90210

When I first saw this story I thought the headline was a cruel, cruel joke. But it’s actually the cruel, cruel truth.

I like to do these “Better Know a Writing Staff” posts not necessarily about the best shows, but about shows that require an interesting mix of writers with a variety of backgrounds. 90210 certainly isn’t a patch on the original (which was not “great” either, but it worked), but writing for the show must be an interesting challenge, because it’s trying to do the impossible: be a teen soap like the original and be a hip, now kind of show. The writers have not managed to pull this off so far, but here are the people who are trying to pull it off.

The news that 90210 has already been picked up for a full season is kind of a surprise, since it’s the first positive piece of news we’ve had about this show since it premiered. From the big drop-off in week 2 ratings to the news that people have been noticing how dangerously thin the female leads are (in what might be called reverse Facts of Life syndrome, the network is asking the girls to eat more), it seemed pretty clear that this show did not live up to the expectations the CW had for it — granted that the CW expected it to justify the network’s existence, and nothing can do that. While I didn’t think the network would just stop it after 13 episodes, since that would be the equivalent of admitting to the whole world that they’re doomed, I didn’t think they’d make quite such a strong and instant commitment to the show; but that’s just what they’ve done, by making it the very first show to get a “back 9” order.

Not looking good for week 2 of 90210. No, not very good at all. And ratings aren’t like election poll numbers — well, okay, ratings are like election poll numbers in that they poll people on their preferences and extrapolate from that, but my point is that unlike polls, ratings actually count.

The word you’ll most often hear associated with the new 90210 is “tame.” Despite the blowjob reference, it wasn’t really much naughtier than the original; certainly, as critics are already pointing out, it’s not as naughty as Gossip Girl (which isn’t all that naughty itself, certainly not as much as it thinks it is). That may not turn out to be a problem, since, as I keep mentioning, Gossip Girl isn’t actually a hit, and the original 90210 has a much more successful formula: an essentially wholesome show with elements of soapy glamour. The good side of the 90210 franchise is that unlike Gossip Girl, which has tried to sell itself to kids as the show that adults don’t want them to watch, 90210 is more of a family event, because of the basically wholesome nuclear-family setup and the nostalgia value. And you can’t have a real hit show unless the kids’ parents watch along with them.

Preliminary thought after watching act 1 of 90210 (I’ll finish the rest very soon and talk about it tomorrow): nothing has really changed when it comes to the ancient art of clunky exposition, has it? The first scene consisted primarily of the characters telling each other things they already know — they moved to Beverly Hills to be with Grandma, Dad’s the principal — just so we would hear it. It reminded me of that scene from The Simpsons:

While we count the seconds until 90210, we should take time to remember The Ben Stiller Show‘s “Melrose Heights 90210,” where Stiller, co-creator Judd Apatow (in the first of his many TV cult flops) and their writers satirized the original 90210’s relentlessly pro-social messages, and Janeane Garofalo parodied Shannen Doherty’s weird line deliveries. This is the second of the two Melrose Heights sketches, where Vaughn (Bob Odenkirk) is shunned by his fellow students because they think he’s… a robot. The combination of melodrama with hit-you-over-the-head PSAs was a staple of Fox’s early programming — 90210 picked it up from 21 Jump Street — and also of Canadian programming (that’s kind of the Degrassi formula, but in a grittier way), but it’s what the producers of new 90210 are apparently trying to stay away from. For now at least.

It’s official: nobody gets to see 90210 before the premiere. Not officially anyway. I guess it’s possible that the network really is just trying to build up hype for the show and isn’t embarrassed about it; advance word on the pilot script was good, and there are plenty of shows with much more to hide that do have screenings for critics. The network probably assumes that they’ve generated so much buzz for the show through their endless, relentless leaks to the press that any actual advance reviews would just dilute the buzz by focusing on the mundane question of whether the show is good or not. Maybe they’re right. But then this is the CW and it’s always dangerous to assume they’re right.

Karen Hill has read the new Beverly Hills 90210 pilot script (written by Rob Thomas, then rewritten by a new team after he left the project to concentrate on other things) and says it’s good.