One of Brian Austin Green‘s favorite Beverly Hills, 90210 storylines doesn’t even involve his own character.

The late Matthew Perry‘s role on a season 1 episode of 90210 “was one of my favorite storylines on the show,” Green told Saturday’s crowd at a 90s Con panel featuring his fellow 90210 castmates Jennie Garth, Gabrielle Carteris, Ian Ziering, Jason Priestley, and Tori Spelling.

“Matthew and Jason had such great [chemistry] — that brought my attention to mental health in a way I hadn’t ever thought about before,” said Green, who played David Silver across all 10 seasons of the era-defining teen soap.

“J., I learned from you,” Green said directly to Priestley, “and Matthew, God bless you.”

On the first season episode “April is the Cruelest Month,” Priestley’s character, Brandon Walsh, seeks to write a profile of Roger Azarian (Perry), the golden child of West Beverly Hills High’s senior class, for the school newspaper. As a way of introducing the character, Ian Ziering’s Steve Sanders says that Azarian will “probably get a Rhodes scholarship, marry Miss America, and run for president.”

After Priestley is granted rare access to the popular senior’s private life, however, Brandon learns everything that glitters isn’t necessarily gold. Azarian’s rich father, who “owns half of Orange County,” according to Ziering’s Steve, has placed punishingly high expectations atop his son’s shoulders. At the same time, his constant calling in of favors to aid his son robs him of any opportunity to actually achieve anything on his own merit, a potent cocktail that leads Roger to issue thinly-veiled warnings that he’s depressed enough to do something dangerous.

Brandon is able to intervene when Roger threatens to kill himself, after finding out he didn’t get into the school his father decided should be his top choice. The episode ends with Roger checking into a psychiatric facility and urging Brandon to write the story as planned. Perry publicly struggled with substance abuse and mental illness for decades, and “April is the Cruelest Month” becomes even more poignant in light of his 2023 death from the acute effects of ketamine.

“It was, what, 1990 or 1991 — wasn’t that what everyone was doing: wearing polo shirts and shooting their dads?” Perry joked in a 2012 interview with the Los Angeles Times, in which he revisited his time on 90210. “That was some of my finest acting.”

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Perry’s character wouldn’t return to Beverly Hills, because the actor booked a little show called Friends, which took over his life — and the world — in 1994.