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I miss this show so much. Laura Leighton's Sydney is a top-five character of mine of all-time. For the longest time I wanted her to cougar me and then I realized that she wasn't older enough to be a technical "cougar". I was so disappointed. LMAO. She's still hot to this day.

It's too bad that Thomas wasn't there or Heather either. Those two are a big part of the series. 

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Heather was mentioned today and they wished her well. I'm sure it's too soon for her to be making appearances after her struggles.

 

Thomas nor Grant were mentioned although Thomas was shown on a flashback scene during their game portion of the show. 

Edited by Soapsuds
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 They all look so good

 

I'm still so pissed the CW fucked us out of real revivals of 90210 and MP (both also unfortunately well before the brief "revival craze")

 

Grant always seemed like he was thrilled to be away from Melrose. But considering he's doing the trash that is Dynasty ....

Edited by KMan101
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I don't think Grant has a problem anymore. He was open about it in their 2012 interview that at the time he had a chip on his shoulder, but looking back he didn't realize how good they had it. They all said as much, I recall Daphne Zuniga pointing out how television has changed so much and they originally would be shooting on location outside the apartment complex and there'd be no paparazzi, no nothing. 

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Ah, I do recall that now, somewhat. Thanks. I always liked him so it irked me he had such a chip on his shoulder towards the show (I get it ... and even back then actors were still being told not to get stuck and they feared always being identified as said character). I feel like he probably would have done a proper revival, if it had come at the right time. David shouldn't have been Michael's, SMH.

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Most of the original cast had chip on their shoulders when they left during the big cast exodus of season 5. I think Josie Bissett and Courtney Thorne-Smith were the only ones who really never "turned" on the show at that time - I mean, it took Marcia Cross until she got a second wind on Desperate Housewives to seemingly get behind the show again. I assume it also has to do that most were in their late 20s/30s and that was their "last" chance to make it big beyond Melrose Place that was a stress factor too for a lot of them.

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When you're young, or younger, you never really appreciate when success enters your life.  If anything, you question why it hadn't arrived sooner, lol.  That's how I think the MP and 90210 casts felt at the time: they were too busy living in those moments to realize they wouldn't last forever.

 

Conversely, look at the casts of shows like DALLAS and KNOTS LANDING.  In those cases, the actors were older and had experienced more of the ups and downs of being in "the business."  Ergo, they tended, on the whole, to be more appreciative of the success and exposure these (and other) series had brought them -- both while the series were ongoing, and later.

 

That's why I think it's VERY important to have more shows with multigenerational casts, so that the older cast members could (if only by example) show the younger ones how to handle everything with a modicum of grace and gratitude.  It's not GUARANTEED that they'll follow the example -- after all, look at what ultimately happened to the teens on "Diff'rent Strokes" -- but at least it'll be there as a guidepost, should they go looking for it.

Edited by Khan
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I thought I read at one point that Josie Bissett initially left in the middle of Season 5 because she was pregnant and later miscarried. I can't remember the timing, if the miscarriage happened after she left or before, but it was understood by TPTB behind the scenes that they would gladly welcome her back when she was ready. 

 

Having her leave half-way through Season 5 and pop up at the tail end of Season 6 actually worked perfectly for the character, as it definitely revitalized her and brought her back down to reality as being the good girl with a slight edge, versus the unstable villainess she had become with Richard, Jake/Alison... 

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Yes I remember this was the case too and that it happened before she left and was the reason she took time out. However I looked up some old newspaper articles and it was stated in Nov 96 that she had planned to leave to start a family. When her last episodes aired in Jan 97, Aaron Spelling only stated that Josie left for personal reasons.

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Well, it's finally here. Last night, I finished the series finale. I started watching Melrose Place somewhere around 2012, and have watched on a weekly basis, with a few breaks between seasons. What I love about this (and HATE about binge-watching), is that a show really becomes a big part of your life as you grow with the show. It also makes me feel a bit melancholy that's it's finally over now. The show has definitely had a lot of ups and downs, but I really did love it.

For the past 8 years, I've been avoiding this thread (with one minor exception) out of fear of being spoiled, but I definitely have a lot to say. I'm still kind of collecting my thoughts, but I'll start to put some of them into words over the next few days (anything to prolong my stay in the MP universe for a while), so stay tuned.

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We look forward to hearing from you

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I randomly started to rewatch Seasons 1&2 last January and I've picked it up again at Season 3 (must be a January thing for me). Currently on the season finale and will get into the 4th tomorrow. 

