Let's Watch This: An Episode of "Beverly Hills Teens"

NOTE: Please do not take any of the little nitpicks in this review (or any of my other reviews, for that matter) seriously. I write these reviews in the hopes of making people laugh. Those nitpicks are really just dumb little observations that I'm attempting to make jokes out of, not complaints that add to whether or not I like something.

NOTE #2: No disrespect is meant towards anyone who worked on the show I am reviewing today. I'm sure they are all very nice and talented people.

NOTE #3: If you like this show, that is great. Go ahead and like it. I'm not judging you.

I've never been to Beverly Hills, and I am not nor have I ever been rich, so a cartoon about a bunch of rich kids living in Beverly Hills is something I likely would never watch if it weren't for my doing a blog about little-known cartoons. Of course, I'm not a sea sponge who lives in a pineapple or works as a fry cook either but that never stopped me from enjoying SpongeBob SquarePants.

Beverly Hills Teens was the creation of Jack Olesker, Michael Maliani and Barry O'Brien, and a co-production between DIC Enterprises, Access Syndication, and Coca-Cola Telecommunications. It first aired in syndication on September 21st, 1987. One season consisting of sixty-five episodes were produced. After its initial run, the show was made part of a package with two other shows called Maxie's World and It's Punky Brewster. Why does the show exist? Apparently, the producers were bothered by the "neo-materialistic, boy-toy animation" that dominated 1980s television like SilverHawks and ThunderCats. The president of Access Syndicate, Ritch Colbert, asked, "Where are the Tom and Jerrys, the Flintstones, the rich characters for children to nurture and identify with?"

Uh, have kids EVER identified with Tom and Jerry? I feel like everyone was too busy laughing at them beating the crap out of each other than they were seeing themselves in the characters.

Well, anyway, the show focuses on a bunch of teenagers Richie Rich-ing it up in Beverly Hills. All sixty-five episodes were eventually released on DVD in 2013, and you can also find episodes of the show on YouTube. Is Beverly Hills Teens worth watching? Let's find out. We're going to watch the second episode of the show, "The Dog Ate My Homework".

Here's a question: has any student in the history of school ever actually told their teacher that a dog ate their homework? Somehow, I doubt anyone is dumb enough that. Unless they couldn't find a sheet of paper so they wrote their homework assignment down on a T-Bone steak.

The episode starts off with one of the show's main characters, Larke Tanner (voiced by Mary Long). She's a part-time model, a straight-A student, good at everything, and drives a pink Ferrari who she might or might not have gotten from Barbie. I'm sure all the part-time model straight-A student kids at home are going to identify with HER!

Doc Brown soon regretted allowing Penelope Pitstop to give his DeLorean a paint job.

She is talking on her video-phone to Troy Jeffries (Jonathan Potts), her boyfriend and the most popular boy in Beverly Hills. They talk about how excited they are for the Midnight Ball that night - especially since Troy has been chosen to be prince of the Midnight Ball. Maybe it's just me, but I don't think having a school dance at midnight is a good idea. Isn't midnight when the Fairy Godmother's magic spell wears off and the girls' coaches turn back into pumpkins?

Then we cut to the show's main antagonist, Bianca (Terri Hawkes). She's described on TV Tropes as being Veronica from the Archie comics without any redeeming qualities. She is accompanied by her chauffer, Wilshire (Michael Beattie), who looks like a giant Cabbage Patch Kid, and a pink poodle named Empress.

And she rides around in a pink limousine, too. There's a lot of that color in this show.

She goes to a dress shop to find a gown for the ball, and when she sees the dress that aspiring actress Nikki Darling (Corrine Koslo) is wearing, she announces that she's going to buy it right off her back. "All's fair in love and shopping, you know," she claims. Then Wilshire accidentally spills Moroccan grape juice on the dress, creating a stain that the French-accented clerk claims will never come out (not even with OxiClean? It's tough on stains!), and Bianca changes her mind.

It's just as well, Nikki. Gold ballgowns won't be "in" this season until Beauty and the Beast
comes out in 1991.

Eventually, Bianca finds a gown that she must, MUST have, but the clerk tells her that Larke has already paid for it. This makes Bianca MAD! She storms out, telling the clerk that she wants every other gown in the store delivered to her house by tonight. Larke shows up just as she's leaving the store, and WHACKY SHENANIGANS ensue as Bianca's poodle chases after her cat.

Later on, at Larke's house... jeez, there's way too much pink in this screencap. It's like she lives in a bottle of Pepto-Bismol.

Who was her interior decorator, the Pink Panther?

Larke is talking to Troy about how she needs to finish her homework. She sits down at her extremely dated-looking 1980s computer and starts typing. At HER house, Bianca gets an idea. An awful idea. Bianca gets a wonderful, AWFUL idea. You see, there's a rule that if you don't complete your homework, you don't get to go to the Midnight Ball. For some reason. And since Bianca wants to be named the princess of the Midnight Ball but knows that Larke is more likely to get it, she has her poodle go inside the house and chew up Larke's computer disks that features her homework assignment (what exactly that assignment IS, they don't say)... after a lengthy sequence where the poodle chases the cat again.

