Luke Perry Was the First Bad Boy I Loved

Most women do not want bad boys and the character of Dylan was not even close to one. The character was a hero and a good friend to the other characters. Luke Perry played him very well.

I have to comment on some of the comments I’ve read. There is a lot of unnecessary snark being directed toward a quite touching, and beautifully written, “In Memoriam.” I do not know what motivates people to write disparaging comments about such heart-felt prose. I just don’t know.

How many TV series last that long?

Thank you for this lovely piece. As a 59 year old cancer patient, who mocked 90210 for years, but who is lucky enough to have a great many younger friends, I have found myself watching reruns with them. One thing about that program that every comment has missed, and it was first said by the inimitable Orson Welles, who appeared in a great many radio soap operas: “If it is done well, it is a perfectly legitimate form of drama and humor and entertainment. The hell with snobbery about it.” 90210 worked because they did it very well. And so did Mr. Perry. And PS, he would have been a very good Hamlet.

Good on Maris Kreizman for her honesty. I say that because 90210 is a lot like the band Green Day for Gen-X. Both came out in my late teens and were hugely influential in their day, however now folks are too cool to admit they ever liked them because they were a bit more on the pop side. Seems like all the guys forgot about that year they all wore the 90210 look (hiking boots, flannel and that “Dylan” hair) so they could get some attention from equally enraptured young ladies trying to look like Brenda.

My third comment for an actor I didn't watch, but take it easy on the author. For most of us, it's a show that ran 10 years. But she was in sixth grade when it started, a college senior when it ended. Think of the social maturation of those years. A cultural touchstone coming into your room with a new hour's entertainment every week is something to envy, regardless of whether this is the one to do it for you. Peter Tork of The Monkees passed away a week ago, with the inevitable "Pre-fab Four" rehashing of truth, half-truth and complete misunderstanding about the circumstances around that series with four guys cast as a fictional band that actually released records they sang on but (at first) did not play or write. The series' run and the vocal group's chart peak came as the Vietnam war grew less popular and more deadly. Culture changed over the course of a year. But those who didn't like The Monkees wouldn't've if they did write and play those songs, the biggest of which were peppy pop and puppy love ballads. The reason was simple: age. In sixth grade, it's right up your alley; about to be shipped off to war, you may hunger for rawer expression of the conflict in & about you. It's Romeo & Juliet. Every generation is entitled to discover puppy love, bad boys, all the trappings of pubescence. And every generation just a little older looks down on it. 90210 wasn't Lord Byron, it was Aaron Spelling. His Charlie's Angels was mine at her age. Such is youth. It deserves comment.

On the one hand, I appreciate the spirit of this piece. Perry died too young, and by all accounts was a decent and generous human despite being idolized. On the other hand, it's quite weird to read such a serious article in which the author only belatedly realizes that people who didn't grow up with 90210 found it totally ridiculous. Each generation has these odd little bits of culture. It shouldn't be a surprise that something that emotionally impacted your teenage self doesn't feel terribly compelling from a more adult perspective.

I was surprised at my reaction to this news - Luke Perry was the great imaginary love of my teenage years, the centre of my adolescent passion. I'm too old for such silliness now but felt a pang of nostalgia. My condolences to his family and loved ones.

I loved Luke in the original full-length "Buffy the Vampire Slayer." Rest in peace.

"i don't get it" either, as someone else commented. what in the world is this doing on the op-ed page of the ny times? 90210 was not break-out tv; it was of marginal merit then and still is. what is it about this piece that rises above the level of what any swooning teenage girl -- with a near obsessive-compulsive need to watch every episode of the show but with no special writing talent or insights -- could have penned in the '90s? luke perry's obit in the times was appropriate. this thing might be appropriate in a little-noticed fan magazine.... but not here.

I grew up with the author of this piece and remember us having many conversations about Dylan McKay.

As much as Luke Perry's death is a very sad news for his friends and family, how can people (and the writer of this article) be so confused when it comes 90210's show or actor performance quality. Perry and the rest of the cast were very young and rather bad actors, dead or alive. None of them did anything significant after that and this is often the case after being part of such poor quality productions. Please.

"It was only then, as a woman in my 30s, that I realized that people who didn’t grow up with the series, those who discovered it on DVD or through streaming services, found the show to be ridiculous. It was full of clichés, it was much too morally conservative, it featured ridiculous clothing and cloying dialogue." It was even for its time but in a manner that was very self aware. It's troubling that so little of what came before this generation can be contextualized or even basically understood, as if humanity all came into creation only in the 21st Century at peak woke.

You got to write an op ed for the NYT. Congratulations. However this is not about the tragic medical condition that killed him - which needs attention because it happens to a lot of people but it's not high on the radar map. No it's about your fantasies growing up. Okay - call your mom and dad - and your grandparents - you get to say, "Hey I just made the NYT!" No harm no foul.

