“That’s what kids here do, they have planes, and they go places and they don’t tell their parents because it’s no big deal.”
Well, I think we all know what city that zip code refers to by now, so we can certainly leave Beverly Hills out of the title!
Call me a hopelessly sentimental sap, but a chill of excitement shot up my spine as I saw Brenda Walsh, Kelly Taylor, and Nat Bussichio share a group hug in the Peach Pit, even if it is now referred to as the Pit. Yes, even if Nat’s now forced to try to make lattes and espressos.
So how do we go about rebooting the godfather of the tawdry high school soap opera now that Josh Schwartz’s Gossip Girl is being advertised as every parent’s nightmare? Face it, in 2008, the original Beverly Hills 90210 has the relative raunch value of a 40-year-old virgin’s sex life.
How about having your male lead receive a hummer in his Hummer? Yeah, that ought to work. Let’s not stop there. We’ll upgrade the fancy cars to private planes, and why not make one of the parents a super rich porn merchant? You decide whether you want your kids to watch it, because by now I think we all know that I eat this stuff up like a heroin addict who has just climbed the wall and fled the Betty Ford center.
The truth is that despite the fact that 90210 can’t match the writing, style, or upscale beauty of Schwartz’s Gossip Girl, it’s still a pretty amusing waste of time for those people who cried when Donna Martin finally graduated.
The Walsh family is now the Wilsons and they’re from Kansas, not Minnesota. Why? Probably so Annie Dixon can look her brother relatively straight in the face and say “Dixon, I don’t think we’re in Kansas anymore.”
Article comments
1 - Chris Beaumont
Let me admit up front that I never watched the old show, not my cup of tea. However, as time has passed my tastes have changed and I decided to give this new show a shot.
I found it awful. The acting was bad, dialogue was bad, characters were bad. I could barely make it 5 minutes before changing the channel.
Oh well, leaves room for other ventures...
2 - Laura
Great post! Being a girl who grew up watching the original show religiously with her friends all through elementary school and high school, I'd have to say I was both impressed and ashamed. Impressed that the show turned out to be actually good, and ashamed at the same time that I actually liked it. The appearances of Brenda, Kelly, and Nat were exciting, and I became giddy when I saw that they incorporated Kelly's younger sister and Andrea's daughter into the mix... as well as the mention of Kelly's mom still being a drunk and David's dad still being a cheating moron. I had to think back to the old days and try to remember what happened in the series finale, and the intertwining of both story lines actually worked for me. As a fan of the old show, I kinda hope the show keeps up this momentum, and hopefully we'll see and hear more about the characters we left behind (Brandon, Dylan, Steve, Donna, David, Valerie...). Now, I've never seen Gossip Girl, so I guess for now this definitely works for me.