Peach Pit After Dark

Not only was the premiere of the new 90210 delayed until "a special time" because of a ballgame, the Cubs waited until the 11th to lose. So given that the show didn't start until after midnight, I'm gonna blog during the ad breaks in an effort to stay awake. SPOILERS ahoy!

Initial thoughts based on the pre-credits intro:

• The Brandon and Brenda characters are really annoying. One's over-the-top surly and one's over-the-top peppy. I mean, really annoying.
  
• I'd heard they'd be trying to out-Gossip the Girls from the East Coast, but I didn't quite expect it to feature a 9021-0ral scene before the credits rolled.

After the "rockin" update to the classic song:

• Hey look – It's the mom from Arrested Development! And she's drunk! Could be fun.
  
• Hey look – Andrea and Jesse's kid is the broadcaster for the campus news station! Decent joke about her looking 30.
• Hey look – apparently Kelly and the guy who showed up on Melrose Place eventually dated! When she was 10 or something? Huh? And now Kelly's little sister is back at West Bev, and she's cool because she likes some local band and that's how she bonds with the Brenda girl, whose name I can't remember yet.
• Hey look – Nat still works at the Peach Pit, but he can't work an espresso machine! Even tho he's had over a decade to learn!

Back from the break:

• Kelly's sister, who's known as "Silver," runs a bitchy blog and attacks the Brenda girl with it. OMFG she got so Facebooked!
  
• Lots of talk about lacrosse – along the "hey, the adopted black kid from Wichita's got some moves" and "hey, let's start a fight with the black kid so he gets kicked off the team because, you know, he's black!" lines.
• Arrested Development Mom again – still drunk! Making jokes about cracking eggs on her ass!
  
• Side note: so far, all the girls are perilously close to exhibiting Tori Spelling disease, where they're so thin that they look like unbalanced lollipops.
• The Brenda girl, who's been overacting her way thru the show, has now been cast in the school play, so she can really start chewing some scenery. Which she does by the mouthful. Huge, shouty mouthfuls. Oh dear.
  

Getting a little tired:

• Boy, couldn't see this plagarism plot coming... particularly with the "I wrote a paper just like the one that you're blowing off to go party at clubs like so many fifteen year-olds do" foreshadowing. More like fiveshadowing.
• Just realized that Silver is the girl who played the Daughter of Darkness on Reaper. Was better as the Spawn of Satan.

So where the hell is Brenda?:

• The omnipresent ads for the show "Privileged" look better than this one.
  
• Apparently the Brenda girl is named "Annie." Still can't remember the brother's name.
• Oh, and the girl that she outsung in the play is a druggie. How LA!
• And she broke up with her boyfriend from back in Wichita. I guess his name was Jason. She's sad, altho I can't imagine why, since... we never met him and only just learned his name.

On to Part II of the pilot:

• Full House girl is taking the news that Silk Stalkings guy husband fathered a son with his high school girlfriend pretty well – wonder how she'll hold up when she finds out that (I think) Kelly adopted him. Stay tuned for sweeps!
• Annie hasn't stopped overacting from the pilot. Warning signs that she may not be able to stop for the whole season.
• The rival lacrosse team has trashed the hallowed halls of West Beverly! Are our boyz gonna get them back? Tough to care because, well, it's about lacrosse.

During the break:

• The "live" check-ins from the launch party don't do viewers any favors. It's like walking a red carpet with an EPK.

These breaks are getting harder to sit thru, particularly when you come back to this:

• While the show hasn't shied away from branded integration (I think I need some Aquacurrent science – it's putting moisture where I need it!), they clearly couldn't land a videogame partner, as they just showed the worst fake on-screen gaming action in the history of fake on-screen gaming action.

Ok, maybe the breaks aren't so bad:

• As the extended trailer for Confessions of a Shopaholic looks pretty good for the Devil Wears Prada crowd.
• Oooh, we're back. And the scruffy cool teacher just botched his chance at asking out Kelly by referring to her son as "baggage." Oh, and the baggage is four and a half, so I guess he can't be Melrose Place's kid.
• It's Brenda! The actual Brenda! Who updates us on Brandon – apparently he's in Belize, still loves Megaburgers... and Kelly. Whuh? At this point, I'm really just wishing that they made a show about the original 90210 kids all growns up as opposed to this Superman Returnsish reboot/remake. The only plot point I gave half a damn about was Scruffy McTeachy giving Kelly flowers and a cap at the end of the show.
  

And I think that's the problem. Right now the cameos from fan faves are sorta fun and the rest of it's sorta... not. It may get better – the Gossip Girl pilot was pretty damn bad, and that's turned out to be tons of fun. It passed the Pilot Test in the sense that I stuck with the second episode since it was attached to the first. And I was invested enough in the original show to give this one a bit of a go, but right now it's a little bit of 9021uh-0.