NY or LA, the Rich, Pouty Rule TV

The most surprising thing about The CW’s 90210 reboot isn’t the onscreen blowjob that occurs just six minutes and 41 seconds into its pilot. It’s also not the fact that the latter-day Walsh family, here renamed the Wilsons, have an adopted son who’s African American—call him Brendan, er, Dixon.

It isn’t even the way that West Beverly High is somehow mounting a production of Spring Awakening, a musical that’d be near-impossible for any high school to stage
since it’s still on Broadway and its rights haven’t been released. Oh, and because it includes scenes of masturbation, onstage sex, and a song entitled “Totally Fucked.”

No, the most remarkable thing about 90210 is even more shocking—it’s good. Maybe not Gossip Girl good, but certainly better than the train wreck it had the potential to be. The show’s writing is fairly snappy—it helps that Arrested Development’s Jessica Walter is on hand, basically reprising the boozy matriarch she played flawlessly on that late, lamented Fox comedy—its production values are high, and its cast is fresh-faced and energetic. AnnaLynne McCord’s bitchy Naomi could become the most fabulous mean girl since golden age Kelly Taylor herself.

If 90210’s quality doesn’t take a drastic downturn between its premiere and the episode that airs tonight at 8 p.m., The CW may have done something nearly impossible by creating a show that actually lives up to its hype.

This is good news for the fledgling network, which arose, phoenix-style, out of the ashes of The WB and UPN in 2006. Since the merging of those two disparate channels—The WB was known for teen-friendly fare like Gilmore Girls, while UPN leaned more towards sitcoms like Girlfriends and Half & Half—The CW’s been suffering from an acute identity crisis. Last year, its primetime schedule was filled with a hodgepodge of shows that had nothing in common—the Buffy-esque supernatural comedy Reaper, the syrupy family drama Life Is Wild, and WB and UPN leftovers like Everybody Hates Chris and One Tree Hill.

With 90210, as well as Privileged, premiering tonight at 9 PM, and Stylista, which premieres October 22, The CW seems finally to have found its niche. These three new shows all have one important thing in common—following the archetype established by Gossip Girl, they take place in a world filled with glamour, scandal, and dazzling wealth.
Shows that focus on the lifestyles of the rich and pouty are hardly unique this season.

Just as programs starring geeks—Chuck, The Big Bang Theory, etc.—were all the rage last year, two recent trend pieces in the New York Times and the Washington Post have noted that in 2008, it’s all about money.

But while soaps about the upper crust are uniformly prominent on TV this season, The CW is the only channel that’s filling its schedule almost exclusively with this type of show. It’s a questionable gamble—although Gossip Girl is based on a passel of bestselling books, 90210 is a remake of the ‘90s classic, Privileged leans more toward the comedic than the dramatic, and Stylista is a reality show, these four series are otherwise so similar in tone and style that it’ll be tough for The CW to attract a wide audience for them.

The network’s meager ratings prove this to be true, providing a sober counterpoint to the bold, cheeky advertising campaigns that make it sound like everyone’s talking about CW shows. 90210’s premiere set CW records, drawing 4.9 million viewers. That number is paltry, though, when compared to the other networks: a rerun of Two and a Half Men that aired Monday, August 25 on CBS drew 9 million viewers. Even Gossip Girl, the series that’s landed the covers of magazines like Entertainment Weekly and New York, averaged only 2.6 million viewers per episode last season.

It’s ironic that a channel that so noticeably bases its programming around the allure of wealth may itself soon go bankrupt. According to the Wall Street Journal, last year, The CW’s ratings declined a staggering 28%. If the network can’t turn a profit this year, it may soon vanish into television history, leaving our screens a little glummer and a lot less campy.

So please, for everyone’s sake, watch 90210. With your help, maybe Beverly Hills 2.0 will become the hit it needs to be to save The CW from extinction. The future of an entire network rests on the tanned, toned shoulders of a few brats from West Beverly High—and it’s up to us to make sure they have the opportunity to keep back-stabbing and bitch-slapping for years to come.