Luke Perry's Dylan McKay transcended space and time on Beverly Hills, 90210

Vulture

"Dylan McKay was simultaneously forever young and divorced from a mundane concept like age," says Jen Chaney of Luke Perry, who died today at age 52. "He was angsty and sexy in a decade when being angsty and sexy were the key component of the male ideal. He was an obvious descendant of James Dean, with a tower of moussed-up hair that defied the laws of gravity and a forehead that conveyed an entire set of feelings separate from what was happening on the rest of his beautiful face. He was the Fonzie of the ’90s, except he was too authentic to have a catchphrase. He was a pre–Jordan Catalano Jordan Catalano, except much smarter and even more tortured. Dylan wasn’t just hot and dangerous, he also was intelligent and sensitive and spoke to his girlfriend Brenda Walsh with a warmth that could take all of the chill out of your ice-cold Snapple. Luke Perry obviously wasn’t Dylan McKay. But he became so intertwined with the character that the two became synonymous, which is why it’s so hard to process the news that Perry died Monday at age 52 after having a massive stroke from which he did not recover. This doesn’t make any sense. Dylan McKay can’t die. In our minds and hearts, he’s still at West Beverly, still seducing Brenda on prom night when she wore the same black-and-white dress as Kelly, still (later) struggling to choose between Brenda and Kelly, still contending with his demons and his drinking and his shifty dad, still saying cheesy things like 'I know that cloud' to comfort his best friend Brandon while making those cheesy things sound meaningful and true."

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• Luke Perry's magic still had deep power: "He seemed to know the show was silly, that his role was ludicrous," says Richard Lawson says of Perry's 90210 role. "But he was still game, committed to acting under a wall of hairspray to the delight of so many. It’s a rare teen idol who can handle that pressure with as much easygoing grace as Perry always seemed to—simultaneously trying to distance himself from Dylan McKay while acknowledging what the character meant to 90210 fans; taking pride in his signature role because the other option, a futile one, was to hate it and try to push it away." Lawson adds: "I’ll tell you what hasn’t dimmed: the pure wonder of Luke Perry cocking his head and furrowing his brow as Dylan contemplates some surfer insight with charmingly self-important seriousness. Perry’s magic still has deep power. Only you realize now, watching this amiably creaky show as an adult, how much work it must have taken for those actors to play it all straight. Perry had perhaps the heaviest lifting to do in that regard: Dylan was a dozen familiar clichés stuffed into a white T-shirt and blue jeans. And yet, Perry made him singular."
• Perry had a lived-in face and physicality: "As the breakout star of Fox’s enduring Nineties teen drama, Perry became the easiest butt of jokes about hiring grown-ass adults to play high school sophomores and juniors," says Alan Sepinwall, adding: "Every generation has its own brooding teen heartthrob. For Generation X, it was Dylan McKay. Perry was so instantly cool and magnetic in the role that he transformed what had seemed an earnest culture clash comedy into something more addictively melodramatic and soapy. Dylan would, in time, become so much larger than life that the show didn’t know what to do with him."
• That Perry never could quite shake off Dylan McKay merely proves how neatly he filled the role: "Perry’s Dylan was the stand-out male character from the start, his brooding scowl so much more interesting than clean-cut pretty boy Priestley’s pudgy grin, and he fascinated a generation who had been waiting for a handsome rebel who wasn’t, ideally, Charlie Sheen," says Hadley Freeman. "We all knew, to a certain extent, that Perry was doing a pastiche of James Dean, but that made him seem classy – classic, even – rather than cliched. In the grand tradition of teen TV stars, he was always, clearly, too old for the role – in all the many parodies of 90210, much was made of Perry’s forehead wrinkles, even though he was, in fact, only 24 when the show premiered. But that meant he was the manly one, the slightly scary one, the one to fancy as a transition to teenagehood and beyond. That he never could quite shake off Dylan McKay merely proves how neatly he filled the role, giving meat to a character that was probably sketched out on the back of a matchbox."
• It isn’t easy being a “former teen heartthrob,” but Perry didn’t run from his past — he embraced it
• Perry was bigger and more real than anybody on 90210: "Luke Perry was more than an actor on a popular soap. He was more than a Tiger Beat pin-up," says Meghan O'Keefe. "He was something that only comes around maybe once in a generation: the intangible ideal of adolescent angst. Handsome, sensitive, smart, dangerous, and loving, he was the boy you wanted to date, and the boy you wanted to be. And yet, Perry outgrew even the tremendous shadow of himself."
