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to three years younger than the characters that inhabited the world I would come to know and love on Fox's newest teen drama. At the time the show began I was living in Los Angeles three months out of the year, and the other nine were spent in Houston Texas. This was interesting because I saw the effects of the show firsthand in two different parts of the country, one of them being within a few miles of the show's setting. Both my geographical location, and my relative proximity in age to the characters on the show played an integral part in drawing me into the show initially, but it was the cultural phenomenon that the show became that would keep me there for the next ten years and beyond.

When 90210 first aired it was a show about a family from Minnesota that moved to Beverly Hills and had to deal with many foreign situations and personalities, but that would quickly change due to viewer interest in the younger characters on the show Brandon and Brenda Walsh, as well as their exciting and eclectic group of friends. From the onset of the show it was fairly apparent that 90210 was always intended to be somewhat issue oriented, but I can't imagine that the creators of the show had any clue just how important and widely received their messages would become. In early episodes of the series, issues that were addressed tended to be youth oriented issues of little consequence to anyone old enough to have already learned those lessons throughout their own adolescence, but for young teens like myself, 90210 was a great influence and reinforced values that I would come to live by. Subjects such as stealing when feeling inadequate around your peers, cheating on tests, and standing up for those who can not stand up for themselves were some of the types of light issues that the show tackled in the early episodes. The writers and producers of the show quickly realized how important and widely viewed their show had become however, and more topical issues soon became a main focus of the programming. Heavier storylines involving teen pregnancy, rape, drugs and drinking, and many more socially pertinent issues soon became a mainstay for the series. Often times following episodes, cast members would give information and phone numbers for crisis hotlines and organizations dedicated to helping teens in need, the charity highlighted after the show related to the content of that particular episode. What had begun on Fox's first legitimate teen-drama hit, '21 Jump Street', had carried

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