Beverly Hills, 90210- The Holiday

The cast early on their long run of greatness

It only comes around once every hundred years, but yesterday was 90210 Day all across the country - September 2, 2010 is 9/02/10. The city of Beverly Hills threw a big bash and people all over the interwebs are posting stories to honor or sometimes tarnish the best teen drama of all time. It's a shame that I didn't think of this type of thing five years ago, because we could have had the party of century in my home town of Falmouth, ME on 04/1/05. Or my first year of college in Poughkeepsie, NY on 12/6/04.

Anyway, Alan Sepinwall, over at HitFix.com, did his best to degrade the great Beverly Hills, 90210 based on the fact that all of the characters were juniors for both the first and second seasons. Now I love this show as much as anyone, but that was the least of its problems. He quietly slid in that Friday Night Lights, a critically acclaimed series, maybe sorta had a grade issue, and then continued to rip on 90210 for the horrendous error in the series. My thought is at least they got rid of the problem in one fail swoop. FNL continued to have issues with its grades throughout the seasons. Riggins, Lyla and Tyra were seniors for three seasons! By the end of season three we are also told that Landry is a year behind Saracen?!? A much worse way to handle grades of high school students than what happened after season one of 90210.

And then there was my brother, Jack Thomas, who is still trying to figure out where to go with his new blog, and posted his top 10 lists of best male and female characters on the original Beverly Hills, 90210. A couple of good lists by all means, and unlike Bill Simmons, thank you that he didn't put Bruno the limo driver ahead of John Sears and DeShawn Hardell.

Speaking of Simmons. I commend him on the effort to do this two hour special podcast on the series. I listen to most of the Sports Guy's podcasts even though I can't stand him much of the time. I'm half way through his awards and although it's mostly enjoyable, I still get so mad that him and Matthew Berry have such little knowledge on the series. The number of names and details they screw up is amazing. Noah Drake?!? Was it "he's one of those Drakes"? No it was "he's one of those Hunters". He's Noah Hunter and he's one of the best characters of the later years.

The fact of the matter is that this was one of the first shows I grew up on, and it will always have a special place in my life. I remember when I was in third grade I used to watch repeats of 90210 and Saved by the Bell over and over again. Probably why I grew up fast, and probably why I got out of the tv game for a while. It was hard for anything else to measure up. So Happy 90210 Day everyone, and here's hoping the new series can turn things around and be half as interesting as the original was.