Premiere Watch '08: 90210

90210: "We're Not in Kansas Anymore" and "The Jet Setters"

Da da da da, da da da da (clap clap). Well, 90210 is back, or rather, the new 90210 is here. But is that a good thing? Let's discuss...

The show is all right. It's certainly not the complete disaster that it fairly easily could have been. It's also not a life-changing or ground-breaking foray into the teen soap world like The O.C. was. I also remember the original 90210 as having more of an edge.

One flaw I'm noticing out of the gate for the new 90210 is that is seems a little light. As in, the stakes don't seem that high. After two episodes into The O.C., Ryan had been in and out of the juvenile detention center a couple of times, there were several ass kickings, a house was burnt down, and the main character was abandoned by his family, among other major developments. During two hours of 90210 tonight, we had a couple break ups, a couple shoving matches, some groundings...nothing too heavy. Even on Gossip Girl, everything certainly feels important, even if it's ultimately not that big of a deal. People on Veronica Mars were freaking murdered. The point is, how long are we going to care about the relationships of high schoolers if nothing much else is going on?

One way to make us care about characters (no matter what their doing) is to make them ridiculously charismatic. The Seth Cohens, Chuck Basses, and Dick Casablancases of the fictitious world don't need to be involved in great story lines for us to love them. We just love them already. On the new 90210, there were a few characters with the potential to be lovable (Mr. Matthews, maybe Ethan, Silver), but I don't think any of them quite got there yet.

I'm nervous that many of the main characters (Annie, Dixon, Naomi) didn't give me much to like about them at all. Annie was over-the-top. Dixon was bland. Naomi looks like she's 35 years old.

The new 90210's ace in the hole: Jessica Walter. She's freaking hilarious, and any show could use a Lucille Bluth (and, let's face it, that's who she was playing).

I think the most interesting aspect of the pilot episodes was trying to piece together the back story of the original 90210 characters. I'm no doctorate-level 90210 historian, but I can remember some of it. Tonight's interesting developments: Silver is the child of David's dad and Kelly's mom (they got married during the original series) and Kelly has a 4.5-year-old son. The conversation between Brenda and Kelly seemed to suggest that the child's father is Brandon, which is a shocker since Kelly ended the original series with Dylan. So, I guess we're to believe that after the show ended, Kelly continued to flip flop back and forth between Dylan and Brandon, neither of whom ultimately stuck. My theory is that the new 90210's producers think they have a better chance of getting Jason Priestley to do a guest appearance than Luke Perry.

I think we could have done without both episodes tonight. I think the first one would have stood on its own quite nicely. However, I'll be watching next week to see how episode 3 goes.

Other observations on episode 1:

• I'm having some problems understanding Dixon a la Chris Brown's The O.C. season 4 cameo. I did get "Sucks. Bites. Blows." though.
• Jessica Walter is so awesome. I think she's considerably nicer on 90210 than she was on Arrested Development.
• Is MGMT's "Time to Pretend" the "Young Folks" of 2008 (in terms of ubiquitous plays in pilot episodes)? I hope so!
• Navid is cool. He's fast-talking like a journalistic Cappie.
• Hannah Zuckerman-Vasquez does the morning news... Mr. Matthews: "What is that girl, like 30?" (ha!)
• Mr. Matthews is adorable. (The actor was on one episode of Veronica Mars as Logan's real secret half brother.)
• The Kelly Taylor I remember would never have been a guidance counselor.
• Silver is amusing.
• Speaking as a former Writing Center instructor, I can diagnose Naomi as having a serious case of writing anxiety ;-)
• So which student is the hot teacher going to have a illicit affair with? My guess is Naomi (and I wouldn't have been too surprised if it was already going on).
• Grandma: "I say it was racially motivated!"
• It's nice that Annie and Dixon really seem to crack each up...because they might not end up with any other friends.
• It's gotta be beyond awkward to run into your (current) English teacher at a bar.
• Aunt Becky used to date a guy who lived in a tepee? Now he sounds like an interesting character.
• Grandma: "I won't tell the rest of the story, because I don't remember it."
• Silver: "Yeah, well, that's what blogs are supposed to do: cause problems."
• Since when do you have to read your term paper in front of the class? What would that take, like 15 minutes?
• Whoa, Dixon is already going to a dark place with his tipping Naomi off that Ethan is cheating via text message.
• Sorry, Annie's singing performance was just scary.
• Told you Dixon's revenge text was hasty.
• Dude, Naomi's crazy mom and Annie's dad have a son together! And she's all indignant about it. Even though he never knew about it. Not sure why she's still so mad.
• Was that Marissa's lifeguard station on the beach?

Episode 2:

• Grandma: "I need to finish my memoirs before my friend does. We've slept with all the same people!"
• Wow, Harry actually told Aunt Becky that he has a secret kid! Normally, it takes months for that kind of news to drop.
• Mr. Matthews: "Well, you're too easy. Anyone ever tell you that?"
  Kelly: "Not lately."
• These kids do actually remind me more of kids than the Gossip Girl "kids" do. They also seem more kid-like to me than The O.C. kids ever did, but that could be because I'm (shudder) getting older. Eek!
• It's Brenda! And Kelly and Nat are happy to see her! Really?
• So porn producers don't mind if their sons take their pigs and let them loose never to be seen again?
• So, Annie isn't allowed to have any more dates on school nights, but she's allowed to go hang out by the pool with Ethan right now? Come on, parents!
• My new guess for the student/Mr. Matthews hookup is Adriana.
• Anyone else getting a Mean Girls vibe from this Silver/Naomi "we used to be friends" stuff?
• Why did Annie take a match box from the San Francisco restaurant? What is this, 1947?
• A Kelly/Mr. Matthews/Brenda love triangle perhaps? We haven't seen anything like that before...
• Frankly, I think that Dixon not being allowed to text message is a good idea.
• Poor Ethan and his "pentapus."

Premiere Rating: 6/10

(photo: cwtv.com)