90210 > Gossip Girl

For my dear friend Harmonie, who made the mistake of revealing last night that she still watches Gossip Girl. She will now never hear the end of it.

Two years ago, New York Magazine claimed that Gossip Girl was "genius" and that it was "changing the way we watch television." I think I probably agreed with those statements two years ago - but I certainly don't any more. 90210 is now better than Gossip Girl, and also one of the most underrated shows on television. Let me explain myself, because I know how crazy this sounds, but here goes:

It's morphed into a completely new show since its first season. When 90210 began, it was like One Tree Hill meets Beverly Hills 90210, the corny Aaron Spelling original. They even hired back some of the original BH 90210 actors to play parents and teachers on the new show. Ugh. I wouldn't blame you if you had given up on it right then. But since the beginning of the second season, the creators fired four of the adult actors, kept the two most interesting ones, and the show has become more of a fast-paced, fun, witty guilty pleasure, more about the kids, replete with self-depricating dialogue and clever pop culture references. (Ex: Liam: "Trying to understand rich kids is like trying to understand LeBron James. The more you talk about it, the angrier you get.") They also gave Annalynne McCord more of the spotlight on the show, which was genius - she is hilarious, electric; the show's resident rich girl with a heart of gold, and she steals every scene she's in. Also, this season and last have dealt with some of the following storylines: coming out, internships, parents' income worries, feuding brothers, a sexual assault case, and being a single parent. Yes, there was a brief HIV scare and Adrianna became a pop star - I know these were ridiculous - but 90210 doesn't try to be some kind of meta-commentary on pop culture like Gossip Girl, and it never goes too overboard - when it does, it makes fun of itself. Here are some Gossip Girl storylines as of late: affairs with married politicians and teachers, masquerade balls, "auditioning" for high society groups, running a company at 20 years old, and apparently kids these days can "ban" other kids from New York City. Huh???

Which brings me to my point: you should be watching 90210 instead of Gossip Girl. Gossip Girl used to be better than 90210 - the story lines were fun, Blair and Chuck had fantastic chemistry, and we could stand Serena/Dan/Nate/Jenny/Vanessa etc. because they were so easy to make fun of. But in the past couple weeks, Gossip Girl created a storyline in which Serena accidentally put a high school teacher in jail, and his sister tried to "bring Serena down" by drugging her and withdrawing her from Columbia. I actually couldn't bring myself to watch the show anymore. And I never give up on shows! I stuck with Weeds! I know people don't watch Gossip Girl to see character growth, but every single storyline on Gossip Girl has become trite; not one character is likable, not one character has changed since somewhere around the second season. It's now looking like Blair and Dan may get together, according to people who are still watching. Blair has been nothing but awful to Dan for four seasons now - not in a cute way - in a making fun of how "poor" he is, his looks, his attitude, writing, life in general way. She is grossed out by Brooklyn! There's unrealistic, and then there's just grasping at straws. 90210 is on The CW Mondays at 8 - perfect! You can watch it right before you waste an hour of your life watching Gossip Girl at 9.