te.

No, it didn't go anywhere. I think they eventually used it on The Colby's though as an excuse for Fallon's breakdown (it was in part because she was attracted to her brother!). And the "Adam's not a real Carrington" story was more of a family fodder story more than anything. They wanted more stories that focused on the love and family conquers all or some bs due to the popularity of family sitcoms and they thought the whole "you're not our son but we accept you anyway" was a heart-warming angle despite being utterly stupid. Also, Fallon was still on The Colby's at that point, so no that wasn't ever the plan. They retconned it back to Adam being a Carrington in season 8 when Fallon was on the show again.

These shows were always wonky about distances - O/T but I've been starting to watch through Dawson's Creek and in one episode Joey's sister gives birth and the ambulance can't come there and it's portrayed as Joey/Dawson/Jen lives in the middle of nowhere. Two episodes later they go to a beach party, the area is clearly heavily populated (it looks like it was the same house that they would eventually use as Emily Thorne's beach house on Revenge) and Joey gets drunk, so Dawson and Pacey get her home without an issue supposedly by walking home. TL;DR these distances are just plot dictated. I wouldn't put too much stock in how it actually is in real life. In real life, Michael would've eventually just fallen out of touch with the people at the apartment complex, Sydney wouldn't have taken his laundry to the apartment complex to wash them (in one episode it's implied she skated there) and so on. We roll with it because it makes for a delicious soap, plus we got a new pretty location out of it.

To be fair, the show itself never brought up that there was some major distance between the apartment complex and Michael's beach house, so I think it's a case of Convenient Soap Distances where it's sort of fuzzy where everything's located. Most watchers won't have ever been in Los Angeles, much less know how long it takes in real life to travel from one distance to another. Beverly Hills 90210 also did this sort of thing where things would either be located just around the corner/walking distance or miles away depending on what the plot was that week.

Well, I think a huge charm of Melrose Place (especially before they started islanding characters) was that they lived so close together and got embroiled with each others lives (one of my favourite examples of this is an episode in season 2 when Sydney has started hooking and Jo starts noticing that's something is "off" with Sydney's "modelling" career - two unexpected characters that never really interacted starts unexpectedly interacting because they live next to each other). I think the idea could work with a new cast - LA Complex was proof of that and more Melrose than the reboot. It just needed better writing and drop the entire premise of a murder mystery. The new creators clearly wanted to do their own show rather than reboot Melrose Place - they weren't even fans of the old one!

I agree - I don't see why they need so many characters + locations. BSII would've been better if they had just focused on the Bo/Hope and Megan story. This was way too bloated for five episodes.

No. I think they might've referenced Amanda's step-mom in the season 7 plot, but from memory they did focus a lot more Mrs Damarr (Julia Adams, famous from Creature from the Black Lagoon). It has always been my guess that if the show hadn't been cancelled that she would've been involved with the murder of her son (like him surviving the fall from the bleachers and she coming in later, clearing Amanda and Eve) since they cast a a somewhat noteable horror movie star in a role that turned out to be so small.

It's probably more of a hassle to find an actor whose schedule would have to match Ali Sweeney's than for Sami to stay single - or he'll just exist off-screen like EJ did for years and that wasn't really a good solution either. Add that there wouldn't be time to build that romance either way because AS only does two week "arcs". Nah, just have Sami stay single and have her turn up a few times every now and then to wreck havoc.

Since Allison Sweeney will only commit to doing drop-ins it's probably better for Sami to stay single.

This death seems to happen on July 27th.

I said it before, but I think they truly bring out the worst in each other. Both need a co-writer to balance them. From what I've seen, BSII seems to be the worst sort of amalgamation of both their worst habits.

Even if the last one worked as a stand-alone from what was happening on DOOL, they still used characters that were mostly on the canvas - this one they use a lot of characters that haven't been on for ages, some that have also been dead. It probably would've been enough to have the Bo / Hope and Meghan Hathaway returns story on it if they wanted to keep it to five episodes. Either that or expand it to two weeks, if not three. It's a busy canvas on BSII.

So how did they explain Megan coming back to life then?

I mentioned the 2009 reboot in my post... But yes, we kind of are.

Honestly though, does it need a reboot? I love the characters, but it wouldn't make sense for them to live in Melrose Place all these years later and in all honesty, you can make the core of the show into a new one - I actually thought the short-lived Canadian L. A. Complex was a better Melrose Place than the Melrose Place reboot! I kind of feel the same way about Knots Landing - it's a show about a bunch of people living in close proximity to each other so they get into each others business. Just do a show from scratch instead and don't have the baggage of the old shows.

Who the hell would bring their dad to a Pride party with half-naked men? This is almost as embarrassing as the strip show on the Christmas special...

Oh God, we're going to get the spoken word dialogue from Oops!... I Did It Again between Andrew and Paul, aren't we?

I think most people figured that she said that to signal that they better bring a bag of money if they want her back again.

Oh gotcha. I don't mind minor up-aging like the one they're doing for Holly at the moment where they've obviously done it to make the kid slightly more mobile. Shawn-D is also a decent example of someone being slightly SORAS'd without disturbing too much of any time line - I think five or so years is a good ball park figure of what I think soaps should aim for since characters tend to stay in an age bracket (especially 20s/30s) for longer than they actually are that age.

Will is actually one of the characters age that makes some sort of sense since they pretty much allowed him to grow up on-screen, same with Abby (along with Shawn-Douglas, who also only had minor adjustments to keep Hope a "young" heroine). But the biggest [!@#$%^&*] up of all when it comes to ages is still Belle since she was so important to forming of Sami's character with the conception and then Sami kidnapping her. Now they're the same age!

Well, I think David would *probably* be in his 50s if they brought him on the show since they'd probably want to empathise that he's young enough to be Julie's kid (who is roughly in her 70s), but also old enough to be Eli's dad. Not that it matters since he's dead, but ages are confusing on DAYS. I still wouldn't put him in Abe and Tony's age bracket at this point since they seem more contemporaries of Julie at this point.

Abe and Tony are in their 70s...

I genuinely don't get why they went with such a contrived set up to begin with if it was just going to end so soon. But on the other hand, I feel the same with a lot of the villains that Ron tends to cycle in and out of the show - why not actually give them some stability in the sense that they can keep torturing their victims on the long term instead of sending them to jail/coma for long stretches, then spend time trying to justify why characters would tolerate having them around only to wish-rinse-repeat? The only thing I miss from JER is that he could write a long-term storyline that would end up in a real pay-off.

The "heaven" set looks like absolute [!@#$%^&*]. I get what they were going for - I guess sort of A Matter of Life and Death situation where people can look from there, but blah. I also like how they try to sell all these locations like they were there - uh, like it's re-dressed sets + some stock footage. The "Living in Cin" boat... criiiiiiiiiiiiiiinge. I wonder if Bo and Hope are going to come back to the main show now that Kristian's been lured back into the fold.

Because they own the show?

Sal is likely to be back I feel, but Lamon will probably be trying to build off his All American role.