• Perry became the imaginary boyfriend of millions of women and girls around the world, awakening something in them
• How good an actor was he? It didn’t really matter: "Gifted with charisma, he needed only to squint his eyes or press his lips tight, and girls my age — and certainly boys, too — went swoony. He spoke softly; you leaned in," says Alexis Soloski. "On Beverly Hills, 90210 and more recently as a 'hot dad' on the kid-noir Riverdale, he walked the line of naturalism and subtle parody. If he knew how ridiculous some of his lines were ('May the bridges I burn light my way'), he never let on."
• Perry was Fox's defining heartthrob: "Luke Perry wasn't the Fox Broadcasting Company's first heartthrob," says Daniel Fienberg. "Johnny Depp and Richard Grieco of 21 Jump Street beat him to the pages of Tiger Beat by a couple years. He was, however, Fox's defining heartthrob. Perry, who died at the age of 52 on Monday, was a template for a brooding, Gen-X hero that was everything that the upstart, play-by-its-own-rules Fox wanted to define itself as. Fox may have been a network that Married With Children and The Simpsons built, but Perry's Dylan McKay taught the network to swagger. It's one thing to be iconoclastic, and certainly Fox didn't lack for edgy boundary-pushers in its early years, but that's not the same thing as being stone-cold cool. Dylan McKay was stone-cold cool."
• He flashed, he fizzled, he left after six protracted seasons on the show: "It seemed as if Dylan got all the intense scenes," says Hank Stuever. "It seemed like a living room full of chatty friends would fall silent whenever Dylan was on. Years away from high-def, he somehow seemed high-def. There was a moment when the entire country (and foreign viewers, too) had their eyes on Luke Perry’s eyes. The new heartthrob! Was there more to him — a bona fide film star, perhaps?" Stuever points out that just last week, Fox announced a Beverly Hills, 90210 revival series. "For whatever reason (Money? Scheduling conflict? Lack of interest? Dignity?) Luke Perry was not listed among those agreeing to return," says Stuever. "As James Dean could tell us, what’s cooler than being notably absent?"
• Dylan McKay feels timeless because he was a throwback character: "Like his favorite hangout, ’50s diner the Peach Pit, Perry’s surfer-slacker Dylan was a classic updated for the ’90s," says Judy Berman. "Though greaser styling heightened his startling resemblance to James Dean, it was the haunted quality the actor shared with that ur-teen idol that made Beverly Hills’ own rebel without a cause believable. Perry was 24 when 90210 premiered; not many actors that age could have done justice to such an old soul, let alone one whose arc featured so many absurd twists."
• He looked like James Dean, but didn’t always act like he looked like James Dean: "At the height of his fame, from his Saturday Night Live hosting gig ('Kick his ass, Luke!') to his self-mocking Simpsons cameo to his armed and shirtless Vanity Fair cover to his penchant for causing mini-riots at shopping malls, Perry carefully balanced reveling in his success and decrying the way most people defined it," says Rob Harvilla.
• Riverdale made Luke Perry a sex symbol all over again: "Is it just my own middle-aged-ness talking, or was Fred Andrews way hotter than Dylan McKay could dream of being?" says Rebecca Onion. "...The show actually offered two DILFs: Fred and FP Jones, who’s Jughead’s dad and is played by Skeet Ulrich. Here were two aging actors, both former teenage hotties, playing dads on the downslope to old age. But where FP, who’s a formerly incarcerated gang member, is dangerous and sometimes unreliable, Fred is comfortable. FP is wild and charismatic; Fred does things right. It’s a testament to Luke Perry that his straight arrow was as much fun to watch as Ulrich’s live wire."
• Perry's Fred Andrews was Riverdale's best dad: "What made Fred the best TV Dad wasn’t winning the 'Best Riverdale parent' contest by default, it was how Perry channeled his inner goodness to make every scene with Mr. Andrews special," says Alex Zalben. "Particularly in the first season, it was like Fred was permanently installed on the front porch of the Andrews house, a mug of coffee in his hand, a flannel shirt on, and great advice ready to be doled out. When Fred was on screen, it was always Fall, the leaves softly tumbling in the background, a fire crackling somewhere. Some of that is credit to the show’s production design, writing and direction; but it wouldn’t have worked without Perry embodying the character."
• Fred Andrews was Riverdale's beating heart: "In some ways, Fred Andrews always seemed unmoored in time—contemplating his goofier, more innocent teenage self, while realizing that those days were long past him," says Laura Bradley. "Like his son, Fred was once a lovable, oafish jock with big dreams; he wanted to become mayor of Riverdale until his father died, leading him to take over the family construction business. From some angles, he was an aged Dylan McKay—a vibrant soul whose life did not go as planned, but who still harbored boundless gratitude for what he had. That’s the beauty of Fred Andrews: he’s a character you can’t help but feel for, even if he never needed or even wanted our pity."
