They're Rich, Beautiful and Should've Graduated From High School Years Ago

There have been a number of attempts recently to convince us that a return to the early 90s is a good idea, but this one is undoubtedly the strangest so far.

Hey, I was a child of that period in pop culture, and I watched 90210 with the same mixture of snark and secret fascination that many of my peers did (my last memory of the show was Luke Perry making like Errol Flynn and getting into a rapier duel with a middle-aged man in South America. It was that kind of show). But even if one is a Walshian of the highest order, this can't seem anything but anti-climactic. Buffy actually recycled 90210's high school sets when it debuted in 1997, but it staged a much richer teen melodrama on them, and it was followed by any number of shows that utilized 90210's narrative tropes for good (Veronica Mars, The O.C.) or evil (Dawson's Creek, One Plot Hill, Grey's Anatomy). The news that VM auteur Rob Thomas might be involved with this revival is even odder; it's like Bono ditching U2 to form a Beatles cover band-- one might think you could pay hommage in a less slavish way. I mean, is the culture really that desperate for the return of the Notorious B.A.G.?