Normally senior year is about proms, homecoming and first loves. Throw in a part-time job, college applications and a car accident and you’d have more than enough material for a season of a primetime soap opera. But that’d be too easy for the makers and stars of Beverly Hills 90210. Instead the show’s super-sized third season tackles such themes as eating disorders, gambling addiction, car accidents, world travel, birth, death and first record contracts. And that’s not even mentioning the revolving door of several relationships.
The show centers on twins Brandon and Brenda Walsh (Jason Priestley and Shannen Doherty), a pair of down-home kids from Minnesota transplanted to the palm trees and bikinis of California. They’re nice kids so they attract a varied group of friends including Kelly (Jennie Garth), the rich kid, Donna (Tori Spelling), the virtuous rich kid, Steve (Ian Ziering), the rich kid who’s full of himself, and Dylan (Luke Perry), the rich kid rebel.
Like any soap opera, if you get sucked in and figure out what’s going on, you’ll be hard pressed not to get sucked in by 90210. The show was great at building relationships and having them develop and evolve over weeks and even years. The show’s third season was important to the characters in that it transitioned the gang from teenagers into adults. The drawback with watching it on DVD is that everything happens so quickly and the pace seems very hectic. When it first aired you had a week to digest it and get excited about the inevitable cliffhanger.
90210 was a signature show at the time, keeping a pulse on trends and helping to dictate what was cool and what wasn’t. Today it can be viewed as a time capsule with a cheesy soundtrack (made all the more cheesy as it’s been changed for DVD), dated fashions and a time-specific mentality towards many issues that have since gone on to achieve greater public acceptance in more recent years. 90210 didn’t shy away from topics deemed touchy at the time. In turn it helped the general public – specifically it’s younger audience – become more aware of the world around them, even if it was largely a White, upper-middle-class perspective.
Beverly Hills 90210: The Third Season DVD Review:
The third season of 90210 comes with a whopping 29 episodes spread over eight discs. The box states that some of the music has changed and some episodes may have been edited (I’d assume when live bands were playing, but I’m sure there’s plenty of websites moaning and groaning elsewhere that break it all down). Me – I’m just happy to see the show on DVD. I understand the complications of “the biz” and sometimes a little nip and tuck is better than nothing at all. I’m like that on a case-by-case basis and while music is a big part of the show’s timeline, 90210 is more about the soap opera and that certainly remains in tact. Each episode is shown in its original full screen format with English stereo surround sound. English, Spanish and Portuguese subtitles are also available.
In the way of extras, “7 Minutes in Heaven” runs – well – seven minutes and captures the season’s greatest moments. “The World According to Nat” explores the resident wily veteran Joe E. Tata and his take on the role of Nat, owner of the Peach Pit. Finally, comedians Michael Colton and John Aboud host “Everything You Need to Know About Beverly Hills 90210 Season Three“, sum up the show’s third year in about 17 minutes and basically kill it with their tongue-in-cheek humour.
