Sounds Delicious

 The new 90210 is off and running.

I watched the original series religiously for its entire run, so I’m having a hard time judging this new version.  The fact that, for me, it’s a mixed bag - as opposed to a crime against humanity - is pleasantly encouraging.

I like the fact that they are including original characters, sort of continuing the soap opera ten years later.  I like how hot some of the teenage girls are.  The new series is much more like what the old series became (a trashy, turbulent, incestuous mess, like its spinoff, Melrose Place) than Darren Star’s original concept, but a slower paced and character-focused “issue drama” like the first season of Bev-Niner is a delicate mix.  I wouldn’t expect anyone to even try to recreate that, much less do it well. 

I think many people (even true fans of the original show) forget that 90210’s initial popularity was not established through sleaze and scandal as much as good writing, good characters, and a frank, honest, and open-minded approach to real issues.  Sure, it was sugar-coated with rich, brooding dudes and chicks in turquoise bikinis, but it had a heart and a mind as well, an enlightened moral core that it eventually abandoned in favor of the more detached ’realism’ of a smutty soap opera.  Not that I didn’t eat it up with a big brass spoon.  But the characters that Star set up in that first season are what allowed it to endure.

This new show, I don’t know.  I like some of the characters okay, but it seems sort of like what happened to the Real World:  the first several seasons had all this bizarre, different people from all over the place dipping their fingers in each others’ peanut butter; now it’s just an endless series of identical, attractive, whiny college students.  I’m worried that these young, skinny (jesus they are skinny), flawless girls and their respective dudes are going to be just as interchangeable and replaceable.

My other concern is the pacing.  So far the show seems guided by a 30-second maximum for any given scene.  Obviously this is to keep the story moving and to stay up-to-the-minute with all the characters, but it also forces an unrelenting urgency.  There are very few scenes of casual dialogue, which is unfortunate, because conflicts matter less when you don’t know if you even like the characters. 

 But this is just the beginning, and it seems like it has plenty of room to grow.  There are some very likeable people, it’s entertaining, etc.  I just hope personality develops with the story.