Valerie Malone

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Valerie Malone was a fictional character in FOX's popular TV series Beverly Hills, 90210, portrayed by actress Tiffani Thiessen. She first appeared in the fifth season. Valerie is affectionately referred to in the series as Val.

Valerie's family were neighbors of the Walshes back in Minnesota. Brenda, Brandon, and Valerie grew up together. Problems in the Malone family had been escalating for many years, mostly in secret, but it wasn't until Valerie's father was found dead in the bathroom of his home, an apparent suicide via gunshot wound to the head, that the family's issues seemed to come to light. This marked the catalyst that led to Valerie's move to Beverly Hills, where she would live with the Walshes.

[edit] Season Five (1994-95)

Valerie came off to the gang as a naive, but fun, young woman; however, the first episode she appeared in ended with her rolling a marijuana cigarette in Brenda's old bedroom and talking to a friend (later revealed to be Ginger) over the phone back in Buffalo, about the possibility of getting involved with Steve Sanders for his money, saying: "He seems kind of dumb... but I bet he gives good credit card", as well as insulting the gang and boasting her ability to act, seemingly more innocent than she actually is.

Romantic interest in Valerie came quick, often, and usually all at once, leading to many situations, where male members of the series became contentious over their similar affections for her. This started with Valerie dating Steve, while sleeping with Dylan McKay. Despite the annoyance it provided her, Valerie would reluctantly act as an enabler to Dylan's addictive and self-destructive behavior, which re-surfaced after he had been conned out of his fortune.

Kelly Taylor discovered Valerie's continued affair with Dylan while dating Steve, and while the other members of the gang gave Valerie the benefit of the doubt, Kelly and Valerie would remain constant enemies throughout the entire series, save for Valerie's final episode, where they are polite to each other, and very rare moments in between, including one during the West Beverly Hills High School reunion in Season 8 where Kelly is disturbed by an encounter with Ross Weber, a former upperclassmen that had taken her virginity in a disrespectful way, though Kelly was willing; at the reunion he acted like it never happened, which greatly distressed Kelly, who revealed to Valerie the details of the encounter. Val ultimately confronted Ross, indirectly reprimanding him for his ungentlemanly behavior and humiliating him. Kelly toasted Valerie's act of retribution with a glass of champagne.

Valerie assisted in the rescue of Dylan's younger sister, who had been taken out of the country by the couple that conned Dylan out of his money. With Dylan's money returned, Valerie was paid off for her involvement in the rescue and used the money to purchase the Peach Pit After Dark, a club that had previously been opened behind the Peach Pit diner with Dylan's backing and then sold from Dylan to Steve Sanders' father Rush. Valerie's status with the group took another hit when David and Claire found out she had slept with Ray Pruit, and while they didn't tell Donna this story, Donna knew enough about Valerie's behavior around Ray to tell Val that she wasn't Donna's (or anyone's) friend.

[edit] Season Six (1995-96)

Valerie started out Season 6 at a crossroads: the PPAD had become one of the most successful clubs in L.A., but no one in the group wanted to talk to her and she was ready to move back to Buffalo until Brandon asked her to stay because she was his only family left in the area. Valerie and her best friend Ginger cooked up a scam where various items were stolen and it looked like Ray Pruit was guilty, until Valerie "busted" Ginger for doing so and thus became accepted again by the group. Valerie later faced a professor who sexually harassed her and refused to seek redress due to her past, but Brandon and Susan Keats wrote a story that forced the professor to resign and redeemed Valerie. Valerie then began a serious relationship with David Silver, whom she had initially bonded with when his mother attempted suicide. The pairing would get serious fast and be the most stable and mature of Valerie's relationships. They first broke up when Ginger returned to town and attempted to blackmail Valerie for either $50,000 or a night with David. Valerie chose to reveal her past behavior to David and attempted to convince him to sleep with Ginger. David broke up with Valerie over what she had asked him to do.

Very soon after, Valerie would start a relationship with Kelly's recent ex Colin Robbins, a Coke addict. The pair had known each other from before Beverly Hills, where Valerie had a crush on him. When Colin was arrested in possession of cocaine after a high-speed car chase, Valerie posted the bond and paid for the lawyer by putting up the Peach-Pit After Dark as collateral. Colin then jumped bail and put Valerie's club at risk. Valerie later got help from an FBI agent who helped track down Colin. He was later caught and handed to the police by Brandon and Steve after a chance on-foot meeting by the docks in the sixth season finale.

[edit] Season Seven (1996-97)

She had a great affinity for money, often considering financial status as the most important factor in a relationship. She had an affair with an accountant and pretended to be pregnant in order to extort money from him. Brandon forced her to choose between giving back the money or leaving the Walsh house forever, and she grudgingly chose the former.

She also got back into business with David when, under the affects of his manic depression, he would offer to buy half of the After Dark and take her (along with Steve and Clare) to Vegas. She was later chewed out by Donna for not taking proper care of David, who had considered a romantic relationship with her while going through a manic phase. David and Valerie did go ahead with the PPAD partnership. Valerie's old boyfriend later came to town and slept with her for a while before Kelly deliberately started a relationship with him to get back at her arch-enemy. But Kelly later decided to end things for the right reason and the boyfriend helped Valerie out when she finally told her mother why her father had killed himself.

Val later contacted Kelly's estranged father for the dual purposes of forming a business relationship with him and rubbing Kelly's face in her terrible relationship with her father. But this plan/scheme blew up in Valerie's face when a con man posing as an investment specialist stole all her money, right after she had pretended to hit on David in order to get him to buy out her share of the After Dark. Right after this, Valerie's mom decided not to attend CU Graduation, and Brandon reluctantly said she had to move out because Kelly was moving in and they couldn't co-exist.

