90210: The Next Generation

OK, so I waltzed in last night around midnight, flipped around a bit, and discovered that I had the CW in HD. Not only that, but the new 90210 pilot episode was premiering. So I watched. I watched with an open mind. And my reaction? Promising, I say. Promising. But remember, this is coming from someone who watched Melrose Place religiously. Someone who scheduled his freshman year classes around Days of Our Lives (Believe it!).

The premise is this: A new principal at Beverly Hills High shows up with his family from Kansas. He has a couple of teens: Annie, a relatably cute Shanae Grimes, and Dixon, her somewhat awkward adopted brother played by the Wire's Tristan Wilds. Naturally, they don't initially fit in (sound familiar?), but things turn around pretty fast, and before you know it, they are the center of a swirling tornado of popularity, wealth, intrigue, and angst.

At this point, you're probably asking: "Why would anyone in their right mind want to watch this garbage?" I'll tell you:

It fills the void left by the OC. We just love rich, good looking teenagers and their rich, good looking parents. And the beauty of this show (as opposed to the OC) is that there are like a thousand characters, so if you hate one of them (like you hated Marisa, for example), you still have many to choose from! There's the central brother-sister pair from Kansas, their parents, their grandmother, the school's evil bitch, her evil parents, a mischievous blogger girl, an actress who needs to act to support her family but is terrified of auditions, a golden boy, and golden-er boy (did someone say love triangle? No? OK.), some guy whose dad is a porn director, a Never Been Kissed-ish hipster English teacher, and the school's pretty, blond guidance counselor, which leads us to . . .

Nostalgia. Kelly (Jennie Garth) is back as the guidance counselor. Brenda (Shannen Doherty) is visiting for a month. Lori Loughlin (Full House) and Rob Estes (Silk Stalkings, Melrose Place) are the parents of the central brother-sister pair. Joe E. Tata still runs the Peach Pit, for chrissakes.

Jessica Walter is in it! She's not playing a carbon copy Lucille Bluth, by any means, but she's still got that beautifully sardonic delivery, and if the only place I can get it is on this show, I will. Walter (Arrested Development, PCU) plays the wily grandmother of the central brother-sister pair on the show. In the first episode, she crashes a car!

"Eden" from Nip/Tuck is in it! Yes, her name is AnnaLynne McCord, and she plays -- you guessed it -- the evil bitch character. On Nip/Tuck, she plays the manipulative, insane, seductive teenage daughter of Portia de Rossi's character. I think she's getting typecast (I even saw an episode of Cold Case in which she played an evil bitch), but she's good at it, so I guess she should just run with it.