• Perry was an entire generation's first crush: "Millions of women (and men, or anyone that is attracted to men) that categorize themselves in the older millennial demographic have similar stories about obsessing over Luke Perry on Beverly Hills, 90210," says Megan Vick. "It didn't matter if you were Team Kelly (Jennie Garth) or Team Brenda (Shannen Doherty), everyone wanted Dylan, or to be like him. Yes, he was the teen soap bad-boy prototype that you'd be absolutely willing to get grounded sneaking out to see at night. But he also had a heart of gold underneath all that brooding and danger. He was so cool, but with the propensity to love you with every fiber of his being, thus inspiring an entire generation to be willing to kick a puppy just for a ride on the back of his motorcycle."
• Perry walked so My So-Called Life's Jordan Catalano could run: "Luke Perry had the (Lord) Byronic presence to turn Dylan into an unforgettable teen-rebel archetype, a Gen-X surfer outlaw reading poetry and breaking hearts, making 90210 a sensation," says Rob Sheffield. Tragically, Luke Perry died today of a stroke, only 52 years old, while having his biggest career resurgence in years as Archie’s dad in Riverdale. But even on that hit CW show, playing the kind of TV father he used to terrorize, Perry seemed as mad, bad and dangerous to know as ever."
• Riverdale's Lili Reinhart on Perry's death: "I’m finding it hard to grasp that he will no longer be around to give long hugs and share his wisdom and kindness with all of us. I’m thinking of his family. His children. I pray for them to heal and find peace in this devastating loss...I just can't believe it."
• 90210's Jennie Garth pays tribute to Perry: "My heart is broken. He meant so much to so many. Such a very special person. I share my deep sadness with his family and all who loved him. Such a terrible loss.”
• Where to stream the many sides of Luke Perry: From HBO's John from Cincinnati to Buffy the Vampire Slayer
• Was Perry too young to have a fatal stroke? Not really
• Luke Perry’s sideburns Inspired lust, envy, and press coverage like no others: "Perry’s sideburns rated a mention in practically every article about the actor or the show," says Heather Schwedel. "...In 1991, a Fort Lauderdale Sun Sentinel article, written after Perry’s appearance at a local mall devolved into overcrowding and shoving that led to 20 injuries, teased that Perry’s sideburns were even longer in real life than they were on the show, a morsel designed to drive adolescent girls crazy...Soon enough, young men everywhere started copying the sideburns, and, like the tiny hairs by their ears, trend pieces started sprouting up all over the place...They’d gone out of style, until 90210 arrived on the scene and changed everything... In the annals of celebrity hair, Luke Perry’s sideburns deserve a place alongside Andy Warhol’s wig, John Waters’ mustache, and Amy Winehouse’s beehive."
• Perry had the better 90210 sideburns, "longer and sharper ones, to go with his longer and sharper bone structure"
• Perry was always game to spoof his teen heartthrob persona -- he would've loved Fox's 90210 revival
• Watch Perry shoot down the James Dean comparisons in a 1992 Today profile
• Check out clips of Perry hosting SNL in 1993: Watch him get advice from Obi-Wan Kenobi
• Watch Jason Priestley answer questions about Luke Perry when he hosted SNL in 1992
• Watch one of Perry's final TV interviews from October, with his Riverdale castmates on Watch What Happens Live
• Inside Perry's private life: His 21-year-old son is a wrestler named “Jungle BoyNate Coy"
• Perry's most memorable non-90210 TV roles: From Oz to Family Guy to Will & Grace
• The father of Sherrod Brown -- the Ohio U.S. senator and potential presidential candidate -- actually delivered baby Luke Perry
• Listen to Beverly Hills, 90210 superfan Bill Simmons' extended, in-depth interview with Perry from 2013
• Perry was engaged to a family therapist, who had a small role on The Mentalist, when he passed away
• "I'm going to be linked with him until I die, but that's actually just fine," Luke Perry once-said of his career-defining role. "I created Dylan McKay. He's mine."
• UPDATE: Tori Spelling is in "utter shock and heartbroken": “Luke was one of the kindest and most humble human beings I’ve ever known,” she adds. “I’m grateful for the years of friendship we had. He truly was family to me, a protector and a brother. I’m so sorry for the loss that everyone is experiencing.”
• UPDATE: Shannen Doherty recalls having lunch with Perry just last month: “Luke was a smart, quiet, humble and complex man with a heart of gold and never-ending well of integrity and love," she said in a statement to People. "Luke reached out to me during my cancer journey and we picked right back up, albeit older and wiser, but that connection remained in tact. There is a special kind of love one has for each other when you are experiencing the journey we did on 90210 and of course life in general. Luke and I were working on show ideas for us. We wanted to work with each other again and create something special and meaningful for our fans at this stage in our lives. I will miss him everyday. Every minute. Every second.”