Not-So Dangerous Liaisons: "90210" Too Tame for This Zip Code

Cue those familiar guitar chords that have echoed in our heads for the last, oh, umpteen years.

Yes, folks, I am talking about the CW's 90210, which launched last night and brought the denizens of one of the world's most famous zip codes back to the airwaves. Of course, a lot has happened since the original Beverly Hills 90210 went off the air back in 2001 and the hallowed halls of teen drama heaven have been joined by such series as MTV's The Hills, FOX's The O.C. and the CW's own Gossip Girl... which seems to have better captured the excess and scandal du jour of the jet set better than this new 90210, which felt more than a little cheesy and trying way too hard to be hip.

One tipoff was the use of Coldplay's "Viva La Vida" in the opening scene. Had this aired prior to Coldplay's latest debuting back in June, I would have given the musical director snaps for choosing such a brilliant song, but here it feels a little dated, as did the reference to Superbad. Certainly Veronica Mars would never have settled for such a tired cultural touchstones and that series had enough wit and charm to spare.

It doesn't help that the script--originally written by Veronica Mars creator Rob Thomas (albeit with a remarkably different ending than the version that aired) and rewritten by Freaks & Geeks writer/producers Gabe Sachs and Jeff Judah--tries too hard to play it every which way but loose, injecting subplots about BevHills newbies Annie and Dixon Wilson (Degrassi's Shenae Grimes and The Wire's Tristan Wilds), parents Harry and Debbie Wilson (Women's Murder Club's Rob Estes and Summerland's Lori Loughlin), boozy grandmere Tabitha (Arrested Development's Jessica Walters, who provides the only laughs here), trophy couple Ethan (Runaway's Dustin Milligan) and Naomi (Nip/Tuck's AnnaLynn McCord), scruffy teacher Ryan Matthews (Dirt's Ryan Eggold), and familiar faces Kelly (Jennie Garth) and Brenda (Shannen Doherty). Hell, they even bring Nat (Joe E. Tata) out so he can grumble about espresso machines and kids today.

Annie and Dixon quickly find themselves enmeshed in a whole heap of trouble within the opening scenes as they discover that they are not quite fitting in at West Beverly High the way they did back in Kansas. This fish-out-of-water scenario, which worked so well in the original Beverly Hills 90210, pales in comparison with those present in Gossip Girl or The O.C., which both are at their core about the pull between the haves and have-nots, though both of these series crafted such charismatic, instantly likable characters that it was impossible not to fall under their spell.

Within minutes of the opening chords of the title sequence, the Wilson kids find themselves in the immediate orbit of some of West Beverly High's power players, including mean girl Naomi, jock Ethan, journalism zealot Navid (Michael Steger), clearly having inherited the mantle of school paper geek from Andrea Zuckerman, and Kelly's rebellious lil' sis Silver (Jessica Stroup), whose mean-spirited blog takes attacks at other BH students.... and somehow garners "half a million hits" per installment.

Lest you think that 90210 will stick to the tried-and-true moral lessons of the original series' early years, the writers have crammed in as many "decadent" behaviors as possible into the two-hour installment. There's a lacrosse team prank involving pigs taken from a porno set, an impromptu jet trip to San Francisco for a first date, term paper cheating, vehicular oral coitus interruptus, and a whole host of other subplots jockeying for center stage, including a bizarre subplot in which Rob Estes' high school principal Harry Wilson discovers that his high school girlfriend--who happens to be Naomi's mother--gave up their illegitimate child for adoption. (This jars somewhat with the already established role of adoption on the series, as Estes and Loughlin's characters adopted Wilds' Dixon.)

And yet none of this so-called decadence seems to compare to that embodied by the teens on Gossip Girl who seem able to be so much hipper, badder, and stylish without trying so damn hard. McCord's bitchy Naomi would be eaten alive by Leighton Meester's Blair Waldorf. (Hell, at this point, Naomi seems like she could easily be dethroned by little Jenny Humphreys, in between sewing some high-end garments.)

Ultimately, I felt like this update was trying way too hard to please everyone: fans of the original aching to catch up with familiar faces Brenda and Kelly (just whom was she talking to on the phone?) and teens barely old enough to remember that there was an original series that this is based on. To me, the most exciting elements were Jessica Walters' boozy Tabitha (her line about ordering takeout from Dan Tana's rather than eat Debbie's tater tots was classic Lucille Bluth) and the reunion of Kelly and Brenda, whose scene together crackled with possibility and long-buried emotion.

As for the rest, the kids do their best with some obvious storylines amid a persistent need on the writers' part to bring everything squarely back to Rob Estes' principal. I'm not sure why he needs to be quite such a large presence amid all of these plots, but time and time again, everyone keeps finding themselves in the principal's office for one infraction or another.

My advice: let Estes slip into the background a little bit and pull the focus on to the kids, with some subplot time given to Kelly, Brenda, and Ryan, and for the love of all things holy, add some much needed depth and charm to the main characters, who all come off as more than a little vapid and one-dimensional. Yes, we get that spoiled Naomi is more sensitive than she seems, that Silver's aggression is really just the sting of betrayal, and Annie is wide-eyed and naive... but that's really just Character Development 101. Where's the clearly defined motivation for these characters? Why should we as an audience be connected to them or care about them?

While the opening installment of 90210 doesn't quite live up to its first line of dialogue ("this sucks"), it proves that it still has a long way to go if it hopes to inherit the mantle of touchstone teen drama. Longer, one can't help but think, than the distance between Kansas and Beverly Hills.

Next week on 90210 ("Lucky Strike"), Harry and Debbie plan a family bowling night without consulting Dixon and Annie first, Naomi has an awful evening with her father, Dixon finds Silver asleep in his car, and Kelly must deal with her mother.