New '90210' is anything but rich
Posted: Wednesday, September 03, 2008 6:30 AM by Anna Chan
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TV
Back in my early teens, I was a huge fan of the original “90210.” Sure, it was set in a wealthy high school with ridiculously rich kids (nothing like my school or classmates), but at the core were two average teens I could identify with, and issues that young people often face.
When the CW announced that it was doing a reboot of the popular '90s series, I was a bit doubtful – until it was announced that Jennie Garth and Shannen Doherty would be back. Garth said in an interview that the new show would push the envelope, and I thought it was already pretty edgy back in the day. I became hopeful. I wanted to see what the new generation would bring.
Judging from the two-hour premiere that aired Tuesday night, what the CW version brings is overexaggerated trash, not the envelope-pushing Garth hinted at.
The original covered everything from teen sex to drugs to underage drinking and more, all dealt with individually to get the issues across. The new series crams all of those – and then some – into the first two hours, barely glossing over things as if they were normal, everyday occurrences in the lives of real teens. Sorry, but I never saw kids performing sexual acts while parked in front of the school at the beginning of the day.
All of it just screamed “unbelievable” to me. The 15- and 16-year-olds appeared, spoke and acted as if they were at least a decade older; the new, “poor” kids from Wichita, Kan., live in a mansion with their gorgeous parents; a rich girl’s parents argued she shouldn’t have to do her report because her Sweet 16 party was stressing her out; the new Brandon and Brenda – Dixon and Annie Wilson – make friends and become accepted by the popular crowd in zero time; and it’s totally normal for a high-school kid to fly his date to San Francisco for dinner. Yeah, right.
None of this is edgy. It’s all the stuff of soaps. Where’s the real stuff high-school kids deal with nowadays? Granted, the original “90210” veered off into soap territory too, but not to this extent and certainly not so quickly.
To be fair, there were some bits I enjoyed. Jessica Stroup’s Erin Silver (Kelly Taylor’s half-sister) and Tristan Wild’s Dixon prove that real kids attend West Beverly Hills. Not only do they look and act their characters’ ages, they seem to have personalities and problems the average kid can identify with. And thank god Kelly and Brenda were both in the premiere, or my urge to turn my TV off may have won. Sure, these two have grown up, but hints of the same two girls I adored almost 15 years ago are still there, and I want to see more of them.
But it’s unlikely that the new show will turn its focus back on the original characters, so I can safely say I probably won’t tune in again.
What did you think of the series spin-off?
