If you hadn’t heard, the highly-anticipated (speak for myself, I know) 90210 spin-off aired this past Tuesday and was it ever juicy! From underage drinking to gratuitous blow-jobs to plagiarism to Maury-worthy paternity scandals, the jam-packed, two-hour season premier could have passed for a Lifetime made-for-TV movie (on crack).
Tuesday’s spin-off began exactly where the series left off in 2000. The only difference? The character equivalent of Brandon is now some adopted black kid. And voila! The gang is instantly politically correct.
People, what has become of prime-time television?
I was a big-time Brenda-Brandon-Donna-Dylan-David-Kelly die-hard back in my day. I pretty much grew up with those brats. When an episode aired, I was all about the zip code — even if I had already seen the episode before.
The gang from West Bev was always older and, ahem, a little more mature than me, but my overworked single mother never had the time to sit down and watch an episode for herself. She was aware that her oddball daughter would wake up at six on Saturday mornings to watch old reruns of The Brady Bunch, so really — how harmful could this other show be?
My mother actually lucked out because the earlier episodes of 90210 were total Disney. They attempted to tackle tough topics with a family-friendly (albeit melodramatic) approach. Take the time Brenda learned to give herself a breast exam and, at the tender age of (what?) 15, happened to discover a lump — OMG! She freaked and stressed and cried and yelled, but in the end, everything was benign. The moral of the story: Check yourself before you wreck yourself?
The original cast of Beverly Hills, 90210 (Wholesome, no?)
But then the gang graduated from high school, went off to Skank U., and drugged it up. I was a bit older by then, so I could play it cool and digest what I was watching. But what about all those preteens who were now religiously tuning in as I once did? Talk about a crash course in the worst kind of sex ed — the rape kind, the promiscuous kind, the when-the-heck-will-Donna-quit-whining-and-just-give-it-up-to-David-before-marriage kind.
And judging from Tuesday’s episode, it’s only gotten worse.
Gone are the days when a girl’s virginity and her boyfriend’s speed habit are the biggest sources of drama in her life. High school jock pranks involving pigs and divorced parents still fuel the fire, but nowadays, the combined weight of the cast is comparatively halved and while old Dylan had a Porsche, new Dylan flies women to San Fran on a whim. On his jet.
*sigh*
Tags: 90210, beverly hills, reboot, review, TV