Teen dramas tend to be mediocre, and write down to their audience. The really good ones either elevate the necessarily angsty and overdramatic plots with clever writing and truthfulness like Freaks and Geeks and The O.C., or they have a unique hook that puts the drama into perspective, like the supernatural in Buffy and detecting in Veronica Mars. 90210 is aiming for the former, and makes a good start of it. This is a review of the first two episodes, shown together as a two hour pilot.

While there are a lot of winks at the old show, this 90210 definitely has a lot more in common with The O.C. than the original 90210. The first hour suffers a bit from being rewritten so many times by so many people, but it provides a solid start. The characters are all likable, and they all stand out on their own, which is no small feat for a teen show, since for most shows of this type the characters blend together for the first few episodes.

The second episode feels more consistent than the first, although I don’t like it as much overall. Unsurprisingly, the only noticeably bad acting comes from two of the cast members from the original show. The storylines are retreads of things we have all seen a million times before, team rivalry, cheating boyfriend, rich guy woos poor girl, although they do manage to add a few little twists. It’s not an impressive episode, although it’s not horrible either.

It will be interesting to see if they can manage to develop the characters enough, and differentiate the show from the other teen dramas enough to keep the show going. For now it stays on my watch list, I’ll reassess after a few more episodes.

Season four starts by wiping away most of what they set up at the end of season three. Everyone is out of prison, some of the non-core characters from the last season get killed or sent away, and Sara turns out to be alive. While I’m not a big fan of retconning out significant events, I think the show is better with Sara, and the way they brought her back was believable enough I’ll give them a pass this time.

Rather than trying to escape, or being on the run, this time they are assembled, working as an off the books unit for Homeland Security trying to take down “the company” (possibly the stupidest conspiracy name ever). It works well in the first two episodes so far, and they manage to keep the pace up, which has been a problem for the show in the past. It’s a good setup, since it means they are trying to break into places rather than out of them. They also have almost everyone in the same place, which works a lot better than the scattered stories of the previous seasons.

I was pleasantly surprised by how good the first two episodes were, and how well the new setup works. They could easily keep it going for at least a season without getting old.

Rating: ★★★★☆