Where are Larke's parents? Why aren't THEY doing anything about the crazy dog running around their house making a mess of things while trying to eat their cat? Anyway, apparently NOT hearing the dog's barking, Larke thinks that her cat chewed up the disk. Now she won't be able to go to the Midnight Ball! Oh, Bianca, how could you be so cruel?

Word about Larke's homework assignment being chewed up apparently travels fast, as it quickly reaches the ear of this girl named Jett (Karen Bernstein). I know this was the 1980s, but take a look at this girl's hair. She looks like a member of Jem and the Holograms. It's like what head lice would think Nirvana is.

It's probably even harder to find a needle in THAT thing than it would be in a
haystack.

And to make matters worse, Larke will have to do the homework assignment in... cue the dramatic music... DETENTION HALL! "Oh, how GRODY! Gag me with a silver spoon!" Jett whines, in case you forgot that this show was made in the 1980s. Well, at least she has a butler to keep her company.

So... are they gonna tell us what the homework assignment actually IS?

Larke has to tell Troy that she probably won't be finished in time for the ball - in fact, she'll be stuck in there all weekend. Wait, her teacher gave the class homework on a FRIDAY? The fiend! Fortunately, hope arrives not in the form of a Fairy Godmother but rather in a ten-year-old genius. Say hello to Chester McTech (Sean Roberge), a bespectacled boy who always wears a labcoat and comes up with bizarre inventions. He overhears Larke's sobs and thinks that they're doing horrible things to her in Detention Hall, so he attempts to break down the doors... which just swing open, so either he's incredibly strong for a A) presumably-ten-year-old and B) a nerd or they just weren't locked.

Refreshingly, the show DOESN'T have a lot of "LOL he's such a nerd" jokes at his expense.

Chester takes out a magnifying glass to see just how bad the damage to Larke's disk really is. He identifies that the bite marks are actually from canine inscisors. That's pretty impressive - I probably wouldn't be able to tell the difference between bite marks from a cat and bite marks from a dog. Larke puts two and two together and realizes that Bianca's dog is to blame, and then Chester says that he might be able to retrieve her homework. He creates an "un-chew" program on his computer to "un-erase" her homework. It works. Scientifically accurate? Doubtful. But it's a cartoon, so who cares?

It's 10:00, but the Midnight Ball is already in full swing... which raises the question of why it's called the MIDNIGHT Ball if it starts BEFORE midnight, but eh... after they deliver Larke's homework assignment, she and Chester head off to pick up her gown. But, oh no! The dress shop is closed! Fortunately, Chester has some sort of invention that can unlock any lock in the world. Word of advice, Chester - make sure that doesn't fall into the wrong hands. A lot of bank robbers would have a field day with it.

"And if you press this button, a laser shoots out and fries Bianca's head!"

"Chester, you can't just break in like that!" Larke points out. "It's against the law!" Chester says that since she already paid for the gown, it technically isn't stealing, but Larke still isn't comfortable with it. If only there were some mice around to whip up a dress for her (why am I making so many Cinderella jokes in this review?). But then Chester gets another idea: if Larke could make a sketch of that ballgown in the window, he could reproduce the dress with his giant sewing machine. I like Chester, but at this point I feel like they should've just named him "Mr. Deus Ex Machina".

A male sewing dresses? Chester is defying gender stereotypes, too!

Faster than you can say "take a chill pill", Larke has a completed dress. But it's 11:50, and she has to get to the ball ASAP. But the universe isn't done making things difficult for Larke - her gown is too big for her to fit in her Ferrari. Fortunately, Chester has the solution once again.

...aaaaaaaaaaaaaaand all those Cinderella jokes I made in this review have just been rendered redundant.

So off they go in Peter Peter Pumpkin Eater's car - Chester's driving, by the way, I didn't know ten-year-olds could get a driver's license - and arrive at the dance just in time for them to announce the ball princess. With eighty-two votes, Larke is dubbed the princess. Bianca, of course, is furious, and chases after Wilshire with the intent of beating him up for not voting for HER (not that it would've made much of a difference).

His name is Troy, so I suppose I should make some sort of High School Musical joke.
Alas, I can't think of anything funny.

What's the Verdict?

I probably would've liked this more if I were a sixteen-year-old girl in the 1980s. I am not. It's not a bad show, the animation is fine and the voice actors all do a good job, but I really don't find the characters engaging or relatable, nor do I relate to all this stuff about school dances and dates. There is one thing I do like about it, however, and that's Chester. Sure, he's pretty much a walking Deus Ex Machina, but I tend to like "adorkable" cartoon kids, and Chester's presence sure made the second half of the episode better than the first.

Aside from Chester, though, I didn't care much for Beverly Hills Teens. At best it's a guilty pleasure (a lot of the other episodes can get pretty out there). Still, I suppose it's a good thing that there was a cartoon about teens where they didn't fight crime or solve mysteries or whatever. Teens need cartoon characters they can relate to, after all.

Rating: Two and a half expensive gowns out of five. Fun to mock, at least.

By the way, I also watched the episode of the show where Chester creates a robotic seventeen-year-old girl to be his date to the dance. Yes, it's just as creepy as it sounds.