My friends were almost secretly watching it, too. How could they not? 90210 validated our angst, identified the same archetypes that existed in our own school, and provided Dylan McKay-the single coolest dude in the history of televised high school-to emulate. There he was, seated with his knees up, at the top of a Beverly Hills High staircase, alone but not lonely, as hes confronted by Jason Priestlys Brandon Walsh. The squint. The Chucks with no socks. The jeans with the tapered roll-up. The vocal fry. The physics-defying hair. Lord god that hair. Luke Perry.
I never thought of him as Dylan McKay. The character was, and to me still is, Luke Perry, a man who seemed to so totally embody coolness that the actor had to be the cool one. This Dylan McKay guy-he was just some slightly degraded reflection of Perry. Even his name was cooler than the characters.
I wouldnt have been able to articulate it then, but it seems clear now that I was into the show because it actually honored the teenage experience as deeply complex, much like the movie Breakfast Club had five years before. And the troubled Dylan McKay was the shows most complex character. He looked like a classic loner jerk, but he was always more interesting than that. And you get a preview of how the character would transform (and how his relationship with Jason Priestleys character would change) in that scene where they meet for the first time.
First, there was the worldliness (Walsh. Scotch or Irish?). Then the sarcasm (Shyeah, lets do lunch.) Then the moral compass (I just dont believe in winning through intimidation.) And there was the breezy action-taking (Come on. Field trip.). Perrys ability to balance nonchalance with stick-with-me-kid generosity (love, really) would ultimately define the character-and would define cool to a generation of secret 90210 watchers, like me. He was both cool guy and great friend. (And there is no better role model for a boy than that.)
Perry never won an Emmy for his work on Beverly Hills 90210, sure, but, for a 16-year-old kid, alone in more ways than one, he was a hero.