Oh my God, you guys, what is UP with Brenda's BOOB?! She is about to experience the worst thing that can happen to a teenager as far as she can appreciate in her limited experience!

Okay, normally I would let the opening establishing shots pass without comment, but check out this guy with his briefcase phone...

And this kid with his word processor.

I think the point the show is trying to make is that these extremely privileged high-school students have access to technology beyond what is currently used by most employees at Fortune 500 companies! Anyway: apparently it's almost time for the SAT (which you will want to remember next season when they're all juniors again, and all taking it again), and Steve is trying to talk Brandon into taking an "Alfred B. Cooke" prep course. Brandon insists that you can't study for the SAT, nor can you make up for 16 years of ignorance in one week. Steve agrees, but notes that you can do a lot in a month. Har?

At the Blaze office, Brandon catches Andrea with a pencil in her mouth and says he now knows who's been masticating all the pencils. Andrea suspiciously asks him why he'd use the word "masticate" -- oblivious to the fact that it sounds vaguely dirty, though I'm not sure how that could have escaped her notice -- accusing him of having learned it in an SAT prep course. "Like Alfred B. Cooke?" says Brandon. Andrea goes into a neurotic rant to the effect that she knew he was taking it, and that it gives him an unfair advantage over those who can't afford it, and on and on. Brandon tells her he isn't taking it, Steve is, and anyway, he doesn't think those courses work. Andrea doesn't believe that, though, and is already freaking out over how bad she is at taking standardized tests. Brandon finally has to grab her by the shoulders and practically shake her to snap her out of it, but Andrea blithers that even though she can take it two more times if she screws it up in her first attempt, it will still determine whether she ends up at Princeton or "Pacoima." Brandon recognizes Steve's turn of phrase, and Andrea sheepishly admits that she ran into him at her locker. Oh, Steve! Why must you undermine everyone else just to mask your own incompetence? You KNOW that regardless of what you do, your natural uselessness will still come shining through!

At Kelly's, Brenda and Donna are running through vocabulary words while Kelly flips through a magazine. We've covered "apotheosis" and "autodidactic" (no, Brenda, the latter has nothing to do with CARS) when Kelly asks the difference between benign and malignant. Once they've established that (and by the way, if they don't know that cold in eleventh grade, the state should pull West Beverly's funding), Kelly offers up the stats from her magazine: 1 in 9 American women will get breast cancer, and 1 in 4 will die. Brenda says that her favorite aunt died of cancer -- which started in her breast, requiring a mastectomy, and then spread to her lymph system -- on her 35th birthday. Well, that's a bigger drag than rain on your wedding day, for sure. Hey, let's ALL test ourselves for lumps!

(What is with that random shot of the water running?)

Downstairs, Cindy bellows at Brenda to come down for dinner. As they wait, Brandon comments that Brenda's probably worn out from studying at Kelly's. Cindy makes an uncharacteristically uncharitable remark about how she can't picture Kelly studying, which segues to Brandon complaining about how much everyone's freaking out about the SAT. He notes that the worst thing about the test is having to wait, afterward, for the results -- your entire future in one envelope. Jim chuckles that it's hardly life and death, which is where Brenda appears to ask what they're talking about. Hearing that it's the SAT, she rolls her eyes to the heavens and announces that she's SO SICK of all the drama around the test; she's going to expect the worst, and hope for the best. Brandon snips that she has a really positive attitude, and she says she'd rather be surprised than disappointed. Brandon makes some completely benign (PUN INTENDED) comment to the effect that she'll probably be fine, and Brenda bites his head off that he can't possibly know that: "Maybe I won't! Maybe YOU won't!" It's awkward, because no one knows that Brenda's totally not even remotely thinking about the SAT right now. Anyway, Brandon comments that the test is not worth making such a big deal about, and Brenda agrees: "Definitely not." Because she's facing her own mortality, maybe.

Later, Jim and Cindy are reading in bed when Brenda comes to the door, arms tightly crossed over her chest.

Can Cindy come talk to her in her room about an unspecified matter? Like now?

Once she has her mother in private, Brenda recaps (save it for the professionals) the afternoon's events: duh, Brenda found a lump. Cindy asks where. Brenda points, and Cindy reaches out to palpate the area. Brenda asks whether she feels it, and Cindy calmly says, "I feel something." Brenda is clearly freaking out, telling Cindy not to say anything to Jim, and Cindy, God bless her, stays totally calm, saying that there's nothing to be embarrassed about and that it could be any of a number of things and is probably nothing to worry about, but that a doctor will tell them for sure. Brenda tearfully asks whether Aunt Sheila thought it was nothing when SHE found a lump in HER breast, and Cindy sensibly says that it's different when you're older. She gives Brenda several hugs and does her best to help her chill out, already, and after she turns the light off, leaving Brenda to weep dramatically in the dark...

