All I know is there is a girl giving a guy a b—job in the first episode.
-Shannen Doherty
The CW has brought back teen angst in a big way. The premiere of the second season of Gossip Girl last night and the premiere of the highly anticipated 90210 tonight marks the start of the new fall TV season and the dawn of a new era of teen dramas. The CW is taking a gamble and betting that today’s coveted 18-34 year old audience won’t be able to get enough of rich kids behaving badly.
Sine the inaugural 1990 season of BH 90210 countless teen dramas have come and gone. Some have been critically acclaimed but short lived (Veronica Mars, Freaks and Geeks, My So-Called Life) while others were fan favorites that got little respect from anyone over 25 (Dawson’s Creek, The O.C.).
But none lasted as long or had the impact of Beverly Hills 90210. An entire generation grew up with the kids of West Beverly (including me). The resurgence of 90210 makes sense in today’s adverse economic and political climate. The CW is creating nostalgia for the good ‘ol days, remember the 90s when the economy was booming and war seemed inconceivable? The CW is hoping you will and that your kids will want to watch too. It’s a brilliant move but risky since most people will be skeptical about reviving such a popular franchise eight years later. Adding fuel to that fire, the network refused to show critics the series before its premiere tonight. But The CW has faced criticism for more than holding out on critics.
Both 90210 and Gossip Girl have been criticized for lacking major minority characters. 90210 has only one main character who is African American while Gossip Girl featured two minority characters in its first season but they were supporting characters who had very little screen time. The CW will premiere the third show in their white rich kid trifecta, Privledged, next Tuesday, sans a lead character of color.
The only two shows on The CW’s fall roster that aren’t about white kids are The Game and Everybody Hates Chris (arguably the best show on the network). It’s not just color missing from the line up, not one show on the network prominently features a main character over the age of 25.
Gossip Girl has also been criticized for “undermining positive values that parents are trying to instill in their children“. No doubt after tonight 90210 will face the same critics. Gossip Girl’s August ad campaign embraced the criticism in a fun and campy way, appealing to its audience and creating a buzz in the press, a win-win for the show and The CW. The ads showed provocative pictures of the young cast with various quotes including “mind-blowingly inappropriate” which is how the Parents Television Council described the show and “OMFG” which the network says “can mean a lot of things” but we all know what it is meant to be. It’s an incredibly eye-catching, smart, funny, and savvy ad campaign aimed at the show’s audience with a nod to the show’s premise.
At least these ads are upfront. What I personally found to be much more offensive was the Vitamin Water product placement in last night’s premiere episode. Soon TV writers and ad execs will be one. What’s worse, advertisers writing Television show scripts or a campy ad campaign?
Young TV viewers today have different media consumption habits than previous generations making it more difficult for TV networks to grab their attention, so maybe that means sexing things up a bit but even so sex has always been a part of teen dramas, Gossip Girl has not completely revolutionized the formula. The plot points have always been the same: cramming for the SATs, stressing about getting into college, prom, the parents who get remarried creating an awkward new family, break-ups, cheating, make that cheating with a significant other’s best friend, and yes, sex. But that is reality for a lot of teens, just not in designer clothes. Aaron Spelling told Jason Priestly, “Fun, sex, and bonding, that’s all I care about” and that was 15 years ago.
And in terms of the lack of color on both shows, wouldn’t they be criticized for not representing these worlds accurately if the casts were multiethnic? I don’t think The CW can win either way in that debate.
My only real criticism of the critics though is that they seem to propose toning things down when instead these shows are a perfect opening to start teaching media literacy to young people and give them the tools to decipher, analyze, and understand messages in the media, rather than continue to be passive consumers of it. Gossip Girl and 90210 are rich with messages about, race, class, gender, wealth, and values. Schools and parents need to educate themselves and their kids about messages in the media before they can expect a TV network to stop using sex to increase its ratings. Expecting it to go away won’t solve anything.
So will The CW’s gamble pay off despite the criticisms? Even with all of the buzz that has surrounded Gossip Girl since its inception it hasn’t had great ratings. Last season’s ratings only averaged 2.5 million viewers a week. (Though the season 2 opener was up slightly to 3.4 million viewers.) But the bottom line is that people want a fun escape, that will never change, and what is more fun than watching a bunch of rich kids self destruct? Chances are The CW has picked a couple of winners.
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