9021Ohhhh! I Get it Now!

Eeee! My friend Taylor is, at this very minute, having a baby. Gross! I mean, yay! I asked her how it was going, and she texted me back, "I just got an epidural. I love the epidural man." Haha. I'm so excited for her! I can't wait to see a bunch of naked baby pictures very very soon. Congrats, Taylor!

Welp, it's another night indoors, safe from the frigid biting wind that eats my face off every time I even look out a window. Sanna and I are crashed in front of the TV watching World's Girliest Shows. It's been made glaringly obvious to me lately how different TV has been since the boys moved out. With them, it was all MANswers and reality shows and Family Guy (oh my!). But now it's E! News, Teen Mom, and Lifetime movies. Tonight is the girliest night of all though. Later is Gossip Girl, but first is the train wreck that is the revamped 90210. To give you an idea of what we're dealing with here, I just heard this line from a girl who recently gave her illegitimate child up for adoption: "I am a teen former drug addict pop star on the cover of all the tabloids. I can't be a MOM, but I can be a reality star." Right.

So yeah, the new 90210, just like the old one, has the liars, the cheaters, the drug addicts, and the money. The premise is the same, too. The hilariously naive family from the Midwest moves out to West Bev, and gets a serious reality check when they see how them rich folk live. Poor, dumb Midwesterners. Then, voila! They are beautiful and end up fitting in just fine, because they are also rich. But this new 90210 has more gay people and celebrity scandals and fewer Jason Priestly's and old lady Ahhhhndreas. More trust funds, less side burns. Most importantly, though, the new one has no Ian Ziering, and I think we can all appreciate that.

Full disclosure: I lost interest in the original 90210 after probably the second season or so. Yes, I totally loved Brenda and the whole Walsh clan, because they were fresh off the Minnesota toboggan - Minnesota? They're just like me! And I thought I was destined to marry Luke Perry. But I didn't understand the entire context of the show. Like what "abortions" were, or what it meant that Dylan "cheated on" Brenda. What, like in Scrabble? That just didn't sound like such a big deal, geeeeez. So I bailed on the gang at the Peach Pit and went back to my obsession with Paula Abdul.

When I joined my sorority like 10 years later, the show was still on, but it had gone through quite the transformation and I was more disinterested than ever before. Now the whole gang was all living on their own, and wearing lots of dark eyeshadow, and just sleeping around. Plus, Kelly Kapowski had joined the cast, and it would appear that the virginal Donna Martin was no longer virginal, and we were expected to take Brian Austin Green seriously as a DJ and/or rapper. Really? Riiiiiight. But I forced myself to watch it, because all the girls in my house loved it. I had missed the last decade of the show, so I was a wee bit behind. I sat there in the informal living room at the House, surrounded by girls who were saying things like "Wait, didn't he JUST have a baby with so and so?" or "God, I can't stand the way she did that one thing to that guy and then they both got that disease!" I never spoke a word, but uttered fake gasps of disbelief as needed. I still just didn't get it.

Alas, I FINALLY got sucked in to the new 9-0. I've seen exactly 2 1/2 episodes but I'm pretty caught up, and I already know that Silver used to sleep with Teddy, who just came out and is now dating Ian, and Naomi was raped by some dude who then tried to blackmail her and attack her, but she took him down by - crazy! - spraying hair spray in his face. Girl power! And it actually makes so much sense to me this time around. And while I could appreciate the adorable floral print overalls and kicky sunflower hats of the old episodes, the fashion on the new version is far superior. Balenciaga AND Givenchy? Yes, please!

And to think, I could have missed out on yet another interpretation of life in good ol' Beverly Hills. But thanks to the overflow of estrogen seeping in to every nook and cranny of my house, I was spared the humiliation of not knowing what Lori Laughlin is up to these days.

Okay, I know that I've probably lost 90% of you by now. I know many of you are all "Uh, I could not care less about this show, and I have no idea what the Peach Pit is." And, like you, I used to think I was better than those crazy kids at West Beverly. But like the eternal love of Dylan and Kelly, once I got a fresh taste I just couldn't stay away. Stupid fake teens, with your fake problems, and fake noses...why can't I quit you?

I will say this for sure, though. The old theme song is WAY BETTER than the new, waterier version. Sometimes you just can't improve on the original.