apropos of nothing

‘90210’ Blow Job Not As Bad As We Expected


So, obviously, like the target-demo nostalgists that we are, we turned into last night’s two-hour series premiere of the rebooted 90210. How was it? Awefulsome! When the CW announced a week ago that it wouldn’t be sending critics advance screeners, the prevailing assumption was that this meant the show was terrible. Even so, we held out hope — maybe it would be terrible in the same way as the original! And it sort of was!

We knew the updated 90210 was reimagining the first show’s characters as current-day teenagers (the new Brandon Walsh is played, hilariously, by Tristan Wilds from The Wire), but we didn’t know they’d be able to capture the original’s tone quite so well. Despite its much-discussed blow-job scene (skip ahead to 4:40 in the above video) — which Shannen Doherty and Jennie Garth have called “not 90210” and thought would make Aaron Spelling spin in his grave — it was still pretty much the same corny, mostly sexless, inane-subplot-crammed Beverly Hills, 90210 that we were too dumb to be critical about when we were 13; basically a slightly grittier Saved by the Bell. We have no idea what current teenagers, weaned on Gossip Girl and actual blow jobs, might have thought. But we sort of enjoyed it, even if we’ll probably never watch it again and totally expect it to be canceled any minute.

Earlier: Will We Hate the New ‘90210’ As Much As Jennie and Shannen Do?

‘90210’ Blow Job Not As Bad As We Expected