Guest blog entry by Joan:

A little over a year ago now, I bought myself a copy of the entire television series of Beverly Hills, 90210 off of Ebay. Watching it the second time around has been just as entertaining as the first, and I eagerly turn to my dvd player whenever I have some spare time. Having said that, my obsession with 90210 is not something that everyone understands, and as a result, I have had to yield multiple questions and endure endless teasing on my “hobby”. These questions and comments have made me ponder on why I find this show so appealing. Yes, the characters are fun, the plotlines addictive, and the fashion appealing. But there is more to it than that. I have come up with the top three reasons why I love 90210. Here they are!

Reason Number 3: Instant Camaraderie

Happily, I am not alone in my obsession with this show. Having run for an entire decade, 90210 developed a huge following of devoted fans, worldwide. Ask any twenty/thirty-something if they watched the show (note: the key word here is “watched, not liked”) and you will undoubtedly learn that they did. It bonded Michelle and me in an instant - check out the great 90210 link off her website! On a side note, Andrew is an incredible exception to this rule, having never watched an episode prior to meeting me. I quickly fixed that! More on this later…

Reason Number 2: The Constant Factor

I was about 14 years old and in high school in Port Alberni when I first started watching 90210, and was 24 and just starting to work at CMHC in Vancouver when the show ended. A whole lot happened and changed in between, but no matter where I was or what I was doing, 90210 and the gang were there. Watching 90210 helped me adapt to leaving home for the first time to attend university at UBC, and it later comforted me when I left Canada to do international development work in Washington, DC. It was also comforting to watch the characters go through many of the same stages in life, at roughly the same time. You’ve heard of comfort food, well this was comfort television to me.

Reason Number 1: The Memories

The top reason why I still love 90210 is that it helps me relive the memories that developed alongside my devoted following of the show. I remember running home after shifts at McDonalds so that I could watch 90210 with my mom. In his heyday, Luke Perry, aka Dylan McKay, stared in the film “Buffy the Vampire Slayer”. My friend Sonia and I must have created a chant with our constant repetition of the movie’s trailer tagline: “This summer, we’re going to walk under the moonlight, dance under the stars…” We went to this movie the first day it opened in Port. The fact that we were disappointed with it is irrelevant. The memory is, as Mastercard would say, priceless.

These are my reasons for loving 90210. So I happily indulge and allow myself to become enthralled in the show once again, and I encourage Andrew and friends to watch with me as many episodes as they can bear. And I smile because I know that by doing so, in ten years time, reliving these simple, cherished, moments will be as easy as pressing power on the dvd player.