'Melrose Place,'
titillating, and well done
Remake of the steamy '90s Gen X primetime soap
By Tom Conroy
Sep 8, 2009
“Melrose Place” is not boring. Silly, implausible, superficial—yes. But not boring.
The new series, premiering on the CW tonight, Tuesday, Sept. 7, at 9 p.m., is a sequel of sorts to the fondly remembered ’90s show of the same name.
That series started as a mainstream ensemble drama with the vague intent of capturing the lives of the then-still-interesting cohort known as Generation X. At the end of the first season, with the addition to the cast of Heather Locklear, it started to succeed as an increasingly outlandish nighttime soap opera.
The new “Melrose” has no ambitions other than to divert and titillate viewers. And it does that well.
Like “90210,” the CW’s reboot of “Beverly Hills 90210” (the show from which the first “Melrose” was spun off), the new version has rehired some stars from the original.
Laura Leighton reprises the role of Sydney, a chronic troublemaker who is now the landlady at the garden apartment complex on the titular Los Angeles street. (She died in the first series, but who’s counting?) Thomas Calabro is back as Dr. Michael Mancini, who started out as a hardworking intern and turned into an adulterer and all-around rat.
But most of the drama centers on the twentysomethings who currently reside in the building. David (Shaun Sipos) is a brooding hottie with no visible means of support who flirts with Ella (Katie Cassidy), an ambitious show business publicist who is trying to help the career of Jonah (Michael Rady), an aspiring filmmaker who’s living with his longtime girlfriend Riley (Jessica Lucas).
And so on.
The most recognizable face (for those who have seen her post-rhinoplasty photos) is that of Ashlee Simpson-Wentz, who actually was an actress on “7th Heaven” before she became better known as a pop lip-syncher and rock-star wife.
She doesn’t act much in the first two episodes, but that may be because, like almost everyone else on the show, her character, an ostensibly naïve newcomer named Violet, is hiding something.
The premiere starts off in a trendy-looking L.A. nightspot—all shiny surfaces and loud music—where David’s make-out session is interrupted by an emergency call from Sydney. Soon someone is floating dead in the complex’s pool, and many people seem to have a motive.
These motives are spelled out in an endless string of flashbacks. A police detective will say something like “Did you see [Dead Person’s Name] on the night of the murder?” and we’re off to a scene featuring a heated conversation between the questionee and the victim.
One prime suspect, Auggie (Colin Egglesfield), the chef in that trendy nightspot, has several such moments in the first two episodes. It becomes part of the fun to see whether he’ll snap out of the flashback with the same blank look that he used after the previous one.
Beyond that central mystery, the characters face various financial or professional crises, nearly all of which involve illicit or mercenary sex.
There’s also drug and alcohol abuse, strained pop-culture references (“bigger than Zachary Quinto’s eyebrows”?) and lots of worshipful shots of expensive consumer goods. For good measure, the producers throw in a girl-girl kiss, but that almost goes without saying these days.
Several of the actors make their characters more interesting than their obvious antecedents. In two episodes, Katie Cassidy reveals more sides to her cutthroat-blonde character than Heather Locklear did in seven years. Michael Rady and Jessica Lucas bring more flavor to the cute-and-still-innocent-couple routine than Andrew Shue and Courtney Thorne-Smith ever managed.
(Oddly, the director of the first episode, Davis Guggenheim, is the brother-in-law of Andrew Shue. Maybe odder is that Guggenheim also directed “An Inconvenient Truth.”)
The allusions to the original show are often coy. Threatening one of the newer tenants, Sydney says, “I can do a lot worse. Just ask a few people who used to live here.”
One link may be disturbing to fans of the first “Melrose:” Early on, we learn that two of the young adults living in the apartment complex may be the children of original characters. This could make millions of people feel really old.
The CW should run a disclaimer noting that the show has taken liberties with chronology and that any children of the original characters would be teenagers at best.
|
|
|