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In all honesty, the first half of season 4 is still kind of "Peak Melrose" for me - it's only around half-way in when Darren Star's proposed arc ends (he apparently helped put up a plan for the first half of the season - I'm guessing Oy! To The World is the last episode he helped plan), the show suddenly starts treading water for a few episodes and then of course goes completely OTT to compensate (Brooke slips, dies and becomes a ghost! Kimberly gets a gazillion personalities!) .

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As much as I liked Central Park West (well, at least before Camille Marchetta took over) I really wish Darren would've stayed or Aaron would've at least let him stay as a consultant as he wanted instead of bitterly shunning him. Maybe Darren would've returned to the show after he got the rug pulled out from under him at CBS.

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Finally caught up fully on this thread. I agree with a lot of what's been said, and disagree with a few other things as well. I feel like I've been watching 3 or 4 separate shows, all of which were pretty great. S1 feels like the 90210-like, learning a moral lesson each week type of show. I know some people didn't really like it, but I did. S2-S4 was obviously peak MP, with the bombing of the place right in its center. The huge cast turnovers - not once, but twice - are a bit jarring, and the later seasons certainly suffered for it, although they still had their moments that made them watchable. S6 was a low. S7 was definitely more watchable, but I have a number of issues with it. I will comment more on the early seasons later, but since it's what I've seen the most recently, I want to go over S7 first.

First of all, I had no idea until I read this thread that those first 7 episodes on the DVD were originally supposed to be part of S6. That makes so much more sense, as the shift 7 episodes into the season is quite jarring. For me, there are three major issues that I have with S7 (and the later seasons in general), and they're somewhat inter-related.
 

The complete lack of honoring the show's history

 

When TV shows enter their final seasons, I am always hoping to see most of the former regulars again, however briefly. I understand that it's difficult with a show like MP, which had so many former regulars, many of whom would have not been willing or able to return. During those 7 in-between episodes, they seemed to be teasing Alison's return. I was expecting her back for Billy's exit and for them to get their happy ending, but no such luck. Next, they were teasing Matt's return, only to kill him off offscreen. WTF? Was that really necessary? The Fielding family had already lost Matt Sr. and Matt's never-before-mentioned brother Tom in a few years' time. What made the whole thing worse is that he was only killed off to jump-start the eventual Amanda/Eve storyline (which I actually liked) with that stupid diary. I do not remember Matt and Amanda being friendly, let alone in a place where she would reveal her deepest darkest secret to him. They even brought back Claudette Nevins to have her interact with Amanda, but I would have preferred to have Michael or Jane, who actually knew Matt, interact with her.

Speaking of Jane, I was happy to see ONE former regular return at least. I HATED that she seemed to have completely forgotten about every rotten thing Michael had ever done to her, and fell blindly in love with him all over again. Some people earlier in this thread called her "stronger" upon her return, but I didn't feel like that at all. The thing that bugged me most of all is that a major thing happened in her life since we had last seen her (her sister died), but she did not mention Sydney even ONCE. All the while, Michael mentioned her at least twice while listing all his ex-wives for comic relief. Although I love that the show has always managed to bring back the parental characters, I can't believe George and Katherine Andrews actually showed up for Jane's ridiculous second wedding to Michael, after everything Michael had done to both of their daughters. I'm also surprised to see the pairing of Jane and Kyle get a lot of love in this thread. Although it made sense on paper (Kyle needed someone a little less used to the high life than Amanda, Jane needed a good guy for once), they went from a small flirtation while he was married to Amanda to wanting to spend the rest of their lives togehter in 0.2 seconds. I also felt that they had no chemistry together.

About ten episodes before the ending, Amanda decided she needed to sell the building. There was a great moment where she was sitting on the stairs looking over the pool, and they showed a flashback of when she decided to buy the place. When Kyle joined her, she mentioned some of the crazy things that happened like Kimberly bombing the place and Brooke drowning in the pool. Kyle had an "oh, year" type of reaction, which was kind of ridiculous as he wasn't there for either event, but despite that, I loved both the flashback and the callbacks to previous events. Exactly the type of thing that I expect to see from a show in its final episodes. I was expecting the sale of the building to last much longer, throughout those final 10 episodes. There was a moment when an obvious lackey bought the place, and was talking to someone unseen in a limo (who obviously turned out to be Lexi). How awesome would it have been if they kept the identity of that person a secret throughout those 10 episodes, all the while teasing possible returns of four or five former regulars, making us think they could be the one buying the building? The finale that we ended up with did NOTHING to honor the show's legacy (save from Peter's incredibly cheesy line about naming their children after the apartment's residents). I loved reading some of the endings that were apparently pitched earlier on in this thread. Eve's therapist being revealed to be Kimberly would have been great. The Melrose Place Hell idea seems incredibly over the top, but at least it would have given many shout outs to the show's history. 

