A Birth Mother’s Take on the New 90210

I could have spit nails at the television. I will admit to not catching the whole episode because I kind of forgot that it was on. But I caught over half of the premiere of the “new” 90210. As a young girl, I watched the original Beverly Hills, 90210 every week into my teens (when I ditched the last season or so for Dawson’s Creek, of course). I didn’t have much hope for the new show. Spin-offs are, in my opinion, never as good as the original. And it seemed that revisiting an idea just eight years later (that’s right, it finished in 2000, people) seems to be a bit reaching.

But I turned on my television and watched.

Apparently they’re also revisiting the clothes because, uh, didn’t I wear some of that in the 90’s? That was very confusing to me. I also couldn’t relate to jumping on planes to go on a date. Then again, I couldn’t relate to the uber-sexy Dylan inheriting so much money back in the day either. So, maybe relating isn’t what they’re going for with the new series. Either way, I felt old watching these young actors portray teens.

So, what does all this have to do with adoption? As I mentioned before, the new series has an adoption theme running through it. I wondered if they would handle it with care. I wondered if they would jump all over stereotypes. I wondered if it would make me spit nails at the screen.

The latter, as I mentioned at the beginning of this post, was what happened.

As Debbie Wilson (Lori Loughlin), the mom, is in bed at night with Harry Wilson (Rob Estes), the dad, they’re discussing recent family issues and drama. And he says, which I will paraphrase because I had to delete it off my DVR in fears that it infiltrated the way that my family thinks:

As an adoptive father, do I want our son’s birth parents around? Absolutely not.

Nice.

Granted, from my understanding, their son was adopted from foster care. There are less cases of successful open adoptions, even in families who push through and try, in foster care situations because of the dynamics that everyone is working with, not limited to abuse and neglect. I get that and I understand the differences because I am attached to adoption and spend a great deal of time working towards reform. However, do you think John and Jane Doe got that in their bed? Did they know the difference? Or did they nod their heads and say, “See! That open adoption stuff is silly! Adoptive parents don’t want the birth parents around! They just complicate things! 90210 said so!”

Well, 90210 is just a (poorly written) fictional show about teens and families with too much money. I hope the general public was able to realize that one. Because, once again, a fictional show has played into the stereotypes that the world wants to believe about the ins and outs of adoption. We’re no further ahead than we were yesterday before the show aired.

And the theme is getting old. Old.

Photo Credit.

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