90210 - The First Season

Remakes (or reboots) of anything beloved from the past are going to have an uphill battle to win new fans from the get-go. While the original Beverly Hills 90210 series ran from 1990-2000, fans were fiercely loyal to Brandon, Dylan and Kelly, among others. When the CW network announced a new 90210 for the 21st century, skeptics were quick to jump at the new show and, honestly, they were not unjust.

The new cast of 90210 consists of pretty, young people living in Beverly Hills and juggling school and their rocky personal lives. Instead of the Walshs from the original, the fish out of water family this time around is the saccharine Wilsons, who moved into the trendy zip code from Kansas and have to adjust to the different ways of life.

Unfortunately, though, the new cast was bland and stereotypical from the start and churning them through various soap opera mechanisms didn't change the fact that the new 90210 is like a rotten egg that desperately tries to cover its stink with perfect teeth and long tresses.

Even having the original Kelly Taylor (Jennie Garth) appear as a semi-regular didn't help make this show a must-see. Appearances by Shannon Doherty and Tori Spelling (separately, of course) may have spiked the ratings but did little else for the quality of the series.

All that said, the DVD of the first season is impressive for its attention to giving the fans many extras to drool over. Featurettes including tours of the mansion, Peach Pit and West Beverly High are fun while a day with Ryan Eggold (who plays teacher Ryan Matthews) is surprising because he's one of the older cast members on the show. The younger kids were too busy to have the cameras follow them around?

Finally, featurettes on the fashion and music in the show are informative while "The Revival of a Classic: Making 90210" gives an insightful behind-the-scenes look at how they producers and cast went about recreating the world. Along with cast commentaries on selected episodes, each of the six discs in the collection has an extra and, at the end of the day, something is always better than nothing.

While the show itself (which was a hit for the CW and returns for its second season in a few weeks) cannot be deemed a 'classic' at this point, there is hope that things will gel a bit more over time but the attention to detail with the DVD release is a good sign that somebody definitely cares about the 90210 kids to wrap their first season in a shiny bow.