What a Difference a Decade Makes

Not so much, apparently.

Whenever I pass posters promoting the remakes of both 90210 and Melrose Place, I wonder who green-lit these nostalgia projects. Who brought the idea of updating these particular bits of nighttime TV soap to the table in the first place, and now that they've been made, who is watching them? And I wonder if much of this all hinged on the "imagine what stirring some Twitter and Facebook into the plot pot would do!" If only Heather Locklear had had a Blackberry. For those of us who grew up and moved out while the original shows were on air, it seems like a chance to peek in on the class reunion to see that we haven't aged a day.

This thought line was iced over with a second one this week when I saw that Slate (okay), and then the New York Times (yeah), but then also the New Yorker (wha?) had all spilled ink over the recast of this trashy TV show from the '90s.

And there's plenty more, um, analysis, but Matthew Gilbert, writing for the Boston Globe, may have summed up the state of things best: "And so I "like" the new "Melrose Place," in that I think it has the potential to be as addictive, and phony, as a can of Pringles potato crisps. The trashy CW series, tonight at 9 on Channel 56, has none of the hokey moral quandaries of the show that precedes it, "90210," no lesson-learning unless you're a student of chicanery and double-dealing. The new "Melrose Place" is just a mess of gossipy plotlines about adultery, murder, and secrets. If it has a moral compass, the arrow is stuck pointing down, to hell."