques with a seminar class to show some guys how to pick up girls at the After Dark club. Meanwhile, Kelly balks at the request of sleeping with Matt, and later regrets it. Gina begins to stir up trouble between Donna and her mother, Felice, by using their tension to play them against each other. While Gina discovers Dylan's drug use, he discovers that his dead wife Toni's grave has been moved away apparently by Marchette and decides to buy a gun to settle the past once and for all. Also, David meets an attractive, naive woman, named Gertrude, using Steve's pick-up technique.

Dylan looks for a strange man after he saves Dylan's life after a jet-ski accident. After finding out that Donna's mother is the one responsible for mismanaging her trust fund, Gina decides to sue Felice for $1.1 million. Meanwhile, Steve acquires a brothel madam's book of her clients to publish for the newspaper in which Matt finds valuable in order to blackmail the prosecutor for a case he is dealing. Kelly becomes torn over being with Dylan or Matt. Also, David advertises for a girlfriend on his radio show and one particular one, a young Hispanic girl named Claudia, responds.

Donna becomes a nervous wreck after her parents announce their decision to separate, and Noah tries to help Donna find out why her parents would want to end their marriage. Matt and Dylan team up as pool sharks and end up in a bar fight with some disgruntled losers. Meanwhile, David befriends Sonny Sharp, a former top radio DJ, whom he tries to help make a comeback. Janet and Steve baby-sit Peter, an 11-year-old child prodigy with big college plans. Gina lies about her relationship with a movie celebrity while house-sitting for the person. Also, Kelly finds a truth about her feelings for Dylan after admitting her feelings for him on a live stage while under hypnosis which prompts a cold response from both Matt and Gina.

Janet goes into premature labor near the end of the honeymoon and gives birth to a baby girl, while Steve maintains a vigil through the week as he worries about the safety of Janet and their newborn. Meanwhile, Dylan asks Kelly and Nat to volunteer in a feed-the-homeless Thanksgiving dinner at the community center. Kelly, seeking a way to boost Jackie's mood, asks her to help out with the dinner, while little Erin continues to mope about her parents' separation. Donna learns of a past indiscretion by her father with Gina's mother, which brings out revelations that could threaten to tear Donna's family apart. Also, David becomes uncertain about where Gina stands with him over her breakup with Dylan.

As Christmas approaches, Gina's meeting with Dr. Martin as her biological father is awkward and unsatisfying, similar to Janet and her parents when they accidentally run into each other at a Christmas tree lot. Steve eventually confronts Janet's parents and tells them to stop acting cold towards her and him. Donna's mother, Felice, offers to help Gina financially, but she refuses. Meanwhile, Donna can't let go of Noah's accident years ago resulting in the death of his girlfriend which leads to her and him considering breaking up. Also, Dylan loses control in front of kids during a Christmas gathering at the community center when he punches a belligerent neighbor complaining about the center's residents hanging around his house. Matt takes advantage of a client's latest fee to buy Kelly an engagement ring and proposes marriage which she accepts. But Dylan confides in David about him still having strong feelings for Kelly.

After Dr. Martin dies from a sudden and massive stroke, unspoken accusations regarding his death haunt Gina. But Felice, as always, speaks her mind accusing Gina of bringing on her husband's fatal stroke while Donna gets consul David and the rest of the gang. Meanwhile, Kelly considers taking a job in public relations while Matt's financial situation gets worse. Dylan decides to explore greener pastures when he decides to leave town and Gina decides on the same. Also, Noah has trouble getting over his kidnapping and brush with death which leads to him drinking again. With everyone against her and conflicted by her past, Gina says goodbye to Donna after Dr. Martin's funeral to return to New York, but Dylan decides to stay to be near Kelly.

Kelly recruits Steve and Janet's five-month-old baby, Maddy, for a photo ad as part of her first independent PR assignment for a new knock-wurst sausage. But when the plans fall through, Steve decides to step in and volunteer himself for the ad. Meanwhile, Noah meets and becomes acquainted with Ellen, a fellow AA member in need of attention. Matt accompanies Dylan on a motorcycle road trip in the California hills where they Matt unknowingly ingests acid at a desert rave which leads to him spending the night with one of the party girls. Also, Donna's distress over David grows after she catches him and Camille in a compromising sexual position on the floor of the boutique after hours.

Dylan's generous wedding gift of two open-ended airplane tickets vexes both Kelly and Matt who consider moving to Seattle for Matt to interview for a job at a prestigious law firm. Meanwhile, Steve and Janet receive an offer by a businessman to buy their newspaper which Janet will run it where as Steve will not which sets both of them to try out a trial run of Steve being with baby Maddy for a week while Janet runs the office. Donna tells David that she wants to keep their relationship strictly platonic, while Donna's mother, Felice, tells her that she has decided to put the family house up for sale. Also, Noah meets Ellen's family which includes her mother and Ellen's six-year-old, out-of-wedlock daughter.

David and Donna announce their engagement in which all of their friends rush to give them the perfect wedding with Donna's mother, Felice, and Kelly's mother, Jackie, taking over the arrangements and Nat catering for the ceremony and agreeing to escort Donna down the church aisle. Meanwhile, Steve asks Janet to help him form their own publishing company so they both can have time for baby Maddie. Noah returns to Ellen and tells her that he has decided to give their relationship a second chance. 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 Zuckerman and even Valerie Malone. At David's bachelor party, Steve, Noah, Dylan, Nat, and David's father Mel attend the gathering as well as Steve's stepbrother Ryan and former KEG fraternity brother Munz, except for Brandon Walsh who sends his regards to everyone via videotape. The day of the wedding goes without a hitch and at the end, Matt shows up briefly to tell Kelly that he has decided to move back to New York, and she goes back to try to renew her relationship with Dylan.