The Good
Yet another great TV classic comes to DVD in most of it’s glory.
The Bad
Are the cast members soooo busy that they couldn’t do any commentary tracks?
Beverly Hills 90210: The Complete Second Season continues the adventures of our favorite privileged kids at West Beverly high school. Part of me wants to reintroduce you to the characters, but chances are if you are reading this review than you’re already quite familiar. In addition to featuring a spot on portrayal of an at risk kid by Christine Elise, in the role of the scorned Emily Valentine, I found that the “My Desperate Valentine” episode plays as a more accessible Fatal Attraction for the younger set. This Second Season set also boasts other episodes like “Beach Blanket Brandon,” in which Brenda thinks Dylan might have impregnated her, “Ashes to Ashes” which sees a community service patrol become a racist clan, “A Competitive Edge” sees Andrea trying to create AIDS awareness only to have her efforts thwarted and “Wedding Bell Blues” in which Mr. Walsh tells Dylan to stay away from Brenda!
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Filled with melodrama, intrigue, overacting and just about every other kind of soap opera, Beverly Hills 90210 holds up because it I don’t think it was ever meant to be anything that serious to begin with. At the same time, you can’t fault it for trying, right?
Features
Meet the Walshes
Focusing on the characters of Cindy and Jim Walsh (Carol Potter and James Eckhouse, the parents of Brandon and Brenda), this short featurette seems like it should have included more about all the characters. Potter and Eckhouse discuss playing their roles, how people still recognize them from the show, and how they were mobbed by adoring fans when the show was on the air. They talk about being parents in real life when she show was on, and even though they had young kids they were forced to examine how they might deal with certain parental issues their characters faced on the show.
Everything You Need to Know about Beverly Hills 90210: The Complete Second Season
Our Favorite Valentine
Christine Elise makes no bones about the fact that she found the writing on this show to be quite cheesy. She talks about not being able to live the character of Emily Valentine down, how the other actors (with the exception of Shannon Doherty) were really nice to her, and she also mentions that the “U4EA” episode is (in her opinion) the best show that was ever done on Beverly Hills 90210. Elise also discusses Jason Preistley being a better kisser than Luke Perry, and how kids on outside of the mainstream really seemed to identify with the Emily Valentine character.
Video
Full Screen. I was astonished at the quality of these episodes; they are crystal clear. Yeah, this show has a dated look (the episodes are from the 1990s), but I could not believe how clear the picture was. There was no fuzziness around any of the images, no dirt that I noticed, and overall these things just felt bumped up. This show looks just as good, if not better, than when it originally aired. My only bone of contention is a tiny disclaimer that says “Some episodes may be edited from their original network versions.” While I doubt I would ever be able to figure this out (unless I painstakingly tried to compare them), I really wish this release didn’t have to be this way.
Audio
Dolby Digital. The audio here was good but I was a tad alarmed when I saw this on the DVD covers, “Music has been changed for this home entertainment version.” Just what does this mean? Now, Paramount didn’t diss me as hard as they did with with Happy Days: The Complete Second Season, but I just hate feeling that I’m not getting the full show! My alarm was alleviated when I heard the opening strains of the 90210 theme. As for the audio itself, I didn’t find that I needed to turn up the volume that loud even though Luke Perry spent the better part of his episodes whispering his lines.
Package
Wearing lots of whites, purples and reds the front cover cast picture is awesome. Above them are some multicolored shots from of the cast, and I love how suddenly Tori Spelling is no longer put across as merely Aaron’s daughter. The back of this slipcase cover again shows off the cast (all in the same clothes) and there are palm tress galore behind them. There is an extremely uninspired description of this show, a Special Features listing, and on the bottom portion of this case is system specs. The eight discs that contain the episodes are each housed in four multicolored covers, which showcase different members of this show’s cast. The backs list out the episodes, their airdates and offer up descriptions.
Final Word
In watching Beverly Hills 90210: The Complete Second Season I was reminded about how much I enjoyed this show. There was time that it was very important to me. I hung on all the characters lives, even the ones that were only around in a peripheral sense. Also, I think it’s amazing how even though a lot of the show was cheesy in certain ways, it did manage to capture a lot of universal truths. The most resounding is the role of Emily Valentine because anybody who has ever attended high school has come across somebody like this. Whether she was too needy, misunderstood, or just plain crazy, we have all known a version of this kind of character and Elise really did a fine job with it. The fact that she’s a true blue punk rocker probably accounts for a lot of that.
Also, this show managed to capture the innocence of the 1990s. Far removed from Vietnam and really any world crisis, this show seemed to allow us to center on ourselves. Whether this gave way to rampant self-indulgence, or was only a facade is really immaterial. As I watched this show I was totally brought back to that time. You can see it in the show. It tried to deal with social issues but for the most part seemed to find itself going back to the he said/she said antics that made people like myself tune in every week.
Beverly Hills, 90210 was released .
