CMI On TV – 90210 Finale: Celebrating 5 Years of Looking Hot, Sleeping Around
The CW’s "90210" bid farewell to television last week after a five-year run.
To commemorate the show, the hour segment before the season finale featured a slew of behind the scenes interviews with the cast, where they talked about their characters, the memories they had made during the "90210," and the feedback they’d received about the show from fans on twitter. The entire segment was quite sentimental. The show had a lengthy run and has come to define the budding acting careers of its young cast.
It raises the question, however: What exactly are they celebrating? What sort of a legacy has "90210" left for viewers?
Sure, maybe there have been some compelling characters, tear-jerking emotional moments, and clever plot twists, but after five years, the kids of "90210" have also left a long, scarred path of broken relationships, dysfunction – in large part created by sleeping around with just about everyone else. They joke about this at one point in the interviews:
The best summary of the show may have come in a parody segment during the first hour with the cast of "Whose Line Is it Anyway," which appeared to both promote the show’s new season and mock "90210." Given a prompt from Ryan Stiles for an R&B song called “Nobody’s Ugly,” Wayne Brady crooned about how everyone is just so good looking (mild language warning):
Brady basically boils down "90210" into nothing but sex appeal, and though he exaggerates for humor’s sake, he has a point. In the opinion of this blogger, about 90% of the show’s success rests on a really hot cast.
As further evidence of just how far "90210" is from the normal, everyday experiences of most of America, consider this moment at the beginning of the final episode: Naomi Clark laments how the mother of Jordan, her would-be boyfriend, has made it impossible for her and Jordan to “hop on a private jet to Cabo like normal people.”
To be fair, Naomi as a character is designed to fit the Hollywood socialite stereotype, but the fact remains that such luxuries are normal for the people who live in the world of 90210 a world where wealth and physical beauty are not only the norm, but absolutely necessary to fit in.
So ends "90210". Here’s to five years of living in luxury, looking hot, and sleeping around.