So disappointed that so few people are getting this piece. If you missed the show at the time. That’s too bad, I’m sorry for you and your lack of understanding. If you were a teenager at this time it WAS important. It showed us what we all felt and feared and were going through. I remember laughing at Dylan and Brandon in-jokes thinking I was in on it too. TV was different too. It was earnest and relatively conservative. 90210 covered all the hot topics:”; relationships, sex, drugs, education etc. etc. But mostly we just lived our vicarious lives. It’s absolute drivel these days. I couldn’t sit through 30 seconds. But it’s place in history, minds and culture is important. If you missed it, were too old, too young, that is too bad. You’ll have yours - hopefully. But for kids of the 90s there was nothing else. And Dylan was king. Luke Perry wasn’t Dylan, but his passing reminded us of what we once felt and that IS important.

I guess my wife and myself were a couple of oldsters when we started watching Luke and the rest of the cast of 90210 during its second season. We were 32 years old but it didn't take but a couple of episodes and we were both hooked, and enjoyed our weekly guilty pleasure of watching beautiful young hardbodies cry and wail their way through youth. Yep, I feel old with Mr. Perry's death. Oh to be young again.

I don’t get it—not the crush on Luke Perry precisely. I gather the author was one among thousands, tens nay hundreds of thousands who suffered over him or the character he played. It would seem that I missed a crucial rite of passage, the crush on an unattainable actor or rock star. I was always rather embarrassed for teenage girls, whether I knew them or saw them on TV, who shrieked and cried over their idols. The phenomenon did not develop with the television; footage of teenage girls screaming for a young Frank Sinatra is readily available. Nonetheless, I don’t get it.

Thank you for your candor and forthrightness! Despite the sanctimony of many a female, the "Bad Boys" usually get the girl! I learned that too late! Maybe, in my next life.

The nostalgia for 'bad boys.' That's a good one. We all have to grow up some time. RIP.

You're were lucky.

Sorry for your loss, Ms. Kreizman. Luke Perry wasn't Dylan McKay. He was an actor who played a role. He didn't get a room of writers to sweat over every line he spoke, being able to say them two, three, ten times over just to get the intonation perfect for the moment. He had to deal with the insecurities the come hand-in-hand with being a tv star, more identified with a doppelgänger that looked like him than himself. He aged while the portrait on the DVDs remained the same. Your "obsession" was cute and sweet, and typical of teens, but the truth is, Dylan McKay died a long time ago. How I wish the NY Times had picked someone to write about the Luke Perry who just passed away.

Puzzled by all the NYT coverage of this unfortunate death. I’d never heard of the man. TV celebrity, right? Ok.

Luke Perry seems like a genuine and nice guy. I never watched 90210, so I tried a half hour last night. Genuine dreck.

I mostly remember 90201 from reruns where someone much older than myself tried to convince me the show was good. It wasn't. If we're going teen "bad boy," I appreciate Luke Perry much more for his role in the 1992 "Buffy the Vampire Slayer" movie. At least there was a cinematic arch-plot with some comedy and some gender positive messaging. Sort of... I don't mean to offend. This opinion is just more than a little weird. Kreizman just wrote an obituary for a character rather than a person. It's sort of like reading the tragic news about Winnie the Pooh's untimely demise. "He taught me so much about honey when I was young." That's sort of how the pop-culture tie-in comes across.

Never watched the show, though I certainly heard enough about it. Still, that a cast member of 90210 has slipped away makes me fell pretty old

I read a few articles about Luke Perry. He sounds like a very nice person, rare in his milieu. For that reason, I am sorry for his death. My own heart throb is someone from my mother's generation, who died when I was only a child, even younger than Luke Perry: Tyrone Power, my gold standard.

Wonderfully written, insightful piece. I would watch it with my then teenage daughter. It was exactly as you describe: driven more by emotions and social mores. Dating Dylan McKay was not exactly what the Walshes saw as their daughters future....a little Romeo and Juliet in there for the classicist. Perry certainly made the character his own and was kind of saddled with it for the rest of his too short life. I had a hard time seeing him as other than Dylan McKay. Either way I really enjoyed your piece and am certainly saddened by his early death. But there is something that tells me Dylan McKay would not have lived a long life either.

Love the piece but it was Lord Byron who was mad, bad and dangerous to know

I saw the first episode of 90210 on a Sunday afternoon in my native Switzerland while home sick. I was probably around 14 or something back in the early 90's when it aired on the national Swiss station. I became hooked right away. I would collect magazine clippings of the show's actors, I too would tape the show on VHS like you did and rewatch my favorite ones over and over. To me there was this unatainalbe dream of America and California. I had no idea that a quarter of a century later, I would end up in Hollywood, working in television and meet Mr Perry when he guest starred on an episode of Major Crimes. He was a wonderful human being and will be greatly missed.

'It followed the teen melodrama of children of privilege in the ZIP code it made nationally famous' You mean internationally! ;)

I was far too old for 90210, but when my daughter was a teenager we bonded while watching The Gilmore Girls and The OC, and I know there were kids who watched Dawson’s Creek with the same fervor. 90210 was the first in a long line of soapy teen dramas and its fans should be able to acknowlege their devotion to it without embarrassment. We were all over-emotional teenagers once. It appears, in the wake of a tragically early death, that Luke Perry was a very nice man, perhaps more deserving of teen devotion than his bad boy character. My sympathies to his family and friends alongside the many now grown fans to whom he was a first farway love.

