While the family came from Kansas, Harry was originally from Beverly Hills. Dad was played by Rob Estes, veteran of the other Beverly Hills 90210 spin off Melrose Place although here he played a different character. And they better be! Their dad Harry was going to be the new principal at West Beverly. Annie had girl next door looks and a flair for theater. But he was a good kid and a good athlete. Turns out before being adopted Dixon had a pretty rough life. Dixon was a black kid adopted by the white Wilson family. As before they came with a son and a daughter – Annie and Dixon. They had a bit more elaborate back story too. Instead of the Walsh family we got the Wilson family from Kansas. As with the original series, the new one started with a family from the Midwest moving into town.
90210 became such a famous zip code because of the original show it does stand on its own. The title changed from Beverly Hills 90210 to, simply 90210. The network's aim was for a young audience so they needed a teen drama kids would flock to. As the 2008 season was starting they needed a hit. But just like its predecessors The CW didn't always have an easy time making a go of it. To stay afloat the two consolidated into the single CW Network. They both had some hits, did okay for awhile but, in the end, neither of them was making a solid go of it.
Hard to do a teen soap when your stars start needing walkers.Īfter the success of Fox, two more upstart TV networks sprang up: The WB and UPN. This teen soap was popular enough that viewers followed it for 10 years! They sort of had to stop it at that point. Getting through high school takes 4 years, college another 4. Not that the show went entirely sleazy but love triangles and betrayal are more fun to watch than rich party kids discovering the joys of old fashioned family values.
While the show started off about Midwest values versus the temptation of the rich and famous, in the end soapy temptation tended to be what brought in the viewers. Also worth noting was their hangout, a restaurant called The Peach Pit run by Nat Buccigio. Then there was Dylan McKay, Steve Sanders and a bunch of other kids but for our purposes that first batch of kids are who are worth noting. Andrea Zuckerman was the poor but smart girl who lived just inside Beverly Hill's city limits so she could attend West Beverly High and get a better education (When the actress playing Andrea got pregnant she also became the show's teenage mom).
David Silver was the new underclassman struggling to fit in. Kelly Taylor was the pretty but self involved blonde. Twins Brandon and Brenda Walsh would have to learn to fit in with a whole different group of kids than they were used to. The original show, Beverly Hills 90210, jumped off with the Walsh family moving from the Midwest with their Midwest values to swanky Beverly Hills, California where the family dynamics were a bit.different. In 1990 they helped create a huge hit for the Fox Network and in 2008 The CW Network hoped they'd work the same magic for them.