Fun
Frisky
Nostalgic
Intense
Adventurous
Choked Up
Curious
Romantic
Weird
When Beverly Hills 90210 debuted in 1990, it immediately became the quintessential Gen X show. Not that there was anything particularly Gen X about 90210: It was cheesy, slick, brightly-colored, and totally unironic. It went against the cultural grain of the cynical, indie-obsessed Gen Xers I knew. 90210 was a Gen X show simply because it was on the air when we were young, starred people our age, and accidentally reflected the most superficial cultural norms and concerns.
The rebooted BH92010, which debuted a few weeks ago and aired its season finale last night, is also a Gen X show par excellence, but for totally different reasons. Unlike the original show, which went all-in on soapy teen excess, BH90210 displays an almost painful amount of self-awareness. It’s a satire and meta-commentary on itself, while also managing to still be a nighttime soap with a charming and attractive cast. I loved the original show as a glitzy escape, but I had to look deeply askance to see anything of myself in the characters. With the new 90210, I don’t have to look very far at all. The show speaks to an entire generation that’s watched its youth flush away and faces a financially uncertain, self-parodic future. We’re all Jason Priestley and Jennie Garth now.
The premise has a chance to be disastrous, but it succeeds on pretty much every level. The original 90210 cast, minus the dear departed Luke Perry, reunites at a half-assed fan convention in Las Vegas. This is the cast playing versions of themselves, not their characters. It hews somewhat close to reality. Priestley is a struggling indie-film director, Ian Ziering is the personal-brand-obsessed star of Sharknado, and Gabrielle Carteris is the head of the Screen Actors’ Guild. But there are some personal differences. Brian Austin Green is married to a Rihanna-like pop star, not like in real life, where he wakes up every day next to Megan Fox, poor bastard.
In any case, the show’s “Tori Spelling” is a failed reality-show celebrity married to an ex-pro hockey player, and she needs a big score. After some Vegas shenanigans get the gang into trouble, Tori decides to, without consulting the rest of them, to pitch a 90210 reboot to Fox so she can pay her legal bills and her mortgage.
The reboot sells, the cast reunites again, and then the absurdity starts. At times, the new 90210 behaves almost like a backstage farce, a Hollywood version of “Noises Off.” The entire cast plays themselves with a sort of dry irony, something Ian Ziering does perfectly in the Sharknado movies. Now I realize that these actors had this quality all along, which was part of the draw. Garth is particularly funny, playing a sexually insecure version of herself with three failed marriages behind her, pretending to enjoy televised golf so she can sleep with her hot bodyguard. And Spelling goes full-on Lucille Ball in the reboot. Her performance is all eyerolls and pratfalls, and she’s frequently hilarious as well.
Who’d have thought that Jennie Garth and Tori Spelling, of all people, would deliver the ultimate meta-commentary of Gen X pop culture? There’s nothing accidentally hilarious about this reboot. It’s actually funny. Shannen Doherty gets to play the Kramer of the ensemble, spending most of her scenes saving endangered animals in exotic locales or continually stuffing her face with Craft Services sandwiches. The self-awareness and self-parody transcends, almost to the point of delight.
The 90210 reboot works because it plays hard on our sense of nostalgia, while also mocking that nostalgia, and itself.
The major “plot” of the show, other than the reboot itself, involves a stalker who’s haunting the cast. At one point, Spelling pratfalls down some stairs and decides that the stalker must be the actor Jamie Walters, whose character pushed her character down some stairs once on the original 90210. She forces the entire gang to drive two hours where Walters, now a firefighter, is performing acoustic music in a roadhouse bar. Walters and Doherty don’t recognize each other, because she was off the show by the time he appeared in Season 6.
“Wait,” Doherty says, “there was a Season 6?”
The scene ends with Doherty talking into her phone.
“Siri,” she says. “How many seasons of Beverly Hills 90210 were there?”
Shannen Doherty speaks for a generation. None of us remember how many season of 90210 there were, even the cast members. And it doesn’t matter. But like most of the cast, we’re still here regardless, and we still have bills to pay, reputations to protect, and a brave new world to navigate. When Carteris explores her “bisexual urges” and has an affair with a Fox executive played by Christine Elise, who was Emily Valentine on the original 90210 but now is playing Christine Elise, Fox executive, Elise makes her sign a consent form. When Ziering hooks up with the show’s head writer, he also has to sign a consent form. “I miss the ’90s,” Green says. Don’t we all?
The 90210 reboot works because it plays hard on our sense of nostalgia, while also mocking that nostalgia, and itself. There’s still a nighttime drama at the core of this thing. Garth and Priestley fall into bed together in the first half hour. There are unplanned pregnancies, mistaken identities, unexplored lusts, and lame, meaningful glances. And let’s not forget why the show was such a hit in the first place. It’s full of appealing TV stars. The cast has lost none of its charisma, energy, drive, and warmth. Only now, they don’t seem as unreachable as they once did. No Gen Xers are cool and indie anymore, except for maybe Steve Albini (and me). We’re all just lost in a digital world, burying our Boomer parents and trying to dodge annoying millennials at the grocery store. We’re still here now, just like most of the cast of the original 90210. And they seem perfectly willing to entertain us.
Neal Pollack is the author of ten bestselling books of fiction and nonfiction. His latest novel is the sci-fi satire Keep Mars Weird. He lives in Austin, Texas.
