te.

I don't think Courtney is the greatest actress, but she's so damn charming. I would've been interested to see season six if Aaron could've swayed Courtney to stay. They could've had her and Amanda start their own company.

Courtney has always been one of the actresses that talked positively about her run on the show. Unlike a lot of the actors and actresses she never seemed to trash it. Her love for drunken Alison is funny too - I recall an interview with Andrew Shue a few years ago - he had a very romantic vision of Alison and Billy getting together some time after the show. Courtney just thought Alison would be a big old drunk at this point. Also, David on Melrose 2.0 was supposed to be Jake's son. Stupid, but they switched the roles when Grant Show didn't want to appear on the show.

From everything I've gathered Daphne had been unhappy with Jo's storylines for a long time when she left. You could tell by her phoning in her performance during season 4. Jo being in season 5 is an interesting thought, though. I've never heard of Daphne being interested in signing in for another season.

It always struck me as odd how much the writers struggled to find characters that worked - in theory, Melrose Place should've been the easiest show on television to write in new characters as they could just move into the building - the fact that there even were empty apartments in the building struck me as odd. Not only that, they could've had new characters coming into the show via Whilshire Memorial, D&D or Shooters, much like Kimberly and Amanda were originally introduced. But either they had to have contrived backstories or they just ended up lasting a few episodes for a plot never to be seen again.

I still say that Doug Savant's idea of Matt being in love with Michael is the greatest storyline that never happened. If Melrose happened today you just know Michael would've been a sleazy bisexual manwhore.

Kimberly suffered the same fate like most characters in season 4 - she was zoned into a group of characters (Sydney, Michael, Amanda, Peter). Not even when she moved into the building for two seconds they seemed to try and get her out of said rut.

On the other hand, the bombing was sort of motivated, even if it was a stretch that Kimberly suddenly knew how to make bombs. She basically had beefs with most of the building, bar Jake, Alison and Billy. In season 4 she suddenly became sane, re-married Michael and then went insane again. In all honesty I probably would've written out Kimberly for season 4 and then had her return sometime in season 5. I honestly think she would've worked better as sort of a recurring villain the way Sheila has been on Bold and the Beautiful for some time now. With Brooke, besides her being completely co-dependent on Billy, I think it was a mistake making her poor so early. Amanda's a character that had funds, but she never really did anything substansial storylinewise with it bar buying the building. It would've been fascinating to see her as the rich bitch villain with endless funds to screw up the characters lives.

The sad thing about season 4 is that the writers had SO much material to play with if they wanted to, but they never fulfilled that potential. I know some people compare the bombing of the building to Dynasty's Moldavian Massacre, but I really don't think it had to dip in soapy goodness after that. Alison walking around in Hayley's mansion could've been played on more definitively.

Brooke was good in season 3, but they completely ruined her character in season 4. And yeah, her being islanded even after she and Billy broke up was weird. It's like they didn't try and just made her move in with Alison.

Have people talked about the unlikelyness of Brooke's death? I mean she spent the season screaming "BILLEEE! BILLE?" and everyone cheered when she finally got killed off but her flying across the pool was a little silly? What do you think? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ITxiZqw2cjk "Nobody's home. Nobody cares!" BILLEEEEEE!

But Aiden was hot, so it's alright by me.

They pretty much erased season 2 in the first few minutes of season 3 anyway.

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.