When you think of a television show that’s emblematic of the ‘90s, none are more quintessential than Beverly Hills, 90210. From the cheesy, guitar-heavy intro music to the too-high-to-heaven hairstyles, the show became an international hit by depicting a group of attractive teens growing up privileged in Southern California. From 1990 to 2000, it served as a forever time capsule of the decade that made consumer technology a staple in everyday life.
Anyone who knows me, personally, knows my unhealthy obsession with this show. I didn’t tune in when it originally aired, except for the few episodes I managed to sneak-watch in the later seasons. As the show concluded on Fox and I entered my early teens, I began watching the reruns on FX and, later, SOAPNet. That’s when I realized the show could serve as an escape for me; I imagined myself running away to Los Angeles to chase the sun. I wanted the freedom these rich kids had.
I also wanted the crap they had floating around in the background. Not only did I like their clothes and want to see the bands that they saw live at the Peach Pit After Dark (The Flaming Lips! Christina Aguilera!), but I also wanted access to the internet as they had in season five when the epic storyline of Kelly getting burned in a housefire starts up by way of an errantly-posted rave flyer on a message board. These were all little moments that kicked off more significant plotlines in the show, and they were a great example of how computers and the internet became background characters to the decade.
I’ve watched all ten seasons of the show every year since 2005. During the height of the covid pandemic, I started watching it daily—they say that we’re more likely to default to our comforts in times of duress. That’s why I’m the perfect person to serve as a tour guide through tech and the internet, as depicted on Beverly Hills, 90210, throughout the 1990s.
Fight hair loss with scienceRight now, you can get The Hair Revitalizing Complex Full Set for the price of the Refill. That’s just $98 for a 30-day supply, and $32 off the supplement’s normal price. This supplement is proven to deliver results. Augustinus Bader performed a six-month double blind trial that found those on the supplement had increased their hair count by 56%, hair shine by 100%, and saw a 98% reduction in hair damage compared to those who took a placebo.
Beverly Hills, 90210 wasn’t symbolic of many teenagers’ experience in the ‘90s—the kind of money and access these kids had was not the norm. West Beverly Hills High School was modeled after the real-life Beverly Hills High School, which boasts wealthy and privileged real-life alums such as Lenny Kravitz, Angelina Jolie, and even the Kardashians. While these rich kids were ostensibly teaching viewers about classism, racism, microaggressions, and how to have safe sex, they were also driving expensive sports cars and wearing clothing brands that only a banker or a lawyer’s kid could afford at the time.
Technology became the background character in the show starting in season one. In the pilot episode, we see b-roll of a supposed student at West Beverly carting around expensive laptops like the Macintosh Portable. That chunky laptop came in at around $7,000 in 1990 with a hard drive in tow, more than the cost of my last three computers in the new millennium.
The kids had access to a class called “Tech Shop”—I’m still puzzled about what technology they were tinkering with, as the show depicts beakers and random circuitry instead of the desktop computers I remember from the elementary school computer lab. Tech Shop became somewhat of a tertiary character in season one. It’s where Brandon and the viewers meet Dylan McKay, played by Luke Perry, who became the show’s resident bad boy. It’s also where Brandon does his first of many sanctimonious takes in episode 5, where he accuses a black student-athlete of receiving preferential treatment. (The storyline was cringe, and Brandon apologized to the student afterward, but the drama started there in that tech room.)
By 1991-1992, the show had grown in popularity enough that the network took a gamble on airing a “summer” season wherein the kids and teens at home could watch in real-time as the gang enjoyed their break from school. Tech Shop was no longer part of the curriculum, but there would be moments of dialogue and transitionary scenes showing that technology had space at West Beverly High.