...I half-expect the camera to find Cindy in the hall, looking silently and secretly terrified, but fortunately, that doesn't happen, because seriously, the odds that Brenda is dealing with anything other than a completely benign CYST, never mind a tumor, are infinitesimal.

And anyway, I shouldn't have been so proud of Cindy for holding it together, because she only waited until the next morning to lose it. In the kitchen, she rants to Jim that she can't believe they've been in L.A. for six months and still don't have a family doctor. ...Geez, I don't want to pile on or anything, but that does seem kind of irresponsible. Jim soothingly says that he'll ask around at work for recommendations for someone good, and Cindy corrects him: "Someone GREAT." She then exposits that what really went wrong with Sheila: she had a bad doctor who didn't catch her illness soon enough to treat it properly. BUT THAT CAN'T HAPPEN WITH PRECIOUS BRENDA!!! Speaking of whom...there she is. She pretty quickly figures out that Cindy DID tell Jim, against Brenda's instructions. Jim reiterates that whatever's going on is nothing to be embarrassed about. Brenda says she knows it isn't; she just didn't want Jim getting worried over nothing. Jim says he isn't worried. Brenda: "Why not?!" Entrapment. Jim says he's not concerned because it could be anything -- like maybe an ingrown hair! Brenda's like, "An ingrown hair. On my left breast? I sincerely hope not." By the way, Brenda's eyes have never been wonkier.

Brenda calls Jim's ingrown-hair theory the sort of explanation Brandon would come up with. So of course he enters and asks what they're talking about, and of course no one will tell him, because boobs.

WBH. We get to hear 25 minutes of lecturing about the ear before a knock comes at the door; it's Cindy, come to pick up Brenda, who's going to die of embarrassment! Remember what it was like when you were a teenager and just the evidence that you HAD parents was mortifying? Ah, youth.

Outside, Brenda gives Cindy hell for daring to show her face at school. Meanwhile, dig how much Cindy dresses up just to go to the doctor! Check out that skirt slit!

Anyway, Cindy got them an appointment with a doctor that came highly recommended by one of Jim's colleagues, and she said she could fit them in if they got there before 2. Brenda's all, "'She'?!" It's 1991, Brenda, good lord.

And then we're at the doctor's office, and she's young and cute and everything.

Brenda and Cindy recap the story so far (leave it to the professionals, ladies!), but we also learn that (a) Cindy's grandmother also had cancer, and (b) Sheila was five years younger than Cindy, and died five years ago. Dr. Donner assures Brenda that it's probably nothing, given her age. Brenda then remembers that she bruised herself a couple of months ago playing volleyball. Cindy totally turns on her, all, "You knew about this months ago?!" and Brenda says she didn't even connect the two until just this second. Dr. Donner says that's how most women become aware of a breast mass, and Cindy's like, "Oh," and then the doctor asks to speak to Brenda alone for a minute. You can tell Cindy doesn't want to leave, but she does, of course. Once she's gone, Dr. D. tells Brenda she wanted to speak with her alone so that Brenda understood their relationship, and that anything Brenda tells the doctor won't be repeated to anyone outside the office: "Not to your parents, not to your clergyman. No one." "Clergyman"? Do we really think Brenda would be concerned that her doctor would go down to First Methodist and start spilling the beans about Brenda's boobs? Dr. D. wants Brenda to feel free to come see her "for any reason." Translation: "I will totally hook you up with the Pill and your parents don't have to know." Dr. D. examines Brenda manually and asks her all the questions you'd expect her to if you're a lady and have ever been to a gynecologist. She repeats that it's probably nothing, and that Brenda's too young to need a mammogram, but they are going to do a needle biopsy. Brenda asks whether a needle biopsy "has anything to do with a needle." See, she has nothing to worry about from her SATs! Dr. D. confirms that it does, so Brenda asks if her mommy can come back and hold her hand.

At WBH, Andrea mooches an invitation to Steve's to study, because she can't take the Alfred B. Cooke course because she's a poor.

And then, Brenda gets a biopsy. If you're not sure how that goes, don't worry: the doctor likes explaining things, as though to a second-grader.

