Nouveau 90210

So last night I watched the premiere of the Beverly Hills 90210 2.0 on the CW and I have to say maybe my expectations were too high, because for the post part, it pretty much blew. The great thing about the original version is that the Walshes were a middle class family who lived in an ordinary house, sort of the slums of Beverly Hills. In this version, the family moves into the humongous mansion of the grandmother who was some B-Movie starlet played by Jessica Walter who is a hoot and the only reason really to watch this particular version.

I am somewhat intrigued by Kelly Taylor (played by Jennie Garth) and the relationship with her half-sister, little Erin who was born during the original series, which ended 8 years ago. When the series ended it looked like Kelly and Dylan were going to end up together, but now it is 8 years later and no Dylan, but Kelly has a child. Frankly I would much rather the series revolved around these two characters than the new family who instead of Minnesota like the Walshes, is from Kansas.

Annie and Dixon are the two kids in this version, Annie is more like Donna from the original series, and Dixon is the kid they adopted who is African-American. So far, we know that Dixon was 8 when he was adopted and he plays Lacrosse because his adopted father, Harry does. I will admit the idea that Harry is the new prinicipal at West Beverly High is different, and they've added the cliche of an old flame who is the mother of the school bitch. The big revelation last night is that Harry and the old flame have a kid who was given up for adoption, which Harry didn't know.

The other big revelation was that Erin or Silver as everyone calls her, who has a blog called The Vicious Circle (shades of Gossip Girl although everyone knows that it is her blog unlike the anonymous blogger of Gossip Girl), is mad at Naomi, the school bitch because Naomi blabbed about Erin's father cheating on her mother which led to divorce and her mother falling off the wagon. Oh and that girls in Beverly Hills apparently get tattoos in 8th Grade (lots of 8's in this show).

The Peach Pit is now the Pit, a night club after hours (didn't they do that in the original series too?) and one of the kids has a father who is a huge porn producer which led to the second best line of the night when he explained that his father had two rules: he couldn't watch porn until he was 21 and they had to have dinner every night as a family!

As for the big Kelly/Brenda reunion, it was kind of boring and lame and full of platitudes. I'm not sure about the English teacher/Lacrosse coach who has a thing for Kelly. He seems too much of a beta male for her.

Here's hoping that the show gets better as the weeks go by, otherwise, I'll have a free hour of reading or writing time on Tuesday nights.