Brandon's Buzz

“I know you. I’ve seen you before!”

— the girl at Best Buy (whose name, sadly, I didn’t even think to get until I had already made it home and decided to turn this experience into a Buzz post) who rang up my CD purchase yesterday. (My response: “I, uhh, frequent your lovely establishment here quite often, so it’s certainly not, umm, impossible.” I didn’t know if telling her that I’ve darkened the door no less than once a week every week for the past fifteen years would freak her out or fill her with pride, so I figured that was the safest way to address her inquiry.)

Sincere kudos (and thanks, natch) to the good folks at TV Land, who have seen fit to return that terrific television classic “Designing Women” (my hands-down vote for funniest situation comedy evah) to its daily lineup (albeit at the ungodly hour of 2am Texas time, to which I can only offer: thank you, Jesus, for the DVR) following an inexplicable and unjustified hiatus. Even though I’ve seen every episode no less than once (and, indeed, have a great many of them committed to memory, such is the level of my supreme madness!) and have almost all of them on tape, I still get all warm and tingly inside when I can flip on live TV and see what fresh hijinks the Sugarbaker gang are involved in.

Having said that, whomever at the network has been placed in charge of recutting these episodes (so as to be able to squeeze in two (!) extra commercial breaks, you see) ought to have his (or her) eyelashes ripped off his (or her) skull one follicle at a time. The original syndication run from years ago produced some outrageous episode edits, but nothing as atrocious as what I’m witnessing on this latest TV Land stint. (Again, it probably helps nothing that I have entire episodes of the series permanently lodged in the Venus flytrap that is my batshit mind.) Thankfully, the climactic (and best, and funniest) scene from my all-time favorite “Women” outing — “Miss Trial,” the one where Julia (as played by the marvelously dry Dixie Carter) got arrested for ditching jury duty — remained largely intact during last week’s airing, but many of the scenes leading up to same were thoroughly and unconscionably butchered. As he was sitting right next to me throughout the viewing, I’m pretty sure A heard my heart break as I pondered all the quips and punchlines that were sacrificed so that TV Land could sell me a can of Manwich and a roll of Tums four times in the span of one half hour. I’ll certainly take what I can get and be grateful for it — something is better than nothing, at least in this instance — but forgive me for believing that a network which has dedicated itself to collecting and preserving the very best material television has to offer should do a better job than this when the time comes to put its money where its mouth is.

“When, in the second hour, Garth’s Kelly and Doherty’s Brenda sat across from each other at a table to exchange a few tense lines, it was the teen-soap version of De Niro and Pacino meeting for the first time in Heat: all that buildup, all that tension!”

— the LOL moment — why the hell didn’t I think of that, dammit?! — from Ken Tucker‘s fairly charitable review of the new “90210” in Entertainment Weekly

6:38 pm: Got a bowl of tomato soup and some goldfish crackers before me, and anticipation is building.  T-minus 22 minutes and counting, people!

6:41 pm:  The terrific Sherry Ann is the world’s leading 9021-ologist — quite seriously, she knows everything — so it feels odd to be doing this without her at my side.  However, I’ve invited her to send along her thoughts (and I know damn well she’ll have some!) via text message.

6:44 pm:  Sherry Ann just alerted me she’s gonna miss the first thirty minutes of the episode, because she and the chillins are at soccer practice.  My response:  “Hurry home!”

6:47 pm:  Anybody else catch my literary hero Jay McInerney on the “Gossip Girl” season premiere last night?  Whoa!  Sherry Ann had texted to warn me it was coming — I had to miss the first half, so I watched it on videotape later — but even though I was prepared for it, I still almost choked on my Rice Krispies!

6:50 pm:  A quote from Sherry Ann last night:  “New ‘90210’ and new NKOTB… it’s like the ’90s all over again!”

6:51 pm:  Umm, yeah!

(more…)

To celebrate the CW’s super-anticipated remake of the series that definitively put the then-fledgling Fox network on the pop culture map — Aaron Spelling’s earnest classic “Beverly Hills, 90210” (or, as we prefer to refer to it, “Sherry Ann’s and my teenage years”) — Brandon’s Buzz is going live tomorrow evening to blog the megahyped two-hour season premiere.  If, like me, you can’t wait to see Lori Loughlin in Cindy Walsh mode, or to see how Kelly Taylor has held up as she moves into middle age, be here at 7pm CDT (that’s 8 Eastern and 5 Pacific, for all you far-flung folks) and join in the fun.