Truly, madly, deeply, I’m in love with Melrose Place. I grew up watching Beverly Hills, 90210 on TBS afterschool, and had perfect attendance throughout the other teen soap runs of Dawson’s Creek, The O.C., One Tree Hill and Degrassi, but little did I know it was all child’s play. It wasn’t until I moved into the Place Melrose when it hit DVD in 2006 that I truly started to live. Somehow in my teen years I lived oblivious to the whole pop culture phenomenon, instead basking contently in le triangle d’amour of Brenda-Dylan-Kelly. I never felt a void for not including a dollop of Melrose in all those sudsy baths of television soaps. I was in high school, and I was content. Who needs a spin-off of 90210 when you could have the real thing at West Beverly?
This was more than just a spin-off, though…this was graduation. This was higher education into just how outrageous, sexy, fun and catty television could be. Of course I didn’t know that, but with the 2006 DVD debut looming, some of my friends on set began talking. Reminiscing in all the great Melrose memories – of Marcia Cross blowing up the building, Patrick Muldoon coming back from the dead or Heather Locklear watching her father get blown to smithereens. “But Donna kept her virginity all throughout high school…” I’d mumbled defeated. Whatever. I’ve got my show, and all this Melrose talk will cease come once production wraps.
Well, as it turns out, my next film project following was to be camera trainee on some crummy Nora Roberts Lifetime movie. Refuge from all these Melrose musings? No, it was the breaking point. As fate would have it, Heather Locklear was to star, and I’d spend the better part of the month taping down her marks. There was no escaping this now – I had to jump feet first into the melodrama, L.A. style. I bought the first season, and hook line and sinker I was immediately reeled in by all the mile a minute plot twists. Of course the series began more humbly than the prime time soap du jour it would become, but that’s a tale for a different review. The fifth season here, sadly truncated into only the first half for this DVD release, marks an important turning point in the series. Let’s talk about the Melrose magic, and just what happened to it when the series went from ratings juggernaut in season four to barely being renewed in season six.
If you ask series connoisseurs, of which I can proudly consider myself a part two short years later, the series Jumped the Shark at the end of the fourth season. It was always a series characterized by jaw dropping plot twists at every cliffhanger finale, but no matter how outrageous, they always seemed grounded in some sense of reality. Cross’s Kimberly was a loon, but even when she was blowing up buildings there were repercussions. By the end of the fourth season, though, the series had nearly drowned in its own soap bubbles as Kimberly kidnapped smarmy and smug doctor, Peter Burns (current beau of our favorite Locklear, Jack Wagner), and somehow managed to have him committed to an insane asylum where she was not only running under one of her deranged split-personalities, but where she also had the authority to give him a full frontal lobotomy in front of, who else, Priscilla Presley. And then, meanwhile, Muldoon’s evil fashion mogul Richard Hart closed off the episode by reaching his hand up from his grave to come back to get revenge on his killers, Sydney and Jane Andrews (Laura Leighton and Josie Bissett, respectively). It was damn fun, but so over-the-top that no future twist could ever top it without breaking the fourth wall. With all its outlandishness, Melrose Place had painted itself into a corner.
For season five, the writers vowed to return the series to its, erm, roots, but moving away from rising from the grave storylines to the more plausible sexy trash that made seasons two and three dy-no-mite. It’s for this reason that those new to the show tread cautiously here, since this is no doubt a construction zone. A time of rebuilding. Original cast members were being phased out in favor of bringing new blood to the series. Kimberly was facing a brain tumor, gaybestfriend Matt Fielding (Desperate Housewives’ Doug Savant, who’d later marry Melrose alum Leighton) was starting an adoptive family, Jane was heading back to Chicago to deal with news of a different birth mother, and Allison Parker (Courtney Thorne-Smith) and Jake Hanson (Grant Show) were looking for residence outside of L.A. Even Sydney’s days were numbered. With six original leads sent packing by the end, just as many new tenants to the famous apartment complex needed to take up residency. So the season five cast was huge – the biggest the series cast would ever be. All this change and the series was supposed to return to its roots, too? Yikes.
Somehow, it managed, though. Highlighting the new additions was Rob Estes, who had just come off a successful run on the trashy Silk Stalkings (and who would later do Spelling proud with the patriarchal lead on the new 90210) and his big-lipped, big-mouthed wife, Lisa Renna (now doing workout videos in the Jane Fonda vein). Together they played the doomed McBrides who would jump in and out of love octagons with Locklear’s Amanda, Peter Burns and the rat to end all rats, Dr. Michael Mancini (Thomas Calabro, the only guy to make it from first episode to last). Then there was David Charvet as Craig Field, the scheming little rich brat to try and usurp Amanda’s throne as queen (king?) of the advertising world. The mantra of Melrose was always “For Sex and Money”, and for at least season five the snotty weasel followed it to a T. Kelly Rutherford joined as call girl Megan Lewis, hired by Kimberly to fulfill Mancini’s sexual impulses while she battled it out with cancer. And remember, this is the series when it’s not over-the-top! Rounding out the new additions was the Southern nice girl with a white-trash past, Samantha Reilly (Brooke Langton), who aw shucks-ed her way into Billy Campbell’s (Andrew Shue) heart.
