Last night, I watched The Class of Beverly Hills, which was the 2-hour pilot for what eventually became Beverly Hills 90210. I was a kid when the show originally aired so, even though I often watched it with my sisters (who absolutely loved the show, though they'll deny it now), I can't really say that I remember a whole lot about it. I did, however, watch the first reboot every week that it aired and I've recently rewatched several of the original episodes on Pop TV. I also watched the recent BH90210 revival that aired on Fox last season and I thought it was amusing and occasionally clever.

But, last night, was my first time to ever watch the episode that started it all and it was an interesting experience. It was considerably less slickly produced than the episodes that followed and the script put a lot of emphasis on the idea of Brandon and Brenda Walsh being outsiders in Beverly Hills. There was a lot more attention paid to the differences between the rich kids (like Steve and Kelly) and the more middle class characters, like the Walshes and Andrea. Tori Spelling only appeared for about five minutes and had hardly any lines. There was no Dylan in the pilot. Instead, it looks like Steve was originally meant to be the troubled bad boy. There were also a lot of mullets. Considering that the show became famous for Dylan's sideburns, it's interesting that almost every guy in the pilot had hockey hair. Jason Priestly was the worst offender as far as the bad hair was concerned, though Ian Ziering's blonde afro was a close second. (I read once that Ziering looks like every third groomsman in every wedding photo taken between 1970 and 1984.)

Of course, the main thing that I noticed is that Brandon, the main character, was kind of a jerk throughout the entire pilot. Between hitting on every girl that he meets (with some of the corniest lines of all time, I might add) to literally stalking Andrea across Los Angeles because he wanted to finish having an argument with her, Brandon was seriously annoying. Today, I get the feeling that Brandon Walsh would be held up as perfect example of privilege and toxic masculinity.

That said, I could still see why the pilot led to a show and why the show became a hit. The cast was attractive and they were all good enough actors that they could survive some seriously overwritten dialogue. Really, that's all most people want from a show. They just want a cast that's nice to look at and vaguely decent acting. It's not that difficult.