A distraught Valerie drove to a cliff to commit suicide, but before she could jump, Brandon rescued her after a suicide letter had been found on her bed. Valerie was allowed to return to the Walsh house after Kelly decided to let bygones be bygones for the time being, although Kelly insisted that Valerie was faking to get Brandon's sympathy.

[edit] Season Eight (1997-98)

Later, after beginning a minor romantic interest in the seemingly poor Noah Hunter, she became angered to find that he was rich; it wasn't until she learned of his family's wealth, that she and he began a serious relationship.

At one point in time, Valerie awoke from a stupor to find she had been drugged. It is found that Noah Hunter, her ex-boyfriend, is the man she slept with, but he denies that it was rape. Chemical tests prove she was provided Rohypnol, the date rape drug (a.k.a., a roofie), but court proceedings followed, and the gang is divided when Brandon and David are the only ones to defend her, with everyone else believing her to have slept with Noah on purpose, using the court system to extort him of money. It is later discovered by a drug-addicted Donna Martin that Noah's brother had slipped Valerie the roofie in order to rape her, but Noah left with Valerie that night, before he could. Noah turned his brother in and later apologized to Valerie for his role in the entire terrible event.

Valerie would reunite with David one last time after helping him attempt to win Donna Martin back. The two would act like they were getting back to inspire jealousy in Donna, but their mutual feelings would reemerge and force a reconciliation. They would break-up for the last time when Valerie refused to donate her bone-marrow to a dying child molester who only gave up his incestuous ways because he was too weak to continue, which David would think was too cold hearted to accept. Valerie would later confess to him that her father had molested her and that she had murdered him for it (where his death was thought to be a suicide before).

Later in the series, Valerie's behavior began to become more and more reckless. After breaking up with David, she engaged in an unsafe sexual encounter with a man she would find out later was infected with HIV, though she herself ended up testing negative for the disease. Later in the same season, she slept with her mother's younger fiancé (a cop), having claimed to feel an intense connection with him as he, like her, knew what it was like to kill a person.

[edit] Season Nine (1998-99)

As Noah battled alcoholism and also began to act recklessly, stresses mounted for Valerie before her next shocking secret ultimately was revealed: her father was not a victim of suicide but rather was murdered. A young Valerie shot her father to death, in order to stop his incestuous behavior (in an earlier storyline, Valerie's former boyfriend told her mom that after Valerie told him about her father's abuse, the boyfriend wanted to kill her dad but instead confronted him with Valerie and gave him until the next day to turn himself in to the police; this was the point where it was said Valerie's dad committed suicide). From this point on in the series, Valerie would contend with the option of turning herself in. She summons her mother, Abbey Malone (played by singer Michelle Phillips of The Mamas and the Papas) to California for moral support, but found none when her mother refused to involve herself in the matter further, having reached her fill of the subject after having to confront her husband with the question about whether or not he had been "having sex with our daughter." Abbey also revealed, to Valerie's shock and horror, that she knew about the molestation but did not take action because he promised (falsely) that he would stop doing so and get help.

Brandon eventually moved away and Valerie was left with the harsh reality, that he was the only reason she continued to be a part of their group. Abbey learned the truth about Valerie's self-defense killing of her father, and stated that she would neither press charges nor forgive her daughter, something Valerie found contemptible and gave her no closure. Valerie made several attempts to turn herself in, but was dissuaded each time by Matt Durning and David Silver. Ultimately, she would go to the police to turn herself in but before she could, she was stopped by her mother who returned to finally console her daughter, admit that she was to blame for being too ashamed to delve deeper into the issue to stop it, and forgave her for the murder of her husband and begged her to forgive herself.

It was actually during Thanksgiving, that Valerie realized that Brandon was the key to her relationship with the rest of the gang and that, with Brandon gone, she no longer had someone in the group who would fix her mistakes and smooth over her inter-group conflicts. Her feud with Kelly reached a head when Valerie invited everyone to a Thanksgiving dinner she would host at the Walsh house but, while packing away Brandon's remaining property to ship to him in Washington, D.C., Kelly come across the letter Val had written Brandon; it was made during Brandon and Kelly's engagement and said that Brandon should not marry Kelly (though it's not clear that this was a major or even any factor in the wedding being called off). This fact turned the gang against her, and Kelly drew everyone away from Val to attend her own Thanksgiving dinner. A sympathetic David confronted Kelly and revealed that all of Val's behavior stemmed from the until-then kept secret, that Val was a victim of child sexual abuse that led her to commit murder. Kelly attempted to reconcile with Val, but Valerie told her to get lost. Ultimately, Kelly kept the secret but hosted the Thanksgiving dinner at the Walsh house in order to include Valerie in the festivities. Kelly was willing to assist Valerie in loading the boxes in the house into her car so she could ship them to Brandon in Washington. It was then that Valerie provided one more shocking surprise: the boxes did not belong to Brandon; they belonged to her. The two reconciled and after dinner, she toasted her friends, thanking them for their friendship, and then moved back home to live with her mother.

[edit] Season Ten (1999-2000)

Valerie was not seen in the series again until the finale, where she arrived in time to rejuvenate Donna's boring bachelorette party (her wedding gift was a pack of condoms). She unraveled a picture of a naked man with David's face on it and a bull's eye over his penis, on which Felice Martin (Donna's mom), hit the target dead on. In the finale, it is revealed that Valerie is involved in a serious relationship back in Buffalo and her relationship with her mother is improving as they go through extensive counseling.