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 Melrose Place

 

(July 14th, 2009. - Editor)               Laura Leighton, Shaun Sipos, Thomas Calabro, Katie Cassidy, Colin Egglesfield, Stephanie Jacobsen, Michael Rady, Jessica Lucas, Ashlee Simpson-Wentz, star in the ensemble revival drama, Melrose Place, airing Tuesdays this fall on The CW Network.

In an elegant Spanish-style apartment building in the trendy Melrose neighborhood of Los Angeles, a diverse group of 20-somethings have formed a close-knit surrogate family. Sydney Andrews (Leighton) is the landlady, still beautiful at 40, and a central figure in the lives of all her tenants, especially handsome and rebellious David Breck (Sipos). Sydney started an affair with David despite her turbulent history with his estranged father, Dr. Michael Mancini (Calabro). Both father and son learned through experience that Sydney was not above using blackmail to control people. Another tenant, high-powered publicist Ella Simms (Cassidy), once considered Sydney her mentor, but their friendship was destroyed by betrayal, and Sydney threatened to evict Ella and ruin her career. Sydney also played a pivotal role in the career of Auggie Kirkpatrick (Egglesfield). After they met at an AA meeting, she became Auggie’s sponsor and encouraged his dream to become a chef. Now a successful sous chef at the trendy restaurant Coal, Auggie has been avoiding Sydney since she began drinking again. The other tenants include Lauren Yung (Jacobsen), a medical student in desperate need of money to pay her student loans, and Jonah Miller (Rady), an aspiring filmmaker who has just proposed to his live-in girlfriend Riley Richmond (Lucas), a first-grade teacher. The newest tenant, 18-year-old Violet Foster (Simpson-Wentz), has just arrived in LA with her own secret connection to Sydney. When a bloody body is found floating in the courtyard pool, David is the leading suspect. However, as the police are soon to discover, almost everyone living at Melrose Place had a reason to want the deceased out of the way.

 A real attempt has been made to connect the old series and the new, even though they really don't have much in common besides an address. I have to think that the producers are counting on the name recognition to be an asset that will overcome any baggage they have to inherit form the original series. I guess I am one of the few viewers who remembers that the original Melrose Place was utterly destroyed in the series finale of that drama. That same cramped, dated, tacky set has been resurrected for this series and promises to cause the same problems with sight-lines and blocking of scenes. But it does offer a nostalga to this series, even though we are seeing it for the first time.

The new characters, like the old ones, are self-centered, immature and without morals, but that seems to be the way the audience likes it. This collection of flawed characters are trying to become a member of the upper crust any way they can. And that makes for good television just as long as the scripts stay fresh and the acting stays strong.

I'll be honest. I didn't like the original series and I don't like this one. But I can say that have a similar distain for both, and the last one was a hit for several seasons. I can only think that the audience who liked the original should check out this new effort. I won't be watching, but that doesn't mean you won't like it.

 

Editor

   

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