What Can We Learn From Beverly Hills 90210
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The Soap Network is replaying Beverly Hills 90210 from the beginning! I’m very excited about this because I was too young to watch it from the beginning when it originally aired. So, now I get to relive a whole new series of Teen Drama, complete with 80’s clothes and catch phrases (nerdbommer, anyone?). We’re about 2 weeks in now, and there are a surprising amount of financial lessons that I’ve been able to garner from watching these spoiled teens in the famous zip code.
Easy Money Often Comes With A Price
There was one episode where a club member at the Beverly Hills Beach Club took a liking to Brandon. He didn’t seem to like that Brandon’s parents were making Brandon work for the summer to buy a car… or maybe he wanted a psuedo-son and saw one in Brandon. He “hired” Brandon to run errands for him for the summer for a ridiculous sum of money, and presented him with the keys to a shiny BMW. Naturally, Jim Walsh wasn’t too happy about this, but Brandon took the job anyway. That is, until he found out that his benefactor was a somewhat immoral guy who cheats on his wife, and who was acting as a Sugar Daddy for a young girl Brandon happened to like. Brandon (and I) quickly learned that sometimes money corrupts.
Money Doesn’t Buy Happiness
The Walsh’s seem to have less money than those around them, or at least aren’t very ostentatious about it. Yet, they are happily married and have a good relationship with their kids. Compare this to Kelly’s mom (a divorced alcoholic) and Dylan’s parents (Dad in jail for tax evasion, Mom off missing in Hawaii with no relationship with her son, and Dylan also a recovering alcoholic). We don’t know much about Steve and Donna and David’s parents yet at this point in the series, but if I remember correctly from spotty reruns, they don’t have the most stable of family lives. So, it goes to show that sometimes being too rich (or placing to much of a premium on money or the careers to get it) can sometimes cost you in other more important ways
How Much Money You Have Isn’t As Important As Who You Are
There is an episode where Andrea is nearly kicked out of school because it is discovered that she doesn’t live In District. There’s a lot of class talk in this episode (she implies that the Beverly Hills Kids with their cd players and fancy cars can’t possibly understand or appreciate what they have, Steve makes an offhanded comment about people who ‘live in the Valley’, etc.) However, her friends rally by her side and help her to makeover her Grandma’s apartment so it looks like she does live there after all. Everything works out in the end, and we learn that if you are a good and honest person who develops good strong friendships, it doesn’t matter who you are or where you came from.
A Gift From the Heart Is The Most Valuable Of All
In the same episode described above (where Andrea’s nearly found out and kicked out) Steve begins dating a girl who is clearly a Gold Digger. His friends all try to warn him, but it takes him a little while to catch on. Finally, he decides to test her by taking her to a jewelry store and instead of giving her glittery diamonds, he gives her a simple bracelet. She rejects it with disappointment, and Steve realizes (and tells her and us) that he had hoped to be with a girl who finds it special just because it is from him. It doesn’t matter how much a gift costs, we learn, but what matters is that the person giving it gave it with love.
You Can’t Buy Love (Or Put a Price on It)
After Dylan’s dad goes to jail for tax evasion, his mother returns to try to be a mother. They are unable to get their failed relationship back off the ground, and she ultimately is unable to enter his life as a mother-figure, and leaves the show to head back to Hawaii. Before she does, she reveals that long ago his father offered her a lot of money to stay out of Dylan’s life. She didn’t spend it, and she gives it to Dylan instead. But we still seem to come away with the lesson that perhaps both of them would have been better off if she’d just stayed and been a mother and left the money alone in the first place.
So, so far a lot of the lessons deal with the fact that money doesn’t make you a good person, doesn’t make you happy, and can’t buy you love. Some pretty important lessons from a silly little show :)
