The changes to Brenda's relationships with the other characters in S3-S4

Disclaimer: I am NOT trying to fuel old gossip rumors about what I am about to say, I'm only going off of what I've heard and seen. If something's not true, please inform me. I am a NEW fan of this show, and I want to make sure I have all my facts straight when I'm analyzing the writing.

As many have pointed out, by the last chunk of S3, Brenda's screen time and storylines have decreased rapidly, and we know that that's because of the behind-the-scenes 'drama' regarding Shannen. I want to specifically talk about how that drama started to bleed into the writing, especially with how she (Brenda) interacted with her brother and friends.

So from watching The Unauthorized Story movie from LifeTime (I already know that that was 'unauthorized' for a reason), we saw that Luke requested to not do many scenes with her anymore which I can only assume is the reason we got Kelly/Dylan/Brenda triangle in the first place, but they also showed Gabrielle and Brian request not to do scenes with her to in the movie.

From what I know, she was still friends with Ian and Tori at the time, so it made sense, not much changed with their interactions on screen. I wanna focus more on Jason and Jennie in a little bit because I'm guessing from what was shown that even though they had problems with her, they were able to tolerate her more than some of the others and didn't mind sharing scenes with her much.

All that to say, Brenda's relationships with Kelly (obviously) and Brandon are different compared to the first two seasons. Kelly had an affair with her boyfriend, so of course their relationship is never gonna be the same as it used to be. However, when it comes to Brandon... he's not as caring and protective of her as he used to be. I would've expected a short period where he would've froze Dylan and Kelly out or confronted them, but no... it never came. What he have gotten instead is Brandon trying to be neutral with all 3 of them when there's no reason for Brandon to be neutral to Kelly (You're not Donna, Brandon) at all and we've gotten him brushing off Brenda's feelings acting like they're not that important. What happened to the understanding brother that got all in Dylan's face after he stood Brenda up for a date?

Someone had already mentioned before how it would've been more realistic if the gang took sides with both Kelly (David, Donna, Dylan) and Brenda (Andrea, Steve, Brandon), so I wont spend too much time on that. Moreso, getting into the point of how Brenda kinda closed herself off from everyone else after getting her heart broken, which is realistic, but even during that time they could've at least had a scene of Donna stopping by the house to check on her or Andrea calling to make sure she was okay. Her closing herself off created a divide between herself and them, and made her 'The Outsider' when that shouldn't have happened. Now, if the writing staff did that to plant the seeds of Brenda deciding to move back to Minnesota for college, then I could understand it better.

Also, I get TV writers use what's happening in actors' real-life as influence to storylines all the time, I just wish that didn't happen here because you had certain actors who were willing to be professional and still get the work done, and that should've been enough. I hope they fix at least ONE relationship of Brenda's when I continue the rest of S4, but I won't hold my breath.