Basically, one of the many pleasures of Melrose Place is that eventually every tenant in the building would sleep with the other, sort of solidifying that Bulworth phrase that if we all just fucked each other then dichotomies of race, religion and difference would fall by the wayside. Of course, in prime time, nobody ever has kids though. It’s always abortions and adoptions and miscarriages before those little tykes force the show to grow up and the ratings to erode. So it was with all this new cast that we could finally set aside our old Melrose hang-ups about Billy and Allison and Amanda and Jake and finally just let everyone have it every which way on bed, desk or the totally awesome common area pool. My brother and I clocked it in one episode of this season, and there were no less than eight separate sex scenes from different cast members in a single episode. Try to find a porn with that much.
Of course there was more to the show than just sex. There was money. Dr. Mancini was always thinking of ways to get even more of it, and Amanda was memorably tearing down anyone who stood in her way from rising to the top of her ad company. Jake was looking to break from his blue collar roots by running the local hangout, Shooters, and even Matt, the man who in season one turned down many a promotion for social work with inner-city kids, was on his way to himself becoming a rich doctor. To get to the money often took scheming, which again made for great TV, or even sex, which made for even better TV.
Melrose Place was head of the pack because no matter what, it was never ashamed of being saucy, shallow or downright slutty. It embraced it. When most shows then, and even most today, were always copping out with happy endings and canonical ideas of romance and honor, Melrose Place was gleefully tearing conventions down with bitchy Amanda as its spokeswoman. Taylor is going to force Mancini to impregnate her not because of goals of maternity or of bringing a life into this world, but to make her ex-husband crazy jealous. That’s it, and that’s what Melrose is all about. Check your pretension at the door and prepare for the wildest soap opera residency you can imagine. I did, and kneeling down at Locklear’s feet to mark her camera steps felt not only natural, but earned. For in the nineties, her Amanda Woodward was Queen Bitch of prime time, and if everyone else could grovel at her feet, then I sure as hell could too.
presentation...
The first nineteen episodes of season five are presented in their correct 1.33:1 full frame aspect ratio. Like all other shows from the early nineties, these episodes have been preserved on horribly interlaced video, hampering any extra sharpness the DVD format provides. The episodes are mostly clean of defect, which is in a way amazing considering how they’ve used those same stock shots of the Melrose Place pool for five seasons now. In his own way the stock shot pool boy should be considered a regular on IMDb. Digressions aside, the image is perfectly acceptable, and at least a step up from the SOAPNET airings.
The music doesn’t fare so well. Like with all the previous seasons on versatile disc, these episodes have had their music swapped with royalty free garbage. Some of those post-credit tunes are just painful to sit through. The plus side is that no episodes have been edited content wise like they were in Season Two (when an entire Billy Campbell karaoke subplot was removed to avoid paying rights for a Neil Diamond song), but then again, there were no real songs incorporated into any of the narratives. Seasons six and seven get problematic when Kyle brings in a bunch of (at the time) big acts like Tal Bachman and those crazy MMMBoppers to his After Hours bar and jazz club. These guys were featured throughout the episodes, so I fear for the future of our favorite apartment complex on DVD. The episodes are supposed to be stereo, but I must have soap suds in my ears because all I hear is mon to the izzo.
extras...
There is little incentive supplement wise for paying the rent this season. Nadda.
wrapping it up…
There’s only one place I want to live, and it ain’t with Dawson, it ain’t in Beverly Hills or One Tree Hill and it sure as hell isn’t The O.C. Melrose Place is what prime time soap opera is all about, equally apt to taking a lead character over the deep end as it is taking them to bed with a different lover. The love triangles, squares and pentagons come as fast and furious as Paul Walker and with Locklear, Cross and Rinna en camp, there’s more bitch here than Lassie. The fifth season was so bulging at the seams from all the new characters that they’d virtually get a whole new sweater by the sixth season, but for old Melrose fans, this is the last of the original cast. While the sex, drama and sex here doesn’t compare with the heyday of seasons two to four, it’s still top notch TV that deserves to perch atop the soap opera canon. Heather, next time I’ll grovel at your feet without pay.
 | overall... Content: A- Video: C Audio: C+ Extras: F Final Grade: B |
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