In the teen TV drama formula, there must be an average, middle-class character with whom the average, middle-class viewer can identify. On the new 90210, the lead girl, Annie Wilson, played by Toronto expat Shenae Grimes, is that kid; the story starts when her family moves from Kansas to Beverly Hills. Grimes spent four years as Darcy Edwards on the average kid–fetishizing Degrassi: The Next Generation. Coming out of the relatively lacklustre star galaxy that is Canadian TV, it’s hardly a stretch to play the part of the wide-eyed newbie just arriving in decadent L.A.

On Annie’s first day at West Beverly Hills High, she looks around the parking lot and, after taking in the deluxe wheels, $300 haircuts, obvious boob jobs, sparkling teeth and designer duds, comments wryly, “It’s like the Oscars—and everybody’s Scarlett Johansson.” She also sees a boy sitting suspiciously still in his SUV. When a pretty girl’s head rises from his lap, Annie quickly figures out the deal. Even in Kansas they have blow jobs, if not necessarily in the school parking lot before the first bell has rung.

And so begins the highly anticipated return of 90210. In this opening scene, the new show stayed true to its roots—showcasing the money of the tony L.A. enclave—while also making clear that it was prepared to boldly go where other risqué teen dramas, most notably Gossip Girl, have already ventured.

Another Degrassi grad and Toronto export has also landed here, in the teen show big leagues. Sean Reycraft, one of 90210’s writers, has moved script by script toward this moment. Having worked in Canadian theatre, film and TV, he’s never seen anything like the promotional machinery deployed to bring 90210 to the masses: the $750,000 premiere party held in August on a beach in Malibu; the ice cream trucks bearing 90210 graphics dispatched to key markets across America to dish out free cones; the ads every­where, from the sleeves of coffee cups in alt-cafés to billboards covering entire buildings in Times Square—not to mention the big one at Yonge-Dundas Square. The stakes are high: the fledgling CW network has had dismal ratings in its first two years. The head of CBS recently sent one of 90210’s executive producers an e-mail asking how it felt to have the fate of an entire network riding on his shoulders.

After an auspicious launch, which drew a record-breaking 4.7 million Americans, 90210 lost 30 per cent of its audience in its second week. “We’re having some birthing pains,” Reycraft admits with customary candour. The writers are dealing with an identity crisis of sorts: how do they preserve some elements of the old 90210—“portraying serious consequences for every action,” as Reycraft puts it—while staying relevant in a field of increasingly raunchy, amoral, flashy competitors? With cocaine addiction, burlesque and group sex on the menu at Gossip Girl, 90210 will have to work to not seem the unsophisticated Valley girl cousin of the Bergdorf-clad debutante.

The original 90210 famously inaugurated a genre with its bratty pack of young actors dealing with drug addictions, nose jobs and decisions to lose (or hold on to) their virginity. The rest is recent TV history: teen soaps like Dawson’s Creek, The OC, Gossip Girl, Privileged and One Tree Hill went on to conquer prime time utterly. (To mock their similarities, Saturday Night Live’s fake newscast recently carried an item announcing the release of a new program called “One OC Gossip Tree Creek.”)