In my household this show is treated as a god and my sister is dying just to get her grubby little mitts on my review copy, and the fact that I had to review it first was killing her. Oh well, I guess we all have to make sacrifices.
"90210" begins as a fish-out-of-water story as the Walsh family moves from Minnesota to the glitzy and glamorous world of Beverly Hills, a place where fitting in isn't like trying on slippers. Twins Brandon (Priestly) and Brenda Walsh (Doherty) make their way from their previously simple lives as Minnesota teens to a life of fast cars and fast times, West Beverly Hills High is not the Midwest my friend. The show deals with everything from fitting in, to shoplifting, rape, drugs, dating older men, drinking, etc. and that is all in the first half of the season. Oddly enough, "90210" is tame when compared to shows in the same genre of today. Hell, "The O.C." pretty much covered the entire "90210" series in its first season. Kelly's mother's drug problem is nothing compared to Mischa Barton passed out in Tijuana.
As for dating itself, the cell phones in the show are the size of tennis shoes and instead of Escalades and Hummers you have an episode in which one young girl asks, "Whose Beemer we gonna take?" A line that made me laugh my ass off, but not quite as much as when Steve Sanders (Ian Ziering) refers to one of the teacher at West Beverly saying, "That guy gives new meaning to the word hemorrhoid." Sorry, that is priceless.
Moving beyond the storylines we have the ridiculous hair styles of the '90s, primarily sported by Brandon Walsh, the drama of what to wear thanks to Brenda, Kelly and Donna, the only one that actually looks like a high-school kid David (Brian Austin Green), the nerd of the bunch Andrea (Gabriel Carteris) and of course the gravelly voiced, soft spoken yet ever so cool Dylan played by Luke Perry. I honestly watch this show and can't believe I ever enjoyed it.
Outside of the 22 season one episodes you also get a handful of featurettes and a few commentaries from series creator Darren Star. The features are pretty much generic and will satisfy major fans of the series, but I don't think you will be watching them over and over again.
If you are wondering what took the series so long to make its way to DVD that would be the music rights and even still not all of it made the transition as you will notice a special note reporting, "Music has been changed for this home entertainment version." Does this really matter? I would say you aren't even going to notice unless you have been scouring the television channel for the show in syndication and have all the episodes memorized.
While I can appreciate "90210" for its nostalgic presence I can't get into the show like I once did. Perhaps it’s the dated appearance or the lack of super-hottie Tiffani Amber-Thiessen who joins the show several years later that turns me of. Sorry, pampered teens with trivial relationship issues wears thin after a while.