te.

SHE'S AMANDA CLARKE! When Emily hit Victoria in the face with that shovel... Revenge never felt so good.

Not that I remember. Poor Jennifer was a total Sydney clone though, even down to her being a stripper for three seconds. Billy's last shot should've been outside Alison's house, knocking on her door. They wouldn't even have had to get CTS back, they could've just cut away before the door opened.

Someone has uploaded all 11 produced episodes of The $treet, Darren Star's flop soap from 2000 that aired six episodes before being yanked off the air and out of production: https://www.youtube.com/user/bison1203/playlists

The final mention of Alison was, however, that she was still a drunk in Atlanta and that Amanda had tried helping her out as much as she could. That was in the final episodes of season six (or the first episodes of season seven), however. And hey, Melrose Place got a call-out on Bob's Burgers last night! "We should've watched reruns of Melrose Place".

True that Kimberly brought the sass out in every character, but Matt really needed it. This iconic scene is my favourite between them: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ce0UoDpgwBY Supposedly, Aaron Spelling was fighting to keep Courtney Thorne-Smith as he felt she was the "heart" of the show. In hindsight... I sort of agree. As much as I love Kimberly and Sydney, the Amanda vs Alison rivarly was what got the show started, wasn't it? Amanda vs Taylor never worked as well, because suddenly, Amanda was the "good girl".

She did one episode in season 6 - the season premiere along with Doug Savant and was gone by the end of it. As I said, Doug was supposed to stay until midseason but Heather's pregnancy meant they had to start filming earlier and had to let Doug go due to other commitments on his part. It's not impossible that they had hoped that Doug would be swayed to stay beyond the midseason and if he didn't they probably wanted to see if the audience would take to Chelsea as a character, but that's the reason for their abrupt exits in the season 6 premiere. Personally, I think a lot of things were obviously screwed up by Heather's pregnancy - the show really didn't flow at all and storylines would just be dropped left and right especially at the start of the season. I'm not sure the overall quality would've improved if they had more time to plan out the season from the beginning, but I can't help to feel they were struggling with time constraints in the writers room. Speaking of Matt... am I the only one who thinks the writers missed a beat by not having him go up against / pair up with Kimberley post-season 3? She really brought out the sass in him.

... when a 4.8 rating was possibly "the lowest ratings for any series repeat in history". Boy do the networks miss the good old days.

Doug Savant was signed on to stay until mid-season 6, but Heather Locklear got pregnant and they had to start taping earlier, hence his odd exit in the season 6 premiere due to other projects he was working on.

Writing had a lot to do with it, but in season 4 it was obvious by her acting that she wanted out of the show. She didn't even try to sell the material during that season (then again it was mediocre, but I've seen actors sell mediocre material before).

That was a huge problem with the writing of the older characters on the remake too. It's really too bad that the LA Complex didn't take off because I think that was by far the "truest" in spirit to Melrose.

I didn't mind the fact that Jo and Richard got together as much as it was written and how Daphne Zuniga suddenly seemed to play Jo like a high school mean girl.

Does anyone remember hearing about Manchester Prep? It was supposed to be a spin-off of the movie Cruel Intentions, originally set to air on Fox in 1999. However, Fox pulled the production after they had filmed three episodes (plus possibly material for episodes 4 and 5) because it was deemed "too racy" - the butchered material from the filmed material became the direct-to-video sequel Cruel Intentions 2 which... didn't recieve good reviews to say the very least. Supposedly the unedited episodes were far better than the movie suggests. Anyway, someone has put up a VHS of the pilot episode on Ebay: http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/AMY-ADAMS-MANCHESTER-PREP-Rare-1999-PRESS-PROMO-VHS-VIDEO-PILOT-EPISODE-NBC-/221397655313?pt=VHS&hash=item338c541f11

No, Matt was the original gossip girl. He just never lived enough to find out what a "blog" is.

Dante's Cove was great for all the wrong reasons. The final episode where Thea Gill just chewed on the scenery was great.

This YouTube channel have uploaded episodes 1-13 to their channel: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLOgu1ZGQNSrw0Cmmq5lu1oz4X3YC7-Mqt A treat for Americans who haven't had a chance to see episodes 10-13.

I actually think Megan is one of the season 5 additions that ended up working - all good soaps need these type of good girl characters. I agree that Ryan is sort of dull though. (Also, it was Lisa Rinna's choice to leave the show as she was pregnant - maybe she would've eventually been lured back if it had continued)

No, the show had already been renewed for a seventh season, but you're right they held off a couple of season 6 episodes, hoping to bolster the ratings. I'd say the biggest factor to it being cancelled was the fact Fox changed presidents - the former one had always been a huge fan of 90210/Melrose/Party of Five, while the new one had all three shows gone within two seasons, feeling that they were 90s relics.

Season 7 would've gotten so much more interesting if it hadn't been cancelled half way through.

I'm rewatching the show and in all honesty, season 1 isn't that bad. It's different from what it became for sure and the Blaisdels are terminally boring, but it makes up for it with the Carrington drama, especially Steven's and Fallon's relationship.

I've always felt like the Alicia character was (at least originally) always supposed to be her. Maybe she just wasn't up for returning?

The sad part about CPW is that it probably would've been renewed if it had been on Fox - it was pretty obvious that it and Party of Five were competing for the same audience as both shows posted around low-to-mid-6.0 ratings (with Po5 having the edge) and once CPW had been pulled Po5 started going up to posting 7.0+ rating points. I can't help to wonder what would've happened if this had been Melrose's companion piece! I guess Fox had been burned by Models Inc the year before. Woulda, coulda, shoulda.

It's quite funny to compare the cool "urban" promo to the 1996/97 one - damage control much? http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oOrtKrTTUNU

Here's one of the earliest promo spots by the way: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yV0ZaP7ob8U Here's a compilation of promo spots and the "new" image CBS tried that season: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=py0HUU1E0Fw

Pretty much - CPW, along with shows like American Gothic and The Client were attempts by CBS to grab the younger demographic and it obviously didn't work. Funnily enough, all those shows ended up getting full season orders despite being pulled off the air and aired erratically. I guess it they just couldn't outright admit that their experiment to flirt with the younger audience had failed! The revamped CPW was originally going to air in March-April, which of course didn't happen. By the time it got on the air it was pretty much cancelled and CBS was just airing it as a courtesy twice a week, which might explain why they completely skipped airing episodes 9-13 even though it made no sense for the audience.

Watching early Melrose is such a drag - Jane takes off her wedding ring! Billy writes a bad script! Jake is poor! Ooooh! By the way - for any ratings nerd out there this site has the ratings for the entire first season: http://www.vidiot.com/Melrose