Brandon is on a road trip through the USA when his car breaks down in a small town in Texas, and he encounters racism from the redneck locals after he befriends a young black girl, named Mariah. In Beverly Hills, Valerie seeks financial help from Kenny Bannerman, one of Jim Walsh's former coworkers, to revamp business for the Peach Pit After Dark. Meanwhile, David and Donna work together on another music video project and find that their renewed relationship may be on a short fuse. Also, Clare and Steve attempt to meet with each other after spending their summer away, unaware that they are at the same airport at LAX waiting for the other.

At a reunion party at the Beverly Hills Beach Club, Clare is stunned after she learns of Steve's past relationship with Kelly, who learns there's more to the story than she knew. Meanwhile, Kenny puts a social spin on his business with Valerie, who once again throws romantic common sense to the wind. David's new friend, Mark Reese, needles Brandon into joining the college TV station. Donna meets an old high school friend whom she once has a crush on. Also, Steve's annoying stepbrothers, Ryan and Austin, return and learn another hard lesson in finding girls.

Brandon is given the request of escorting Lily, Joan's wild and crazy teenage daughter, prior to hers and Nat's wedding, which has a sudden change of venue when a very pregnant Joan goes into labor. Meanwhile, Kelly volunteers to do community service work at an AIDS hospice and befriends Jimmy Gold, a gay AIDS patient whom she is assigned to work with. David moves in with Mark at his house in the Hollywood Hills and later becomes discouraged when he learns of MZA's decision to dismiss him. Also, Valerie is frustrated when Kenny's wife suddenly shows up, disrupting their romantic plans.

Brandon and Mark find the perfect newscaster - a student named Tracy Gaylian - for the campus TV station, but she panics and gets drunk prior to her debut. Meanwhile, an accident with Jimmy gives Kelly a big scare about having AIDS. Mel withdraws David's financial support after learning from Donna that he dropped out of college to concentrate on his film making career. Elsewhere Valerie continues her secret affair with Kenny, who must find the time to be with her.

Steve's so-called "harmless prank" of streaking with his fraternity pledges for Spirit Week lands Brandon in trouble. He refuses to give a video tape of the event to Chancellor Arnold, knowing it will incriminate Steve, while Tracy decides on a crafty plan to get Brandon off the hook. Meanwhile, Donna becomes chairperson of the rush committee for ALPHA sorority and lobbies to get a female jock, named Dani, accepted. Kelly takes a sickly Jimmy on a religious journey to explore his Jewish roots before he dies. David returns to school at California University, but finds all the classes he wants full, and he even has a run-in with Olympic champion gymnast Kerri Strug. Also, Kenny shows Valerie his new apartment for her to live in, but Valerie becomes angry and upset when he breaks a dinner date with her in order to go out with his wife and young son whom he continues to hide his tryst from them.

David and Mark throw a big party at their Hollywood Hills house, until a huge brush fire stops the party which brings back a bad memory for Kelly over the house party fire (back in Season 5) and puts Donna in jeopardy when she attempts to save a baby deer. Steve's flirtation results in serious consequences from Clare, while Brandon and Tracy become closer. Meanwhile, Kenny tells Valerie to keep distant from him while he is proceeding with the divorce from his wife. But when Valerie accidentally finds out that Kenny does not plan on leaving his wife, ever, out of respect for their six-year-old son, she later tells Kenny some unsettling news about her.

Steve declares war by trying to find a date for himself just to make Clare jealous when she starts dating another guy, named Dick Harris, whom he can't stand. Meanwhile, Donna's new fireman boyfriend, Cliff Yeager, who saved her life during the brushfire, assists her at her sorority's Halloween Haunted House bash. At the reopening of the Peach Pit After Dark, Kenny does not attend, prompting Valerie to resort to her devious tricks again by asking for $100,000 so she can keep away from him. Also, Brandon tries to get closer to Tracy while Kelly hits on Mark.

David's gets a huge windfall when he inherits $250,000 after his grandfather dies. But it causes a rift with his father Mel over how to use it when David lets the thought of wealth go to his head. Kelly extends an olive branch to Valerie after learning from Steve over her condition, but Valerie must keep the fact that she really isn't pregnant under wraps at any cost. Meanwhile, Steve rashly challenges Dick to a crew race, much to Clare's anger. Tracy makes an overture to Brandon to appear with her on a presidential debate. Also, Cliff takes Donna on a camping trip where he tells her of his future plans, not involving her.

