Today it seems like switching channels on American television is like switching houses from one wealthy neighborhood to another. Is it just me or have shows based on the lives of the rich and not so famous increased on their airtime these days? And they all seem to be directed to the most influential viewing age; the youth of America. Yes it all began with Fox’s ‘Beverly Hills 90210′ and ‘Melrose Place’.

They were long and successful hits on the lives of those living in the over-privileged parts of Los Angeles. Although anyone who has been to L.A. will tell you the distance between Beverly Hills and Melrose Place is not enough of a distance for people to lead two very different lives at. Yet, there had to be two different shows dedicated to that elite part of southern California. When they ended, the youth of America had its modest and middle-America primetime line up with former CW network shows like ‘Dawson’s Creek’ and ‘7th Heaven’.

Just as ‘Creek’ winded up, Fox debuted its newest teen drama based on yet again, the wealthy and elite of southern California. This time though, viewers moved about an hour’s way north to the residential streets of Newport Beach in ‘The O.C.’. Again this show showed us the lives of the millionaire families with their infinity pools, endless parties with the upper-class elite, and the endless drama of the teenagers with the screwed up parents.

This Fox hit created by Josh Schwartz became such a success that MTV created its own reality spinoff of the drama appropriately titled, “Laguna Beach: The Real Orange County”. Why the real Orange County should be so significant to America’s young adults is something I will never understand.

As if there wasn’t enough television dedicated to California towns, after ‘The O.C.’ was canceled in 2007, MTV launched another reality spin off to its own spin off with characters from ‘Laguna Beach’ titled ‘The Hills’. Once again not moving very far from the California coast.

And Just when those of you ‘O.C.’ fans were starting to miss the not so ‘real’ drama of the wealthy Californians, the CW gave you a nice gift this fall with its newest series ‘90210′ based on Aaron Spelling’s original ‘Beverly Hills 90210’. ‘90210′ is essentially the original only with the issues facing the elite youth of the 21st century.

To those of you who watched the original, you could be pleased with the CW for allowing you to see how your favorite characters turned out as some of its characters came up back in roles that guide the students they once were. ‘90210′ isn’t the CW’s only series based on the lives of the rich and glamorous, ‘Gossip Girls’ debuted last fall.

With ‘Gossip Girls’ the youth of America gets a glimpse of the socialites on the other side of the country. The only thing that makes ‘Gossip Girls’ different from all of the other pacific coast shows is just that, the coast. The series based on the famous girls’ book series takes place on the upper west side of Manhattan.
Although who knows if it still would have had the series not been pulled from a book with its location already developed as there seems to be an obsession with the lives of those in the golden state.

Location is all that really differs though as ‘Gossip Girls’ is very similar to ‘The O.C.’ and the rest of the southern California television lineup, there are always the outsiders, those from the other side of the bridge who cross into the glamorous world only to learn that the lives of those in that world are not to be judged by their Armani’s and Prada’s. The writers of these shows tend to have culture shock story lines with their ‘outside’ characters and that may be done for the viewers not from the upper west side of Manhattan or 90210, so they can have characters to relate to.

These shows all glide along the same themes of the love triangles that never seem to end, the most beautiful and popular ones having the worst lives, the drug and alcohol scene, and the fall and crash of a family from one day sleeping in a mansion to the next sleeping in a trailer park or worse. Each series had its reasons for the crash from a family having too much money to not enough. I guess money really doesn’t buy happiness. But how many shows do we really need to tell us that?