9021-FAIL

I was so excited all day yesterday about the season premiere of 90210 and the series premiere of the new Melrose Place. Really. Even Ben was looking (somewhat) forward to the 2 hours of terrible television that we had planned. Its just a guilty pleasure for us, so we watched 90210 all last year despite the fact that it was pretty unrealistic and did no justice to the original 9-0. We decided we wanted to watch Melrose for the same reasons. What I'm trying to say here is that neither one of us really went into this with high expectations.

I had planned to give a full recap of the show based on the notes that I took last night, but the more I think about it - it really wasn't that interesting. Instead, I'll talk about the merits of the show since that might be slightly more likely to keep your attention. (Slightly being the operative word there). I would apologize for any spoilers I include in here, but I honestly do not feel one bit bad about spoiling it for you here. If you read this and still have intentions to watch it, you are a glutton for punishment.

Evidently, Annie's call to the police at the end of last season resulted in all of West Beverly going to summer school due to their underage drinking. Totally a reasonable punishment, right? WRONG. When I got caught drinking in high school I was suspended for 3 days. Not relegated to summer school. (True story. I would maybe tell it some day but my mom reads this blog and I'm pretty sure she's still pissed at me about that!) Digression aside, everyone hates Annie now and she's about to turn Emo on us. Adriana, Naomi, and Silver are BFF now as evidenced by their coordinating Wayfarers. (Was this whole show one giant advertisement for Wayfarers? Seems like it to me)

Rut-roh. This is turning into a recap rather than a discussion of the show's merits. Indulge me though.

So the whole show basically takes place at the Beverly Hills Beach Club, which is odd considering Beverly Hills isn't even on the beach. But whatever. Navid shows up in a yellow Ferrari (I could be wrong about that, I don't know cars). Now, I don't care how rich you are. Why on earth would you buy your child a car like that? Another totally unrealistic element of our beloved show. Now, I do realize that in the original show Dylan did drive a Porsche but that worked somehow. Not sure why but it did.

Naomi is clearly not over her heartbreak with Liam and is crazy about every male she sees or speaks to. I think maybe the best line in the whole show last night was when Naomi was talking to her friends about the (older) man she had met at Barneys "... he's so brilliant. He reads books you guys - for fun!!"

Yeah, read that line again. Its priceless.

Probably the only other highlight of the show was when Naomi had a little run-in with an older soccer mom at the BHBC. MommaSoccer makes fun of the girls' clothing choices, Naomi asks MommaSoccer to come to their beach bash that night, MommaSoccer says the high schoolers should be required to have chaperone's at BHBC to which Naomi brilliantly responds by saying "over-50's shouldn't be allowed to wear sleeveless". SNARK. FEST. 2009. BHBC EDITION!

A bit later in the show we find out that TheReader is in fact, MommaSoccer's husband. TWIST!!

Lots of things happen but frankly, it was pretty drama-filled and I don't feel like rehashing so I'm going to skip ahead to the beach bash. Scene: everyone is dancing and having a good time. That's pretty believable. Then the camera pans out a little bit and we discover that ....

Everyone is doing the very same dance!!!!!

Yes!!! Choreographed high school dance parties. Doesn't everyone do that? Iloveit!

At the end, we see that Annie was most likely date-raped (it seems that she had no recollection) and Naomi manages to get hold of the naked picture of her with intentions of passing it around the school.

Next up: Annie officially becomes an Emo.

In summary, the show was bad. Worse than usual. It seems that they pack too much drama into one episode. I know the real 90210 dealt with many of these same issues but that was over a 10 year span. Clearly, this 9-0 isn't going to survive 10 years so they are trying to pack all the drama into 3 or 4 seasons.

I would love to talk about Melrose Place but: a) this is getting long and b) it is worse than terrible. As in I only watched about 15 minutes of it. No way on earth it will be picked up for another season.