te.

Not sure why this shocked me - I guess 77 isn't exactly young but to lose him this soon after Drake and with the Bill Hayes memorial finally airing, it hurts a bit. RIP Wayne. The show treated him badly after they decided John and Marlena was the end-game couple.

I'm not sure why, but I image "Donna" with huge teased sprayed hair and chewing gum while delivering it all in a deep New York accent.

Oddly enough, Jean Mowry, who played the oldest daughter and "mother figure" post-Ellen's death was also born in 1923. I guess when they cast Ellen Cobb Hill they didn't worry about the (lack of) age difference since she was killed off in the first (?) episode (though I've always been curious if it truly was episode one or the first week or so). Then again, Peter Hobbs (who played her father) was only five years older (b. 1918)...

It always seems odd to me that they took so long to bring back Meg, especially as she was such a huge part of the origin story of the series and then seems to be tied into the brief revitalization of the show in the mid 70s.

It also has eight episodes of Berrenger's (missing episode 1, 3, 11 and 12) and the French dub of Valley of the Dolls. Too bad the latter doesn't seem to ever resurface without the dub...

It doesn't help that Cady's usually brought back at this point when something big happens that requires her to be in tune with Jennifer's relationships to various characters, which clearly isn't natural to her (for obvious reasons). Even during her first run, she had the rather unthankful job of having to step into the role with Jennifer finding out Hope (her cousin and long time friend) had suddenly up and left Salem. I hope we get a lot of rare Doug flashbacks for these episodes. To Ron's credit - he's been pretty good with these memorial / milestones episodes in getting more than the usual overused flashbacks and has been good at refering to history (let's not get into how he *uses* it), so I'm holding out hope for these episodes.

I've said it again and again - either just take the full plunge with Cady, or just work around Missy for these scarce appearances. This switcheroo isn't working, mostly down to the fact that they're different takes of the same character plus Cady really does take a while to get going when she steps into the Jennifer role. Say what you will about Missy, but the moment she steps on screen, it's instantly Jennifer for me and that's fitting if she's only going to appear every other year.

I really wonder who scrapped that? Ron seemed to imply it wasn't his call and the fact that Kristian seems to have had the entire story pitched to her seems to verify he had a rough outline. So what happened? Did some of the higher up execs hope that they could pressure Kristian and Peter to come back if they didn't get the happy ending?

I don't think "sweeps" really matter on streaming as determining ad rates and such, but I assume that media will still take special interest and increase coverage of shows during these months, so it helps them I guess.

I assume that some periods just simply had stations that either kept kinoscopes for a long time or had a packrat working there who did.

A May 10th, 1953 episode "premieres" on the Moviecraft Inc channel in about 12 hours:

I'd assume they would want to fold it into one platform, but yeah, it's actually my most used streaming app. I wouldn't follow it to behind a paywall though lol. Apparently Netflix France have ordered a musical (!) daily soap opera and has given it a direct order for 90 episodes. So I definitively think it's a question of time before we see a daily soap opera that's specifically developed for streaming at this point.

I wonder if CBS Studios will push this on Paramount+/PlutoTV (though I think they're getting rid of the latter) internationally?

That explains so much about Higley's multiple failed tenures really.

The reason why I think so many shows in the 90s failed when they tried to bring on their own "Amanda" is that they never really looked at what actually happened to Melrose Place. Yes, Heather's first episode got a bump, but it fell after that only to explode in her fourth episode. The truth is, that the conflict that she brought to the Billy / Alison relationship is what made it pop but also the fact that they started to heat up other storylines to keep viewers on (most notably Jane / Michael / Kimberly). I mean, there was already a pre-cursor to this with Keith; viewers responded to that conflict, but the other storylines at the time just weren't quite that high in stakes to keep viewers on the show at the time. But most tv execs just saw that a big guest star character joined and thought that was the magic trick to get viewers.

I'm going to take a wild guess and say someone lost the password.

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...