At home, Jim and Cindy chop onions and fret. Brenda walks in just in time to hear Jim call Cindy "baby," and instead of barfing, she tells them she wishes they'd stop talking about her behind her back. Cindy tries to pass off her distress as tears from the onions, and Brenda's like, "I'm probably fine, calm down," but then they all have to drop it because Brandon walks in, and when he asks about her leaving school early that day, FINALLY Brenda just straightfowardly tells him that she was seeing a doctor about the tumor in her breast. Brandon can't utter the word "cancer," but Cindy and Brenda assure him that the odds that she has it are extremely remote. Brandon points out that if her procedure's on Saturday, she'll miss the SAT, and Brenda ruefully looks back at him from across the expanse of time and maturity and her acute awareness of her own mortality and breathes that the SAT is the last thing on her mind right now. THE LAST.

And then we're at Steve's, where the man of the house is giving Andrea basic instructions on how to take a multiple-choice test that any child would know, even before the age of the internet. But Andrea doesn't rule out any choices ever because she's a grind, in case you weren't aware, and she gets so tired that she takes off her glasses (prelude) and flops down on Steve's bed. This can't go anywhere good. It just can't.

Steve tells Andrea she'll be fine, because she's already smart, and that's her problem -- she outsmarts herself. Andrea sighs that sometimes she wishes she wasn't so smart. (A for confidence; F for obnoxiousness.) Steve adds that she looks pretty cute without her glasses, and Andrea asks whether that's supposed to be a compliment, and Steve's like, "No, but this is," and kisses her. There's a pause, and then...

Ugh, you guys. I'm fine with them exchanging an egg together (not a euphemism) a few seasons from now, but this is gross. Evidently Andrea feels the same way, because she doesn't let things go on very long: Steve is just getting ready to move from his position kneeling next to the bed to lying on top of her -- I'M SORRY, but he is -- when she gets all flustered and takes off in a cloud of dork dust.

And then Brandon and Brenda talk about poor dead Sheila. She died! It's sad.

At school the next day, Andrea plops down next to Brandon on the dead grass to tell him all about how she made out with Steve for three whole seconds, but then he totally hijacks the conversation to give her a news update on Brenda's boob, which by the way Brenda still hasn't even chosen to tell HER OWN FRIENDS yet. Andrea is very reassuring and so forth, and tells Brandon he can tell her anything, and he's cool with that, and then does that TV thing where he asks what SHE was going to tell HIM and she's like, "Nothing, ha ha! Let's talk about your sister's maybe-cancerous boobs some more!" But seriously, why aren't they watering this grass? I thought it was a fancy school.

Elsewhere, Brenda's telling Donna and Kelly all about her boob sitch, so I guess that only makes Brandon an unforgivable gossip by a couple of minutes. Kelly and Donna are freaked out about it, of course, Kelly notably saying that she hopes nothing ever happens to her breasts. "Mine either," chimes in Donna, while we all know that the real work is going to "happen" to her nose first. Kelly doesn't know how Brenda can be so calm, and Brenda says she guesses it's because she has no choice. I'm glad Brenda went with the "noble hero" dramatic overreaction.

Oh hey, someone doesn't know about Brenda's boob yet -- Dylan! Who, if he hasn't noticed before, evidently isn't making it to second base very much. Anyway, he comes up behind her at her locker and puts his arms around her, and she gets all antsy and yells at him, which he attributes to SAT stress, expositing that it's why he only intends to take the test once, in his senior year. Brenda starts crying and hugs him, saying she's "so scared," and finally tells him that the reason has nothing to do with a Number 2 pencil (though using one is EXTREMELY IMPORTANT). Dylan's response to the news that there's anything untoward in Brenda's breast is blank-eyed incomprehension, which may also be why she waited to tell him.

But some time later, Dylan's walking Brenda up to her front door and promising to be there at the hospital when she's having her biopsy. She tells him she doesn't want him there, and he insists that he will, and she decides to Brenda it up by yelling at him that he didn't even want to touch her after she told him, and that when he claims he loves her he's "just saying that." Frankly, Dylan's reacting about as well as any 16-year-old boy could be expected to, but Brenda's done with "noble hero" and has moved on to "shrieking, misunderstood victim," and stomps inside, slamming the door behind her, and right in Dylan's face. That's a hell of a girlfriend.

Later, Brenda's in bed, wondering, "Did I overreact? Wait, I never overreact." She even keeps it up in front of a witness, though when Cindy asks, "Whatcha doin'?" Brenda restrains herself from replying that she's practicing for when she's in her eternal grave.

Instead, she says she's thinking about life, death, and love -- the usual. Brenda admits that what she's most afraid of is the thought of losing a breast -- which is irrational when the alternative is death, but is actually probably a pretty common reaction. Cindy assures her that she isn't going to lose a breast, and Brenda bleats, "Is that what you told Aunt Sheila?" Cindy doesn't slap her in the face for using her dead sister to score a point in an argument, and instead says that if Sheila had started breast self-exams when she was Brenda's age, everything probably would have been okay for her. Brenda decides to let that one pass, and tells Cindy she needs to make a phone call in private. She dials, gets Dylan's answering machine, and sobs, "I love you too." High School + Medical Crisis = Brenda's Dream Come True.

