90210

For the purpose of this entry you really only need to watch from 6:43 to 7:56 to get what I’m talking about.



Now I know what you are thinking and yes, I do watch this show and yes, I know it is crappy television. Here’s the thing about that clip though, not only did I laugh so hard when the character Ethan Ward gave that speech but the show [and this clip] single-handedly fucked up how pre-teen girls¹ THINK guys think and/or act. These 90210 characters live in a world of melodrama, they seem to be relatable, and maybe some of them are but the guys in this show are all WAY too in touch with their emotions. I’m not suggesting it’s a bad thing because everyone should be self-aware of their emotions as it shows you are emotionally healthy and comfortable with yourself; however these guys take it to a whole other level that girls I know aren’t even on. Let’s take the character Dixon for example; he is the adopted son of the Wilson family. He had told his girlfriend he loved her and she didn’t reciprocate the sentiment. We are lead to believe she has commitment issues² of sorts being from a broken family, etc. So she tells him to forget about the incident and put it past them, however Dixon is visibly upset about it but his girlfriend doesn’t seem to get the hint³. When Dixon is eating dinner one night his mom notices something is wrong and he confides in her saying, “Well you know, we kinda got into a fight. Well, first I told her I loved her. But, we got into a fight after, you know, she just blew up on me. Like I don’t even get it?” then, “We kind of decided not to talk about it. You know, just sweep it under the rug.” The male English teacher is struggling with his ability to teach with passion while also juggling his love interests. Annie Wilson’s ex-lover is a drama kid with pants that are too tight. Navid Shirazi insists he doesn’t want to get into the pants of Adrianna Duncan, the designated character who gets addicted to drugs⁴ and he also wishes, like Ethan, to take it “slow”. I could go on with the things that these male characters do and say that make them so incredibly “feminine” but that’s enough.

Now I feel like people are going to think that I think all guys are terrible and the truth is that I don’t think all guys are assholes, but I also know all guys are not overly in touch with their emotions and feelings as is the case with every male character on that show. Speaking from experience I knew no guys in grade 11 who acted like those guys on the show, if anything is the case those guys on the show are acting a little too mature to be 16 year olds because let’s face it, we all know how 16 year old guys act. This is precisely why these pre-teen girls and I suppose even those girls in grade 11 who watch the show are stuck with two conflicting ideological ideas of how guys are. These girls will be expecting the guy they like to act like Ethan Ward, so what happens when that isn’t the case?

Then again, a lot of ladies get treated terribly by guys and aren’t smart enough to realize there are guys out there who will treat them properly. Maybe 90210 is trying to get girls to realize this very fact.
Does this undermine the whole point of my entry? Who knows.
What’s the bottom line? Maybe watching 90210 isn’t such a bad thing.


¹ or any girls for that matter, I just chose pre-teen girls because they are probably the bulk of the population who watch the show and they are the most impressionable
² curiously she acts more like a guy than the guys on the show do
³ also a situation a guy would find himself in
⁴ as I recall, she was totally about to have sex with him but then HE said no