te.

I think the issue is that there really wasn't much else going on in the show to get the viewers that started doing the watercooler talk to stay on at that point - Jo is introduced, but her and Jake's storyline isn't really high stakes and Alison and Billy kind of goes back to the same rut. In fact, when Amanda's first introduced, it initially only gave the show a bump for the first episode she appears and then fell back down for her third, only to explode with her fourth when Billy decides to move in with Amanda (6.9 -> 8.0 (Amanda's first episode, 1x21) -> 7.2 -> 6.6 -> 9.8 (Billy moves out)). I also think at that point, other storylines like Michael's affair with Kimberly started gathering heat and got people who were tuning in to see the Alison / Billy / Amanda triangle to stay.

I've said it before, but I think episode 11 is pretty much the "wrap" of the old Melrose with episode 12 the start of the new Melrose. The Keith affair really doesn't get enough credit as the point where the show turned a corner. Those episodes also had an uptick (from 6.6 for 1x11 to 8.3 -> 7.4 -> 8.8 (last episode of the Keith affair) -> 8.3 (Jo's first episode) -> 6.6). Clearly they saw viewers were responding partly to the serialization, but also the conflict a third party brought to the Alison and Billy relationship. Keith was clearly a pre-cursor to Amanda (who was also only meant to last for about four or so episodes).

Well, they just uploaded an interview with Doug Savant aside from their usual recapping, so I assume they want to start moving faster ahead (if they keep it weekly now, "Melrose Place Christmas" will air on December 23rd). https://www.iheart.com/podcast/1119-still-the-place-191057736/episode/doug-savant-240207366/ Either way, I loved this episode. I loved that he gave a shout out to Jason Beghe aka Jeffrey or Matt's only decent boyfriend, lol. Courtney's story about a Desperate Housewives star getting drunk at an ABC upfront due to getting killed off but having to keep up appearances was funny (I guess Steven Culp since his death would've aired post-upfronts (May 22nd, 2005)). Hearing the background on the extent Doug kept mum about being heterosexual was nice. Glad to hear it helped protect Mitchell Anderson (Ross, Party of Five) and Bill Brochtrup (John Irvin, NYPD Blue) from coming out before they were ready was good to hear.

I'd say they had too short of a run to be well-regarded (about a year). While they're better than what had been (Tom Langan) and what was to come (Dena -> JER 2.0), I don't think they had enough to establish themselves. Reading the DAYS wiki it was revealed during Caroline's funeral by Sami and then shortly after that Cassie was killed off. So I guess JER could be construed as "well-regarded" (during his 90s run), but I don't think the same for the 2.0 era lol

Maybe not exactly the biggest mistake, but I thought making Rex and Cassie a product of Roman and Kate on DAYS was a huge mistake, especially for Cassie since she suddenly was related to all males in her age group. I always thought Cassie had potential to be a long-running character, at least with Alexis Thorpe in the part. Oops, missed the well-regarded part lol

I mean, if Leo was portrayed and written like a gay man in his 40s I could've probably understood the attraction - life experience can be sexy. The reason why the age thing comes up is because he's being written as much younger and it's somewhat jarring. Hell, if they wanted to write him like a conniving grifter like they sometimes seems to allude to, he'd be a lot more smart than he usually comes across (except for the days when he gets to have The Salem Brain). But all his schemes are Sami-at-15 at best. He's just not hot enough to be a man-child like Brady (and even he is getting beyond that point).

I think this is the main issue with Leo to be honest - I don't think Rikkart looks bad, but he's obviously in his 40s. So we have a 40-something gay man, who acts like a messy 21 year old (at best) and for whatever reason attracts a lot of hot men? I'm sorry, I don't really see why they would at this point not treat Leo as a last resort situation. As someone else said, at least build up the relationship with Javi to the point where we understand what the possible attraction there is. To be honest, the only Leo relationship that made sense was with Craig - and that was because he was a newly out gay man in his 50s (?) and probably jumped into a long-term thing with the first option.

Hey now, there was that cute bell boy too.

I mean, they're presumably in archives somewhere at least, so it's not "lost" in that sense. Unfortunately, unless they decide to digitize it to put it on some FAST service I doubt it'll see the light of day...

I just hope they don't settle into too many "meant to be" pairings of characters, since I think that's an issue with todays soaps going in circles. You know certain characters will just end up together no matter what, so I'm hoping they will break that rut.

I've been re-watching Peyton Place lately and they had a rather large outdoor town square with store fronts that definitively helped it pop. Of course, that's unrealistic, but some sort of smaller outside set with fronts would be nice to make it less claustrophobic. I'm hoping that there was a strategic reason for choosing the studio in Atlanta that wasn't just dictated by cost.

