Hacker Cinema
Beverly Hills, 90210
1990 · TV series · 10 seasons
Created by Aaron Spelling, Darren Star
Follow the lives of a group of teenagers living in the upscale, star-studded community of Beverly Hills, California and attending the fictitious West Beverly Hills High School and, subsequently, the fictitious California University after graduation.
2 negative6 neutralfrom 8 commenters
Where to watch
No streaming data for this title.
8 comments on Hacker News
From my memory from the 90s: Baywatch, X-Files, that speaking car one, Beverly Hills 90210, Ninja Turtles. Some dumb sitcom named Step by Step? edit: oh and ALF
Oh and Married with Children, but it was always very late night and I was not allowed to watch it.
And our teacher always played us ET on VHS. (and that dog playing basketball.)
that's america for me when I was a kid
I remember watching a TV show set in socal (Beverly Hills 90210 maybe?) in the late 80s I think? And them having high schools and even lockers outdoors just blew my mind.
IIRC, in the early days of the web, a vastly disproportionate number of people claimed to live in Beverly Hills.
Some here may be too young to remember it, but there was a television show at the time called "Beverly Hills 90210". Guess which zip code would immediately come to mind for people who didn't want to use their real one.
Sometimes these edits can be pretty subtle as well: a while ago my wife and I started watching the original early-90s Beverly Hills 90210 on one of the streaming platforms. It’s a kind of absurd and fun pop-cultural time capsule of a show. After a few episodes, though, I started to realize there was something not quite right.
It turns out that much of the music featured in the original airing of the show wasn’t licensed in a way it could be used long term, and over the years it has been replaced with terrible stock songs or jarringly anachronistic choices that sound totally out of place.
Entire scenes and episodes have been cut from the seasons distributed on streaming platforms, because they featured live concerts that couldn’t be edited. The original had performances by the Flaming Lips, among many others, that simply can’t be watched now, except if by chance someone copied an old VHS to YouTube.
Music was a big part of the original show–in addition to the live shows it featured all sorts of great pop songs from the time, which was part of why it was such a hit with teenagers when it aired. It’s such a bummer they stripped it all out!
There are some places online with copies of early DVD releases that have more music, but still not all of it. The original is locked away in a vault somewhere and almost certainly won’t ever be enjoyed in a complete state.
I watched "Beverly Hills 90210" for a while (shame on me), and eventually realized that all the plots were "given X cast members, how many episodes can one create that revolves around one member of the cast hooking up with another"?
I knew those already from being flooded for 40+ years with Hollywood films (all of them) and sitcoms, I know Cosby, Malcolm in the Middle, Beverly Hills 90210, Miami Vice, the Fall Guy, Seinfeld, Friends, Lou Grant, Mary Tyler Moore Show, Diff'rent Strokes, Cheers, Golden Girls, MAS*H (the best), Married... with Children, Three’s Company, King of Queens, Family Matters and on and on and on.
Basically I know the US better - or the image it projects - than my own country.
Funnily it was a huge letdown when I visited for the first time decades ago, as it felt just like a sitcom and there was nothing new really.
> character has bad idea [...] learns their lesson [...] Sitcom writers actually hold a tremendous place of responsibility in American society
Seemingly not widely known, is that sitcom scripts were for years often submitted to the office of the White House Drug Czar, for approval and negotiated revision. IIRC, the carrot was the show counting towards a station's public service broadcast time requirements? So a "90210" script containing drug use for instance, might be revised to reflect a list of requests, intended to present it more clearly as bad idea.
As we now collectively design a censorship regime for more recent social tech, it might be interesting to see insightful non-narrow analysis of past regimes.
"Movies and TV shows have Finnish subtitles instead of dubbing. One college student says she became a fast reader as a child because she was hooked on the 1990s show 'Beverly Hills, 90210.'"
Interesting. I remember when I began using IRC at the age of 10. The rate that I read at increased considerably within several months. It's unfortunate that many kids today watch TV without subtitles and SMS each other unintelligibly. If they're on the internet, they're probably looking at pictures of cats on Digg.
How the hell are kids supposed to learn how to read these days?