Kelly delights in telling Brandon about Valerie's pregnancy and abortion, and also shares her doubts about Val's story. Brandon goes to see Kenny, who portrays himself as the innocent victim caught in the web of an evil vixen. He tells Brandon that he paid Valerie $100,000 to stay away. Brandon threatens to throw Val out of the house unless she returns the money. Valerie plans to move out, but instead returns the money following a talk with Tracy. She confesses to Brandon that she was never pregnant, and insists that she cannot live up to his moral expectations. Mel, worried by David's newfound wealth, asks Donna to keep an eye on him. David goes on a wild spending spree, and later shows up at Donna's apartment in the middle of the night after swimming in the ocean. David offers to help out the financially strapped Valerie by purchasing half of the club. Steve impresses Clare with his dedication as he trains for the crew race. His team barely loses, but Clare decides that she wants him back. Kelly comes clean with Mark about her past drug problem.

The increasingly manic-mannered David takes Valerie, Steve and Clare for a wild weekend to Las Vegas where his increased drinking and gambling threaten to turn the events bad, and Ray Pruit is performing at their hotel. David ends up picking up two prostitutes and takes them to a seedy motel where they drug and rob him. David is forced to call Donna for help who arrives in Vegas to comfort him. She yells at Steve, Clare, and Valerie for letting David get out of control. Meanwhile, Kelly finally asks Mark to spend the night with her. Also, Brandon befriends Melanie, a diminutive young woman passing through town and who gives him advice on his future career.

During an argument with Donna in the student union, David throws a tantrum and cuts his hand on a glass. He must see a psychiatrist after displaying hostile behavior toward the ER staff. Mel agrees with the doctor's recommendation that David be held 72 hours for observation. David is diagnosed with a mild form of manic depression. His mother comes to see him and advises him to moderate his behavior; he will not require medication if he seeks therapy and stops drinking. David thanks Donna for her support and they decide to get back together. Steve faces plagiarism charges; Professor Randall, who assumed control of the independent study course after returning to CU, recognized Brandon's writing. Randall still holds a vendetta against Brandon and brings collusion charges against him. Kelly and Mark's plans for a romantic weekend getaway are foiled by a lost reservation. They finally secure a motel room, only to come down with food poisoning. The gang helps Willie build a house that his family will receive from Habitat for Humanity. Val displays construction skills as a result of working with her contractor father, but hints to Clare that she has few happy memories of her dad. Everyone eats Thanksgiving dinner inside the unfinished house.

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.

Valerie is surprised when Tom Miller, another old high school friend from Buffalo, comes for a visit and asks for a job at the After Dark club. Meanwhile, Brandon and Mark learn that they've applied for the same prestigious scholarship, which turns into a competition for both of them. On a job interview, Steve is hit on by the employer, Diane, and hesitates about what to do. Donna proves to be a lifesaver when she fills in as the receptionist at her father's office for the day. At the end, Mark shows off his true angry and arrogant colors to Kelly after losing the scholarship to Brandon, resulting in her breaking up with him.

Steve meets a mysterious prankster student, known as the "Phantom of C.U.", while working as a night watchman - his penance for cheating - and feels compassion for him when Steve learns that the student, Larry, is homeless and wants to graduate from college. Meanwhile, Clare, and later Donna, try to arrange a blind date for Kelly, which turns out less-than-satisfying when the guy, an Englishman named Neil Phillips, annoys her. Donna begins a new career for herself as the weather girl on CU TV, which unfortunately nets her an unwanted fan. Tracy helps Clare work on the new college yearbook, and David becomes suspicious of Tom's true motives while helping to get the singer Donna Lewis to perform at the After Dark.

Donna thinks that her stalker is Garrotte Slan, the man who tried to rape her two years ago. Kelly and Clare decide to cheer Donna up by taking her out on the town to a male strip club, where the unseen stalker turns up the heat by attempting to run over Donna with his car. Meanwhile, Tracy and Brandon's weekend alone at her parents' ranch is interrupted when Sam, Tracy's ex-boyfriend, shows up. Steve leads Dick Harrison and fellow frat brothers in a sewing circle to salvage an investment of a Super Bowl T-Shirt sellout. Also, David and Tom team up to produce a Super Bowl party at the After Dark, much to Valerie's annoyance.

Despite Valerie's warning to stay away from him, Kelly decides to pursue Tom, which adds an extra dimension when he and Brandon, who still holds feelings for Kelly, face off in a hockey game. Donna is denied a permanent restraining order against Slan, while David becomes overprotective of her. Meanwhile, Tracy lets slip the three words "I Love You" to Brandon. Also, Clare and Steve's weekend of house-sitting at a bungalow prompts talk of them living together.

Donna's stalker, who is finally revealed to be a disturbed TV station worker, named Evan, takes her, Brandon, Tracy and a group of other people hostage in the campus TV station, where Brandon tries to calm down everyone's heightened tensions as Donna sits in front of the running cameras with a gun to her head. Meanwhile, Steve and Clare travel with their parents to a getaway in San Diego where they try to cool down the burgeoning romance between them. Also, Tom and Kelly's attraction between each other increases and David finds himself drawn to Chloe Davis, a aspiring singer determined to make it big.

