Retro show not so bad

I've been watching some old episodes of the original Beverly Hills 90210 - ain't the internet grand? You can watch anything you want now! I used to watch this show back in the day but I've never seen the first two seasons because I was in college during that time. Thought I'd catch up 20 years later.

I remembered it as being smarmy and preachy - very 'after-school' special. In a lot of ways, it really is. Brandon is such a bloody upstanding kind of guy that it makes one want to hurl. But there is an aspect to it that I was surprised by - the sex.

They don't ever show any of it, of course, but they actually treat teen sex in a pretty mature way. I thought it would have been all 'don't do it until you're ready' and 'wait until you're older' in the first seasons, but it's not. Right from the first episode they talk about the 16 year-old characters having sex and there is no big deal made of it. In one of the earlier episodes, Brandon has sex with his long-distance girlfriend in his parents house. It's all rather matter of fact - just what they do because they're into each other. His mother has an issue with it because it's in her house, but again, there wasn't much of a big deal, just a passing mention that they 'were careful'. I don't like the fact that they never use the words 'condom' or 'abortion' even though they talk about both of those things, but hey, you can't have everything.

When Brenda and Dylan have sex for the first time, it's not a big deal either. They've been dating for a couple of months and they both want to so they do it at the hotel at prom. They are both happy and excited after - no angst, no long talks, no over doing the birth control discussions, they just do it and they're happy about it. Not at all what I was expecting. I figured an Arron Spelling show about teenagers would have been much more sex-negative.

Of course I haven't seen the second season and I know Brenda has a pregnancy scare so we'll see what I think after I've had a chance to watch that. Maybe the tune will change.