Love and death on 90210

Marisa Meltzer's article on the first season of "Beverly Hills 90210" strikes the right note of repulsion and affection. I don't know how much credit producer/writer Darren Star's attention to the Billboard Modern Rock tracks deserves in assessing the show's ultimate aesthetic worth, but let's just say that hearing Concrete Blonde's "Joey," the Pet Shop Boys' "So Hard," and Soho's marvelous, too-long-forgotten "Hippychick" (my introduction to The Smiths!) introduced this high school junior to levels of melodrama and subtle subversion which made that important year's discoveries all the more interesting. Keying an epochal instance of Dylan Walsh's Byronic angst to R.E.M.'s "You Are The Everything" -- by far the most haunting song on the otherwise misbegotten Green -- was a stroke of genius. It was easier to forgive Star or whoever for promoting Jeremy Jordan's "Right Kind of Girl," but at that point Donna and David were hogging all the important stories anyway, and Shannon Doherty's sui generis Brenda Walsh was sidelined. Here was a girl worthy of emulation: masculine, erratic, waspish, and unworthy of pallid Dylan. When John Hurt exquisitely pined for Jason Priestley in Love & Death in Long Island, I was tempted to snort. Brenda was gayer than Brandon ever was.