From "Beverly Hills, 90210" to TV Guide to Life in Thailand

Guest Post

Jim Halterman

went from writing for TV to writing about TV. It was through the latter that we first “met,” years and years ago back when Twitter was a more fun place to be. I had read his work at The Futon Critic and TV Fanatic, and we occasionally traded tweets about television. Imagine my surprise when Jim told me he wrote an episode of “Beverly Hills, 90210.”

Below, Jim writes about his journey from being a staff writer on our beloved teen drama to joining TV Guide. Now he’s launched a new chapter on Substack with

Coffee, TV & Me

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From “Beverly Hills, 90210” to TV Guide to Life in Thailand

By Jim Halterman

A few times a year, a green envelope randomly arrives in the mail from the Writers Guild of America. As soon as I see the envelope that holds a residual check (it’s usually enough to buy me a fancy cup of coffee), I know that a blast from my past has arrived to remind me that the roots of my life as a professional writer began with the 1990-2000 drama series “Beverly Hills, 90210.”

For a certain demographic, you might think that “Beverly Hills, 90210” is not that far in the past, but the original series — before the reboot and the brief scripted reality revival featuring most of the original cast — went off the air in 2000. But time is funny. Wasn’t it just yesterday we’d gather around on Wednesdays at 8 p.m. on Fox to watch Kelly, Brenda, Brandon, Donna, Steve, David, Andrea, and Dylan and their soapy teen (and college) drama? Once that Kelly-Dylan-Brenda love triangle exploded, I was hooked.

I was hired as a staff writer on the show during its final season before the show rode off into the California sunset. In fact, it was just a few weeks ago on January 12 that the episode I wrote, “Tainted Love,” first aired in 2000. That’s the episode responsible for that green envelope showing up with some residuals in my mailbox on occasion. 

Looking back, I had a great experience working on the show and was the proverbial sponge soaking up everything around me. I learned to keep your ego out of being edited or rewritten. I learned the politics of working in a writers room (there were eight of us total). And I made some good friends I’m still in touch with and, like any job, there were others I just didn’t click with. It happens. 

And, at the time, I was in my early 30s and thought this Indiana native had arrived. I was writing for a popular primetime soap and naively assumed I’d just coast from show to show, eventually creating my own television series. But you know that saying about making plans and God laughs? I learned that the hard way when “Beverly Hills, 90210” didn’t come back for an 11^th season (there was talk that it might, believe it or not) and six months after the job ended, I had rent and bills to pay, so I was back to temping at Paramount and Fox. (Yeah, saving money was also a lesson I hadn’t learned yet.) It was all quite a blow. 

But if anything, I have always been someone to lick my wounds fast and get back to work so I kept temping. I also started my own organizing business (I still have Mess No More business cards somewhere), I was a nanny for four years, and even moved to New York City to figure out if writing for TV was still in my future. The good news is when I returned to L.A. a few years later, I brought with me my now-husband. 

Through all of this, I never fell out of love with TV. I still watched a little of everything, loved recommending shows to friends, and I read Entertainment Weekly, TV Guide, Variety, and more to keep up with the industry news. In this time, the internet was slowly growing into what it is today and a friend asked me to write some TV reviews for a website he created. No pay, but I could write whatever I wanted and have my byline out in the world. 

Soon I had stories to share and zero connections but also zero to lose, so I started sending cold emails to editors and eventually TheFutonCritic.com hired me to cover TV. I started interviewing talent and producers of TV shows and loved finding out the inner workings of how shows came together. I also had been a theater minor at Indiana University, so talking to actors about their choices and shaping their characters fascinated me. And because I’d worked on a show and spent many hours in a writers room, I always asked writers why story choices were made and how they’d craft an entire season of a show. I was in heaven.

I wasn’t exclusive to TheFutonCritic.com, so I freelanced for several outlets, including Variety and LGBTQ publications like The Advocate and Out, before TV Guide Magazine brought me on board as their West Coast Bureau Chief, a job I held from 2016 until the end of 2023. Change has been a big theme for me personally over the last year since in June 2023, I moved with my husband to the wonderful city of Bangkok, Thailand, where I can still do freelance work for different entertainment news outlets and also plan to explore creative projects I feel passionate about. In short, the ride isn’t over, but so far, it’s been as unpredictable as it’s been great. 

The time I spent on “Beverly Hills, 90210” wasn’t long, but that experience helped me build the entertainment journalism career I have today. And on those days where I’m bogged down with deadlines and so much TV to keep track of, that green envelope shows up to remind me where it all began.

Jim Halterman is a writer with a wide array of experience in both the writers room of a broadcast television drama to writing for some of the most known entertainment brands like Variety, TV Guide Magazine, Emmy Magazine, and more. In his hearts of hearts, he is a TV fan first and always happy to talk about everything from “Lucy” to “The Brady Bunch” to “Knots Landing” to “Seinfeld” to the latest season of “Fargo.” He currently resides in Bangkok, Thailand, with his husband, Boyd, and Mango the cat.