90210 Review

Overall 4.12 of 5 view all 8 reviews

LauraBelle
South Elgin, IL

Like Leave It to Beaver With Alcoholism and Infidelity

mother of 13 year old daughter, Entertainment Writer, reality TV junkie, mother of 16 year old son, A Big Giant Sap

Pros

A few of the orginal stars, Appeals to tweens and teenagers

Cons

Too perfect at times, Too racy for tweens

SEP

2008

I was never into the original Beverly Hills, 90210 craze. My age placed me just out of that range to be really into it. I knew the basic characters and stars, and what it was all about, but it just wasn't something I was going to get into. Nevertheless, I decided to give this new incarnation, simply 90210, a try.

I realize this is supposed to be Beverly Hills and all, but the characters don't seem to dress and act like today's teenagers. They seem too perfect, like what we saw on Leave It to Beaver or something. In the first episode I watched, the parents of the central family on the show wanted to have more family time with their kids. They make plans to go bowling on Friday night as a family, but the kids don't want to miss out on seeing their friends. The kids of this white family include a daughter and an adopted African-American son complete with teenage angst over not fitting in. The only one that's missing is the little one asking Willis "What you talkin' about?" The kids secretly make plans to have their friends meet them at the bowling alley. It's just all too perfect no matter which zip code you live in.

I just couldn't get into it, but to gauge it, I asked my 12 year old daughter to watch it, the person who thinks families on TV are Miley and Billy Ray Cyrus and the Sprouse twins. She loved the show and now asks me when it will be on again. The things they go through and do on the show are more interesting to her genre than mine. However, the show wants to be cutting edge, so they have storylines that revolve around characters' alcoholism and one of the high school girls finding out her father is seeing another woman secretly. The girl and her mother look like they could be sisters, as the actress playing the daughter seems too old to be playing a high schooler, and the actress playing the mom seems to young to be the mother of a high schooler.

The draw to this show, however, is it's connection to the original Beverly Hills, 90210. Not only is everything happening in the sme zip code, byt zome of the characters that were kids before have come back as adults. Jennie Garth is now a mom and older sister of one of the highs choolers, and guidance counselor. Shannen Doherty returns to the zip code as well, but temporarily, to help out with the school play. Could there be anything more trite for a high school TV show than a school play?

And after I have now had my daughter watch two hours of the show, I now find out that it's more racy than school plays and family trips to the bowling alley. Apparently in the premiere episode there was the "suggestion" of oral sex going on in a car. For an older teenager that would probably be okay to have them see or have knowledge of, but not a 12 year old. But the problem is the show appeals to her age group.

To me 90210 suffers from not knowing who its audience should be. Its audience should be teenage girls and tweens, but they seem to also want to appease the fans of the original series, so they add in a few original stars and have the racy scenes included. Because it was always "soap-ish," those fans will keep returning to keep up with their original characters, and the new younger fans will return to keep up with the new characters. What will be interesting to see will be if it then gets the longevity of the original, or whether this struggle to figure out what and who it should appeal to ends it prematurely.

90210 is not recommended by LauraBelle

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Comments about LauraBelle’s Review

Looks like it would be better for teens not tweens. Thanks for the info.

Once upon a time I was a 90210'er, but after awhile the constant retelling of the same story plus bad acting by some was enough to scare me away. I had no desire to revisit that, but with a 13 yr old I gotta at least take a look at this to decide if she can watch it or not. . . probably not.