6. Beverly Hills 90210
Okay so maybe it is not exactly cool for me to admit that I watched this show but sue me I loved it; well I loved it for the first five seasons which were followed by a couple more seasons that I liked but was frustrated by and finally three more seasons that I hated. If you can follow the math then you will know that this series ran for ten years, seeing as it was a high school show then that goes a long way too explaining the problmes it had in its later years. The show orginally followed the story of twins Brandon and Brenda Walsh who along with their parents move to Beverly Hills and encounter a life and people entirely different from which they had previously known. As with all teen shows they would of course find a group of friends with whom they would face the various challenges that life brings to young people and then came the inevitable, graduation. If a teen show runs for a long enough time they will hit this issue, the time when the characters have to grow up and leave school and because of this the series turns into a soap opera that becomes increasingly more ridiculous as time goes by. That was exactly what happened here, normal teen issues were replaced by drive-by shootings and various drug addictions. However as I said, I was still a fan of the show. The addition of Tiffani Thiessen as Valerie Malone in place of the departed Brenda was a welcome injection of adrenaline that was needed, though it was also a sign of the cast turnover that was to come. Although the soap opera format made 90210 harder to watch as the years went by it alone was not enough to drive me away, but its affect on one character in particular was. My big problem with 90210 from the season five on is Kelly Taylor. In the fifth season the love triangle between Brandon, Kelly and Dylan come to a head with Kelly eventually uttering the immortal line "I choose me". While I did consider this to be a complete cop out it was not where my problem started, my problem comes from the next season. After choosing herself which some people consider to be an important example of a strong independent woman in television, Kelly returns in season six with a new boyfriend whom is a cocaine addict that she has become totally dependent on, both on a romantic level and due to developing a drug addiction herself. So this is the great independent Kelly... really? This began the slow decent into what became the Kelly show, by the time of the series finale she had been shot, date-raped and pretty much anything else you could imagine. Various characters including Brandon left the series and were replaced by others that no one remembers or cares about; the show should have been concluded when Brandon left Beverly Hills, he was the last remaining member of the Walsh family and was the heartbeat of the series.