Ben Whitcomb90210 Series Premier
September 3rd 2008 03:49
I honestly wanted to like this show. I wanted it to be good. I'm sorry to say that it wasn't. I might have liked it a lot more if I didn't have far superior shows to compare it to such as Gossip Girl, The OC, and One Tree Hill. I know what they were trying to do with the show. They wanted to be racy and ground breaking like the original series was, but it fell flat, severely. It tries to hard to be hip and fresh. The writing actually wasn't THAT bad, it just seemed worse because of poor delivery by the actors.
The opening scene turned me off to the rest of the two episodes. It was the chemistry, or the lack there of, that turned me off. Some of the characters have chemistry and work well together on screen, but it's not enough to make up for the characters that don't. The main family, the one we are introduced to in the opening scene, are the worst. It was painful to watch their scenes together because you just cannot believe they are actually a family.
That leads into another problem I have, they throw an insane amount of characters in a very short amount of time giving you no chance to relate or connect to any of them. They jump from sub plot to sub plot with nothing solid tying them together.
There are a lot of "huh?" moments that really took me out of it. One right off the bat. First day at a new school Annie sees a boy, Ethan, that she met and had a fling with a couple summers ago, he gets into his car she she goes to say high only to realize he's getting a BJ in his car from some random girl two seconds later. He sees Annie and is freaked because someone spotted him. Uh... you're in a high school parking lot with literally 100 student walking past your car, what did you think was going to happen? There were just to many moments leaving you scratching you head saying "wait, what's going on?"
Jennie Garth returns, beautiful as ever, to west Beverley Hills HS as a guidance counselor. Her scenes with fellow staff member Ryan Matthews(Ryan Eggold) were the best in the two episodes, but that's not saying much. I am a big fan of Jessica Walter, she plays Tabitha Wilson. I was excited to see her on the show, but was quickly disappointed. She is playing the same character she did on Arrested Development, except with poorer writing.
I'm trying to work more positive stuff into this review but I can't seem to fit it in. There were several strong scenes, and a few strong, well thought out characters, but all the strong aspects of the episodes were over shadowed by the weak stuff.
I know I'm not the key demographic for the show. There are going to be a lot of people who will really like this show, but I'm a fan of several shows that I'm not the key demo for. I know good TV when I see it.
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