David Silver, played by Brian Austin Green (or “BAG,” as the fans call him), was introduced to us as a nerdy wannabe with hobbies like making music with his electric keyboard. Naturally, he morphed into one of the more tech-savvy members of the cast—many of my favorite tech-centric lines come from his character, and it’s clear that he was written as a gadget head from the very beginning. In episode four of season two, David geeks out over a rear-projection TV present in the gaming room when the gang sneaks into the Beverly Hills Beach Club after hours to play poker. In one offhanded comment to Steve Sanders, played by Ian Ziering, he schools viewers on why rear projection was considered a better technology at the time through one punchily-delivered line. Simply, it had “twice the brightness.”
Large TV screens became more readily available to consumers starting in 1991. According to this vintage article from the Los Angeles Times, which was published around the same time this episode debuted, sales of TV screens larger than 27-inches had increased 13% that summer—there’s no doubt that the Beverly Hills Beach Club had budgeted some of its cash that summer to upgrade the TVs in the game room. Rear-projection TVs, which were as big as 53 inches, were labeled as having “gained ‘yuppie toy’ status,” which fits the mold for Beverly Hills, 90210.
Season two is also where we learned that The West Beverly Blaze, the school newspaper, was edited and produced on desktop computers. In episode 12, Andrea Zuckerman, played by Gabrielle Carteris, also editor-in-chief of the Blaze, pens a letter of resignation on what appears to be a computer running MS-DOS (my brother-in-law thinks it’s this one specifically, but we’re going off a screencap). Andrea convinces herself the ruse that she’s living at her grandmother’s apartment in Beverly Hills won’t fly with the school board and that she’ll have to go back to school in the valley. Later in the episode, she impassionately reminds her friends during lunch that she was going through all the trouble to lie because West Beverly High offered access to technology and programs she didn’t have in Van Nuys. “You people have no idea how good you have it...You think every place is like this.”
Indeed, computers were becoming more commonplace in public schools in the United States. By 1991, about 98% of schools were using a computer for instruction, up from about 18% in the early ‘80s. Computers were also more readily available, with one computer for every 18 students, making it easier to access for curious tinkerers.
The most famous tech-tinged storyline in the entire series—and the one that taught me about the concept of “social engineering”—occurs in season three. It’s one of my favorite multi-episode arcs. Steve Sanders, who I mentioned earlier, is the resident jock and “cool guy” on campus. Although he’s boorish and often offensive, he has the best outcome of all the characters by season ten. Each season they had him navigating some troubling situation. In season two, it was steroids on the school track team. And in season three, it was hacking into the school to change his grades.
Steve Sanders is not the hacker in this situation. The storyline starts in episode 8 when a recently-graduated West Beverly High alum seeds Steve with the so-called “legacy key.” This key is supposedly a master key that unlocks every door in the school, including the room where they store the grades. Steve, fearing that he won’t make it into the University of Southern California with his dumpy scores, decides to try to break into the school to change his transcripts. To his chagrin, the grades are not just letters written down on paper. After all, it’s the ‘90s, and because this is an affluent school, all that information has been digitized and stored on a computer.
Instead of working his ass off to make the grades, Steve decides to employ a tech-inclined scapegoat to help him. This is when we meet Herbert Little, Steve’s freshman buddy, who also happens to be a computer hacker in his spare time. However, for Herbert to access the school’s computers, he needs the master password. Steve, ever the master bullshitter, makes the call pretending to be from the “Computer Network Maintenance Corporation.” He successfully phishes the password from the school district’s IT department. It’s almost too easy—and way easier than 2600 told me it would be.
In the end, Steve and Herbert’s efforts to hack into the school’s mainframe don’t quite work out. The police catch on that there was a break-in and launch an investigation. Eventually, Steve fesses up to the attempt to change his grades and spends the rest of the school year in before- and after-school detention, where plenty of other plotlines occur throughout the season.
By season four, the gang had all graduated from high school and entered college. All eight of them end up at the big (and apparently prestigious?) university called California University—in reality, they were filming on location at Occidental College in Eagle Rock. Their campus was chockfull of mid-’90s technology gems.
Thanks to a scholarship, Andrea has a Macintosh and a laser printer in her dorm room. And everyone from Source: Gizmodo