I would definitively love it if they had some sort of Salem Place-type of location at least. IIRC it was actually quite tiny, so it would be doable as the studios in Atlanta shouldn't be too cramped.

I remember a lot of people back in the day moaning that Sunset Beach didn't look like a daytime show and eventually they relented a few months in, so it's probably a good choice.

To be fair, I'd assume that the first few weeks will take longer to film and that they're bracing themselves for any potential issues that might arise with a new production. If they want to get closer to the airdate they can just take days off here and there until they have an appropriate time span from recording to airing.

Wow! That's late, but I guess they want to take their time to film the first few weeks of episodes at least and work out kinks before airing. Makes me wonder why they didn't just order another two months of The Talk episodes.

Fitting advertisement there as Larry wore the worst toupé on television.

Probably. I guess they didn't know Marlena would take off as a character (she was obviously there to fill in for Laura initially) so her first apartment set was just likely a re-dressed temporary set that they didn't give much thought into. I guess once it was obvious she was taking off on the canvas they probably wanted to give her something more "her".

Yes, the house set is still used, though it's mostly just the living room which is a shame. I think we saw the dining room when Marlena was last possessed which was nice. I guess we've seen some upstairs bedrooms over the years, but it's been ages since we saw the kitchen I believe and Tom's study of course hasn't been seen in decades. For DAYS the obvious one is Marlena's old penthouse which was such a nice set. I prefer the new roomier DiMera house set, even if it just debuted without even a mention of remodeling.

It's also worth remembering that all soaps will just take a life of their own and deviate from their bible for numerous factors, least of all with how the cast gels, who the break out character / performer(s) are, where the unexpected chemistry between actors take you and so on. It's sort of why I've been thinking about the politician angle, how it will work on the show in the long run and why it might end up fading for reasons not relating to any nervousness of political hot button issues (which can be dealt with either way).

Well, there would be repercussions for the scab writers, so if it's ever revealed, it won't be until they retire / leave the industry. To be honest, the scabs weren't the worst. I sort of liked the whole night of chaos with Harris shot and the Horton house on fire. The episodes with the box were nice, even if it was understandably low stakes due to it essentially being a filler storyline but we got nice moments and nostalgia out of it. The dialogue writing was mostly quite trite, though.

I've said it before, but the Body & Soul storyline really feels like a passive-aggressive swipe at the show and the brass in general, so I suspect there were already tensions mounding backstage before his firing. I think he knew he wasn't getting the contract renewal and decided to flip them the bird.

Location is one thing, but I feel like there's a limit to the conflicts that can be played out without representing the life in DC. I mean, it's fairly obvious that we're going to have the Senator father who is likely pushing his son to get as far as he can, while this is putting a stress to his home life since being a politician is time-consuming and everything you do is put under a microscope, so nothing is truly too private. But eventually they're going to have to resolve that conflict in some way before it becomes repetitive. But most of all, while I think politics in general is ripe for soap opera material, it's also an insular world in itself. That's why I think there might end up being problems if they're not really going to have a set of characters / physical sets to represent that - and that might end up causing issues with budget as it's hard to incorporate non-politician characters into that set too deeply and it might end up feeling like two-shows-in-one. There's a reason why soaps tend to opt to having their own businesses as you can always play musical chairs with the boardroom - not as easy in with politics. I don't know and I might be getting ahead of myself as the show hasn't started yet. But I could see it becoming an issue a year or two down the road as they'll run out of angles to play with it. As for the whole "they'll push it to BET"... let's see how it debuts first and how it performs on streaming. Ultimately, the audience CBS is trying to target hasn't gone anywhere regardless of election results and I'm sure they did a lot of market research before even contemplating on ordering a new soap. This wasn't done on a whim.

This is why I suspect that the politics angle will fade within the first year or two - unless they're actually going to invest in sets and a set of characters to represent it, it's just going to fade into the background. But since the show since based on this "community" and high-level politics tend to take you away from your community, the character will either disappear or have him quit for some reason.

Getting aside from any concerns over audience rejection, I think this is kind of the issue with characters as politicians on soaps - they can run for what they want and win... and then what? On Scandal, the focus started at the very top - Olivia was a problem-solver for the President. So there were nowhere for the character to "go". If the son has the ambition to become President one day, then that would inevitably mean climbing the ladder and getting further and further away from his community. For that reason alone it wouldn't surprise me if the politician storyline eventually gets jettisoned - not because of real world politics getting in the way.

I mean, the audience that CBS is targeting hasn't gone anywhere. But having politics was always going to be tricky (and has historically been), regardless of who won due to the daytime audience often being more conservative. On the other hand, CBS wouldn't have greenlighted the show with the politics angle if they were overly concerned with it. Ultimately, they need to give this a big push on streaming in the US so that people can get on it at ground floor.