Life’s a party for the new “Melrose Place” tenants. At least they are legal.
No one born in the early nineties (even the late eighties)—CW’s target audience—knows enough about the 1992 series “Melrose Place” to feel nostalgic about it, which is precisely why the new “Melrose Place” will be successful. To say it’s a remake is misleading, because other than keeping the same address and two characters from the original series, the new “Melrose Place” resembles nothing Gen Y would remember. Premiered on Tuesday, Sept. 8, the spin-off followed the steps of “Gossip Girl” and “90210” as CW’s latest exploitation of the rich and the stylish.
The show opens to to a party in green hue with Kevin Rudolph’s “Let It Rock” in the background, all the alcohol and making-out and even dialogue irrelevant, merely to set the tone. Three minutes in, tight-faced vixen from the original series Sydney Andrews (Laura Leighton) drops the first line that matters: “I’ve done something really, really bad.” The last time someone said something similar on CW, she was merely having a guilt-stricken moral awakening. But if Sydney hasn’t made us care enough, at least she’s got us interested.
The next morning, we are introduced to 25-year-old aspiring filmmaker Jonah Miller (Michael Rady) and his girlfriend of five years, Riley Richmond (Jessica Lucas). They are interrupted by Violet Foster’s (Ashlee Simpson) horrendous, throaty scream and a bloody sight of Sydney face-down afloat in the pool.
With that much intrigue built into the first ten minutes, “Melrose Place” declares itself to be free of the nostalgic soap-opera baggage and the popular teenage expectation of it being a grown-up “90210”. This place gets a lot less sunshine.
Essentially we are watching a show about beautiful white people (again) and their troubled lives. Sex, alcohol and scandals are only necessary, if not more vital, to “Melrose Place”. But unlike its teenage counterparts, where vices are merely props and symbols of premature exploitation, the trouble is a lot less contrived here. When two sets of characters, one teenaged and the other of age, are sporting the same look, drinking from the same brand, handling the same large sum of money, it is obvious who comes off as less tiring and trying. I mean, at least they don’t need parents for “oops, I did it again” bailouts anymore.
Other tenants in the complex include Ella Simms (Katie Cassidy), a hot-shot publicist, who tries to pull off lines like “I love love. I just hate monogamy.” (Thank goodness there’s only one of them.) Violet, the weakest link of the chain, seems to be only capable of the average twenty-something ditz and naïveté at first. But by the end of the episode, she has talked money-troubled Lauren Yung (Stephanie Jacobsen) into prostitution. “$5000 is a lot of money,” she says. I think the wide-eye emphasis on “lot” did Lauren in. After that, Violet just disappears back to wherever in the courtyard she came from. The script is full of ghostly, conveniently coincidental encounters like this.
Auggie Kirkpatrick (Colin Egglesfield) and David Breck (Shaun Sipos) complete the roster. David’s father is former Melrose Place tenant Dr. Michael Mancini (Thomas Calabro), now richer than ever. There is an ease between the old and new characters that isn’t found between, for example, Brenda Walsh and Adrianna Tate-Duncan in “90210”.
And as suggested by various flashback spots, dead doesn’t mean goner for Sydney, the more successful manipulator. Her role is to pop up wherever and whenever necessary to remind everyone of his or her past. She also seems to be the only one who knows what’s really going on. (If the rest knows, they would be moving out already.)
There is no central plot besides the brewing murder mystery. As a character-driven show that relies heavily on individuals’ charm to keep separate story lines engaging, at least no one is particularly bland. No one is exactly best friends with anyone, and it is only too easy to overlook the fact that everyone will eventually sleep with one another. As long as the writers keep the premise reasonable, we can try to stay convinced that “Melrose Place” is exploiting real life, like what “Beverley Hills 90210” did to high schoolers and “Friends” to twenty-somethings. I am just trying to picture how they would spin off “Gossip Girl” twenty years from now.