After the commercials -- ha! I KNEW she was practicing.

Brenda's having a fantasy in which her memorial service has been combined with the SAT -- which is handy, because it means the production doesn't have to build a funeral-home set. Brenda gets up out of her coffin and starts walking up and down the aisles, where we see that in her dream, the SATs are more like the Brenda Aptitude Test, with her friends and loved ones answering multiple-choice questions about her. (Kelly's asks what she most wants Brenda to leave Kelly in her will: shoes, a doll collection, or..."her boyfriend." Foreshadowing!) Brenda has just seen Cindy answer that what she'll most miss about Brenda is her help in the kitchen, and when Brenda whines about it, Cindy looks up sharply and says, "Brenda, WAKE UP." They have to be at the hospital in an hour. Brandon comes in to wish her luck; she does likewise, since he's on his way to the SAT, but he shrugs her off: "What the hell, it's only a test." JUXTAPOSITION!

At the hospital, Dr. D comes out to tell Jim and Cindy what will happen and the timeline for results. That they would know "two or three hours" after the sample had gone to the lab whether Brenda's lump is malignant or not seems remarkably fast for 1991, but I'm not a doctor, so what do I know.

Brenda is prepped for surgery as...

...the SAT begins at WBH. Steve and Andrea are both late, and literally run into each other outside the classroom...

They both talk over each other, babbling that the incident the other night was a mistake and so forth, and you guys, now's not the time, IT'S THE SAT. They agree that no one ever has to know, but then the proctor opens the door and is all, "If you two lovebirds are finished, we'd like to begin," so as Steve and Andrea are hurrying in, Kelly has to turn to Brandon, all, "'Lovebirds'?" because she just can't let go and also is just kind of a jerk.

Hospital. Brenda's awake for her procedure, as planned. There's more exposition to the effect that THIS IS TOTALLY NOT A BIG DEAL OR ANYTHING TO BE AFRAID OF, YOUNG GIRLS WHO MIGHT BE WATCHING. Brenda will have a pressure bandage to prevent infection at the biopsy site, so she won't be able to take a shower for two days. The doctor locates the mass: it looks like a little wad of chewed gum. As usual, the human body is totally disgusting.

WBH. While everyone else is beavering away at the test, Brandon stares off into the middle distance...

...because as much as he cares about his academic future, he just cares more about his SISTER, DAMMIT. We don't hear what he says to the proctor as he goes up to the front of the class with his exam book, but frankly, it seems like he could have figured out BEFORE he got to school that he should be with his family. Brandon just wants to be everything to everyone! (Brandon sucks.)

Hospital. Check this out:

If Cindy's shoulder pads don't have their own SAG card, there is no justice. She's all, "REMEMBER SHEILA!," and Jim's like, "Brenda is not Sheila II, get a grip." Cindy can't believe he isn't scared, and he sensibly says that he'll be scared when he knows there's something to be scared about. And then here's Brandon! He can make up the test, "under the circumstances." And here's Brenda! She's alive (so far). She says that the doctor will call them later with the results, and then happens to glance over to the mirror in the waiting area (because when people are stressed out and scared, they just LOVE to preen over their looks) and exclaims that her hair is a mess. But not everyone agrees!

Dylan tells Brenda that he thinks she looks "terrific" (the good kind of "terrific," I hope), adding that he's been to five hospitals because she never told him which one she'd be going to. They're going home! For results.

Chez Walsh, later, Brenda's had a chance to brush her hair, but other than that, everyone's just sitting around anxiously. When Cindy hears a ring, she LEAPS on the phone, forcing Jim to tell her it's the doorbell. Brenda's like, "I TOLD you she'd answer it," and Cindy promises not to cross her daughter again. At the door, it's Kelly and Donna, with flowers and a gift basket. Kelly apologizes for being an ass the other day, but she just didn't know what to say, so Brenda lets her off the hook by asking for a hug. Said hug apparently cues Dr. Donner to call.

Maybe it's just me, but it seems like everyone's hugging Brenda pretty hard, given that she just had surgery on her breast. Right?

Later, Brenda's in bed when Brandon enters to make her health scare all about himself (he would really miss her!) and engage in some sibling-inappropriate displays of affection (do brothers really do the behind-the-ear head-cup?). She must never do that again! She won't. Oh, she'll scare him -- but her boobs will only be tangentially involved.