Over-The-Top, Cartoonish Characters 

 

I realize Melrose Place was built on camp. But characters like Amanda, Kimberly and Sydney are so amazing, because they walked that fine line perfectly, where it's definitely kind of campy, but can still be taken seriously. I felt like a number of characters, some of whom are praised quite a bit in this thread, were absolutely God-awful in the final two seasons. Completely cartoonish, with no sense of reality.

 

The main offender here is Taylor. I can't believe that nearly everyone is praising her in this thread. I absolutely HATED her, and not in a love-to-hate kind of way. There was absolutely nothing about her that could be taken seriously. Someone earlier in this thread used the words "without going over the top". I'm sorry, but she was so far over the top she couldn't have spotted the top with a magnifying glass. 

 

I'm a bit more in the middle when it comes to Lexi in S7. Jamie Luner reveled in that kind of role, but she was so over-sexed. I know this show ran on sex, but some of Lexi's moments are just embarrassing to watch. When she hid into Tony Marlin's car in her underwear and was all like honey this and honey that with EVERY SINGLE LINE given some sort of sexual innuendo, it was honesly just painful to watch IMO. I did like her pairing with Michael in the end.

Speaking of Michael, I was never a fan of him, but in the first four seasons he was the kind of character that you do kind of love-to-hate. I'm not sure when it happened exactly, but he became a complete cartoon character towards the end. His final scene with that playboy model was ridiculous.

Since she was mentioned in this thread recently, I need to give a shout-out to Alexandra Paul's Terry O'Brien. What a completely ridiculous character. I like the reveal that Ryan had a daughter, and Terry seemed like an interesting foe, keeping Ryan from his child. But then she fell for him and was not at all subtle about it. I don't understand how she could kidnap Sarah, get in a car crash, and they were all a happy family after. WTF? She tried to KIDNAP Ryan's daughter. They should have all hated her and banned her out of their lives.

Character Transplantations 

 

Another thing was characters having complete transplantations overnight. Lexi would be one of the main offenders here. I remember liking her (and her and Peter) in S6, but in early S7 I figured I just hadn't been paying attention during the previous season or something. As I said above, the transplantation did sort of suit Jamie Luner, but I'm still a bit torn about it. I also never bought her as running an ad agency. I can't remember, but I don't think Sterling-Conway was even an ad agency when her father ran it. It was clearly done to pit her against Amanda, but at least at D&D and AWA, we always saw and heard about campaigns, clients and meetings. I don't think Lexi would have been capable of running much more than maybe a prositute ring. 

Eve is another character that did a total 180, although I feel like it's a bit more motivated through some of the subtext. A lot of people are referring to her as "crazy Eve", but mind the fact that she only went crazy in the last two episodes. I do think there were some hints early on, when her relationship with Peter started, by the way she pretty much attacked him and moved WAY too fast. And I kind of like Eve's craziness in the final episodes. There was definitely a hint of Kimberly there, albeit a very watered down version. What I didn't buy is that within ONE episode, she went from being lovey-dovey with Peter, to trying to hold on to him as he was breaking things off, to wanting to kill him.

 

To be fair, this is an issue that the show, in a lesser version, has had for a long time. Especially when it comes to the characters' careers. I think the show suffered from trying to bring all of the characters into the same 2-3 places of employment. S1 Billy dreamed of becoming a writer. He had a job at a magazine during S2, until he was brought on to D&D as a copy writer. Somehow, he became Amanda's right hand man, doing much more than copy writing. Up until his exit in S6/7, I was hoping for him to leave advertising and go back into writing. Samantha, Jane and Megan's stints at AWA didn't make much sense to me either. In one of the final episodes (even titled Floral Knowledge), Jane is suddenly working in a floral shop. Whatever happened to her career as a fashion designer? I absolutely loved Matt working at the shelter in S1. Then, after he was fired, he started some type of administrative work at Wilshire, only to later reveal that he had actually wanted to become a doctor all along? Don't even get me started on Alison being content working at Shooters.

What I Liked 

 

For the record, there was plenty I did like in 7. I loved both the Kyle/Amanda and Peter/Amanda pairings, but I am happy that the latter ended up together. The integration of the former's marriage was well done IMO. I really liked the Amanda/Eve story, and I was warming quite a bit to the Peter/Eve pairing (much like Peter/Lexi in S6, just when I started really liking them, they split up the couple and gave the woman a personality transplant). Apparently unlike many people in this thread, I loved Ryan/Megan. The show needed some "normal" characters to keep things grounded, and I really felt this couple. I also really liked the reveal about Ryan's daughter. I'm glad Jane returned, although she could have been used better.

 

Anyway, sorry for a long post, I will go over my thoughts on the earlier seasons soon. I'm thinking of going regular-by-regular.  

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