On Valentine's Day, Donna's former beau, Cliff Yeager, shows up and causes concern for her and David. Meanwhile, Valerie's mother, Abby, whom she can't stand, arrives in town from Buffalo for a visit and asks Val for financial support. Steve commits yet another error with Clare when he decides to take up smoking pot with Dick Harrison. Chloe makes her singing debut and David get to be the MC for Luther Vandross at the Peach Pit After Dark's Valentine's Day party. Kelly continues dating Tom, and an unhappy Valerie tries to halt the union. Also, Tracy gets a big surprise from Brandon when she mistakenly thinks he bought her an engagement ring.

Kelly learns that her old engagement ring that Brandon bought for her years ago is the cause of the continuing friction between him and Tracy. Meanwhile, Donna can't decide whether to be with Cliff or David, while Chloe makes a move on David after she tells him that Donna is not the woman for him. Clare tells Steve to give one of his step-brothers, Ryan, an advance talk about the birds and the bees. Valerie finally confronts her mother and tells her the true, long-kept facts behinds her father's suicide which are: her father killing himself on the day Valerie and Tom threatened to go to the police with the fact that he's been molesting her. Also, Abby then flies back to Buffalo and Tom soon follows suit.

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.

David and Donna visit her paternal grandmother, Celia Martin, who tells them the story of her husband who was the only one true love of her life during the 1940s. Meanwhile, Valerie meets and befriends Rob Andrews, a young and new rising actor in Hollywood. Kelly befriends an 11-year-old boy, called Joey, she finds camped outside her apartment, whom she suspects is a runaway. Also, Steve asks Brandon, Tracy and Clare to help him with filming an infomercial as a class project and literally gets into a sticky situation regarding the product's true nature.

Joey runs away from the homeless shelter and returns to Kelly, who eventually extracts the whole story about Joey's troubles with his mother and stepfather. Meanwhile, Rob asks Valerie's advice on a movie script while a mutual attraction between them develops. Tracy and Brandon quarrel over their spring break plans when Brandon is mailed two airline tickets to visit his parents and Tracy wants to go east to visit hers. David is with Donna at the hospital after her father suffers a stroke. Steve is taken aback by Clare's contract with her "male side" while the gang are preparing to protect his father's beach house from a coming storm.

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.

Mariah Murphy, the young black girl Brandon met in Texas ('Remember the Alamo'), who's now an aspiring writer, arrives in Los Angeles for a visit and her quick kinship with Kelly bothers Tracy. Meanwhile, Rob's new movie is released, which earns great recognition for his performance, but bad reviews for whole movie which makes Rob wonder if the movie business is really for him. Valerie worries that she'll lose Rob when he tells her that he wants to quit the entertainment business and move back to his hometown. Clare has a crisis when her computer breaks down while she's writing a term paper, which leaves her no time for Steve, who goes to Rob's movie premiere solo. Also, David goes nuts trying to plan a special anniversary dinner for Donna.

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.

Both Valerie and Kelly sneak a look at each other's journal, but only Valerie reads the whole thing and spreads rumors about Kelly to Clare and Donna in yet another attempt to make Kelly's life miserable. Meanwhile, Steve and Brandon visit a car museum, where a scheming employee sets both of them up for a problematic ride in an electric car that was revealed to have been stolen. This delays Brandon's attempt to fulfill a childhood dream for Kelly - meeting with retired kiddie show host, Magic Morton, to get his magic wand for her.

David takes Donna on a one-night trip to New Orleans in an attempt to sleep with her, which also delays Donna's presentation of her business project the very next day to her stern teacher, Professor Langley. In Beverly Hills, the relationship between Steve's mother and Clare's father becomes strained during a TV historical awards dinner, when Steve's self-obsessed mother once again lets success go to her head, which also strains the relationship between him and Clare. Meanwhile, Brandon attempts to nurse a flu-stricken Kelly and Valerie back to health, who re-live to each other how they became hard-core enemies two years ago which involved both of them pursuing Brandon. At the end, Valerie secretly meets with a certain Derrick Driscoll, who works for Kelly's father, to ask about a possible investment plan.

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.

Steve becomes depressed and frustrated with his father when Rush doesn't approve of the quick and easy future Steve has planned following graduation from C.U. Clare tells him that her father wants her to move to Paris with him after graduation and wants Steve to come with her. Meanwhile, Kelly's father, Bill, arrives in town for another visit and meets with Valerie, who tells her that Derrick Driscoll is actually an embezzler who just ripped off all her money that she invested. Kelly receives disturbing medical news that she may not be able to bear children. Also, Donna flakes out on her last final exam with Professor Langley.

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.