I was in college in the 90's so a little too old for the show. I now have a 15 year old and we've been binge watching the show with an episode every night. It takes place in our home town. It's silly sometimes and the fashions are embarrassing! But it's been a bonding experience for my daughter and I and has opened up a space for some more grown up topics to discuss. I am grateful to him, the other actors, and most of all the writers of the show for giving my daughter and I something to connect over. It's sad he only had 52 years.

Luke Perry was a teen heartthrob to the generation AFTER mine. I knew who he was, but I wasn't in the 90210 demographic. He sported a '50's look, but the '50's never resonated with me culturally -- I've always preferred the '60's, when I was born. So how surprised was I to be affected by his sudden medical catastrophe and subsequent passing?! If this could happen to him, maybe we're all not as young as we feel...

The entire plot involving Perry on 90210: the "bad boy" of the class bounces between dating the ditzy blond on one side and the conniving brunette on the other?? In reality the bad boy would not be interested in either of those girls, but the show had to be written that way keep it going for years and years.

Considering that Republicans have moved the “center” in the US to the right of insane, I doubt you will find many members of the Democratic Party in that neighborhood,

Luke Perry may have left our cast of characters, but we’re all still living in ‘Oz’.

OH! MY! GOODNESS! That was fascinating. Thank you. Remember Woody Allen's film "Love And Death"? The scene laid in czarist Russia (with a little "Seventh Seal" flung into the borscht). And--the young woman sitting on the bed, musing aloud to Diane Keaton. "I want to be divorced--but not married." Oh the follies and heartaches of adolescence! My hat is off to you, Ms. Kreizman. You look back on them so wryly, so appreciatively. You make them sound--fun. BUT-- --we grow up, don't we. And find all that heartache not the least bit entertaining in real life. Pain is pain. So it goes. But I suspect I am much older than you. By the 1990's, I had long given up watching TV. Which is why your piece was not just entertaining. But enlightening. "So THAT'S what that show was," I murmured to myself. "So THAT'S what it was all about. I never knew." My sister (a bit younger than me) had a similar crush. On Carey Grant--remember him? That handsome, imperturbable presence in movies of the 40's--the 50's--even the 60's. By which time he was getting on in years. And boy! My poor sister! Went into an emotional tailspin when his death was announced. And she (let me tell you) is a pretty level-headed, unemotional person. But there it is. And me? Did I have an onscreen crush? Nope! Nary a one. Innumerable film stars and TV stars have gone to their long home-- --and there I sat-- --dry-eyed. Implacable. We are what we are.

The not-new Porsche Dylan drove around in cemented Dylan McKay as Aaron Spelling's and Darren Star's version of James Dean. All that were missing were bongos - but I might be wrong, as it's been decades since I last watched Beverly Hills 90210.

Although I didn’t know much about Luke Perry until now, there was quite a long piece about him on French radio this morning. He sounded like a nice guy. Apparently “Beverly Hills, 90210” was hugely popular here and was responsible for hundreds of French boys being christened Dylan. Surely a nice compliment.

This title worried me. The idea that 'most' women like bad boys is a stereotype. Most women want mature adult men who treat them and others with respect. Seriously. That aside, I never watched this show, but it sounds like Perry was a good guy in real life and I wish his family peace.

It's difficult to see stars from our youth get old and die. It reminds us of our own mortality. If a Hollywood star can succumb to old age or death than what about us? I was a fan of 90210 and was shocked to hear the news yesterday. Ironically, last season on Riverdale, Luke's character, Archie's dad almost died. His character survived. I wonder how the show will handle his passing now. He was the backbone of the show. So long Dylan.

With all due respect to Mr. Perry, a fine actor, Hollywood's idea to cast a fully mature, young man in his mid-to-late 20s to play one of the "in crowd" in an American high school was one of its sadder contributions to American society in the pre-Columbine era.

I used to think I inherited alien tendencies because most of my childhood was spent having heart pounding crushes on movie stars. Luke Halpin who played Sandy Ricks on "Flipper" was my first "love". I think I was around 5 years old. Another huge crush was James Caan in "The Godfather". I went with my sister to the drvie-in and tape recorded the movie so I could learn every line of the movie. To this day, I can recite every single line in every single scene. I even wrote to Mr. Caan's mother in Long Island (I think) and he wrote back because she gave him my letter. In those days, people listed their names and numbers in the phone books which most libraries carried. My all-time fav, to this day, is James Garner. I just loved him from the "Maverick" days to his final series, "Nichols". and all of his movies in between. I cried so hard when he passed a few years ago and continue to miss seeing him except in reruns. What these "movie star" crushes did was help create an imagination which sparked my love for writing and reading. I doubt there are many people who can identify with that, but growing up I had few friends except for my cats and dogs. I was able to play out silly, sad & funny scenarios in my head and on paper. I always had a keen distinction between fact & fiction, but a warm comfort lingered knowing that various "movie stars" were friends and I was able to include them in my stories. Goodbye is painful whether it's a character or a movie star.

'“Beverly Hills, 90210” was not a show that was meant for critical thinking'. Amen.