Luke Perry, Dead at 52

Okay, so I suppose it's time for a little confession. This is one of those things that I could have never mentioned here and nobody would have been any the wiser. But lately I've been writing some things that are ever so slightly on the more personal side. I've talked about a couple embarrassing moments that I had never shared before (Reliving an Embarrassing Moment from My Youth, That New Year's Eve When I Washed My Own Mouth Out With Soap). In that new spirit of openness and sharing I suppose it's time to risk any credibility I may have had within certain circles by admitting that, yes, I watched "Beverly Hills 90210". Actually, if we're being completely honest here, I didn't just watch it. For a time I might even go so far as to say that I loved the show. There, it's out. Now we can get on with other things. For instance, why am I writing this sudden "confession"? Well, Luke Perry, one of the stars of "Hills" (as my friends and I called the show) died today at the age of 52 after suffering what was described as a "massive stroke" last week.

 
When "Beverly Hills 90210" premiered in October of 1990 I was a little bit older than what I'd expect the target demographic probably was. I graduated from high school three years earlier and was a "young adult". I don't think I was even aware of the show until a few weeks or months later when it really exploded as a mega-hit among the teeny-bopper crowd. At the time my little group of friends used to hang out pretty much every day after work or school or whatever we had to do during the day. We sometimes got out and did stuff (going to a movie, restaurant, music store...), but a lot of the time we'd just all hang out together and have a good time. I remember the topic of "Beverly Hills 90210" coming up and we would routinely put the show down and make fun of it. None of us watched it, and I don't think any of us had any interest in it (despite what I said in my confession above). But then something strange happened over the next year or so. We actually started watching the show a few times. At first we thought we'd simply tune in to make fun of it and see what all the fuss was about. But then, without realizing it, we started to find ourselves getting into the characters, storylines and all the drama. Suddenly we needed to see what was going to happen next (I suppose this is how people get sucked in to soap operas, and this very much WAS a soap opera for a younger crowd). Before we knew it, we were hooked. Even when we started seeing each other less because of different commitments and general life changes over time we would make a point of getting together every Wednesday for "Hills Night". We may not have had anything in common with the characters of the show, but we did kind of feel like they were "friends" of ours anyway, and it seemed like we were all growing together and sharing our life experiences together. Granted the life experiences of good-looking, fictional young adults growing up in Beverly Hills were quite a bit different and more exciting than the life experiences my real friends and I were going through (which I suppose is part of the reason we wanted to be "friends" with the Beverly Hills kids in the first place), but we were still drawn to them week after week. Through all the cast changes and twists and turns we remained loyal to our pals from 90210 and then felt a sense of loss when the show finally ended.

Now that I've explained my own personal relationship with "Beverly Hills 90210" it's time to get back to the untimely passing of Luke Perry. It's the kind of celebrity death that I wouldn't have expect to hear--and also wouldn't have expected to hit me very hard. I suppose it's kind of a two-fold thing though. First off, it was very much unexpected and seemingly came out of nowhere. While I wasn't exactly keeping tabs on him, Mr. Perry was apparently doing pretty well for himself recently. I didn't realize that he was currently starring on the show "Riverdale". So the news of his massive stroke was pretty shocking. You never know who the "Fickle Finger of Fate" will choose to point at, but Luke Perry is someone I wouldn't have had in my Death Pool, if I had one. Wondering if and how he was going to recover from his stroke was already on my mind when I heard this morning that he had passed away.

The second part of the shock was the fact that he was only 52. I remember the ridicule that "Beverly Hills 90210" endured when it first came on because of the advanced age of some of its "teenaged" stars, who were in fact very much adults at the time. As I mentioned, I was also a bit older than the main target audience of the show. And as it turns out Luke Perry, who was in his early 20s when the show started, was only about three years older than me. Which means that this is not only another completely random, gone-too-soon celebrity death, but the celebrity that died in this case suffered a "massive stroke" and was only three years older than me! THAT really makes this story hit home, regardless of what roles Luke was known for in his acting career and what I may or may not have thought of him.

All of this brings us to another really strange thing about the timing of Luke's death. The news of his stroke broke at almost the exact time as the announcement of a new show starring most of the original cast of "Beverly Hills 90210". The show had already been rebooted a number of years ago. That version of the show had a new cast of youthful actors (kind of like "Beverly Hills: The Next Generation"), with a couple members of the original cast reprising their old roles in a few episodes. But this new show is going to feature the original cast. And instead of being a straight-up reboot or continuation it sounds like it's going to be kind of a mockumentary-type show where the actors actually play "exaggerated versions" of themselves looking to pull off some sort of reboot of the show.

Most of the cast has apparently signed on to the project. The only notable exceptions being Luke Perry and Shannen Doherty. Luke was busy with "Riverdale" and Shannen is, well, Shannen. Apparently the door was left open for them to join in on the fun if they wanted to and if their schedules allowed. Obviously all that has changed now, and Luke will not be a part of the show. I feel kind of bad about the fact that there's really no way for his death to not have some sort of effect on the new show. Even though he wasn't slated to be a part of it, it seems like his death casts a shadow over the whole project. And now I'm wondering if they might even find a way to write it into the show. What would be a better reason for the "exaggerated versions" of the original cast to want to get together to do a reboot than the passing of one of their own? Time will tell...