Melrose Place

[Vee]

I remember rumors of a BTS conflict cutting Sabato's run super short as Jack. I think Bobby and Brooke were intended to be long-term by Starr, but weren't. Their exits were great fun but there was wasted potential.

[carolineg]

 

ASJ was just woefully miscast.  He was never a good actor, but at least Jagger was in his very limited wheelhouse of skills lol.  Jack was supposed to be smart, intimidating, evil, etc.   ASJ could play none of those things.  I will never believe he could scare or outwit Amanda in any capacity or that they were ever married.  They had no chemistry.  Plus, again, way too young.  I have no idea how close in age HL and ASJ are in real life, but ASJ was playing a teenager on GH months before.

 

PM was miscast too.  Both of these guys would have been okay if they played characters similar to what Austin/Jagger were, but they made both of them evil and, unlike Dan Cortese, they were just not capable of that.

 

I wish Brooke would have lasted longer, but her death was awesome.  She had potential if they moved her out of the Billy/Alison stuff.

 

Bobby always creeped me out.  I think it's JE because he was pretty good with Amanda/HL and his story was fine, but the actor always struck me as sleazy.  I was fine when he left.

[Vee]

I think Richard was also intended to be a full regular - they had Muldoon in the Season 4 promo shots - but his lack of talent ran the character aground and ended that. But we've discussed that in this thread a while back.

 

I don't dog Season 4 as much as other people. Yes, later it went off the rails but the first half of the year I think was pretty good.

Edited February 3, 2021 by Vee

[carolineg]

 

I honestly didn't think the wheels fell off the show until season 5.  In retrospect, it did have major problems in season 4, but I always chalked it up to the amount of story they burned through in seasons 2-3 and thought it was just a bad period the show would pull out of.  Guess I was wrong.

 

To me, the writing got worse, but the casting was a bigger issue.  There was no one in the new cast that was much of a breakout star other than Taylor.  I liked Rena Sofer, but I don't think that's a popular opinion around here lol.

[te.]

I liked Megan, Taylor, Lexi in season 7 and yes, Eve of the later characters. Coop probably could've worked with stronger writing in season 6 (I mean, the idea of another doctor carrying on a torch for Kimberly and worming his way into Michael's life to destroy it isn't bad - in theory; as was Miriam gaslightning Michael). Ryan was okay (but boring), but he was a bit like a lot of hunky male characters on the show and just there to support to ladies.

 

Sam worked for a brief time as the "grounded" character, but once they had to expand on that and paired her with Billy it just went down hill from there. She should've killed by Richard to up the heat on that storyline (and maybe we would've talked about her as a missed opportunity lol), but I guess they just wanted it over with.

 

And yeah, PM was clearly intended to be added to the main cast eventually. He got the same treatment as Laura Leighton and Marcia Cross in appearing in cast shoots before they got added to the opening credits.

Edited February 3, 2021 by te.

[Vee]

I liked Eve, but only insofar as I was waiting for her to fully turn on Amanda and go nuts. IMO it took a little too long, lol.

 

Megan worked in Season 7 despite some boring stories with Ryan. I love Kelly Rutherford but most of Megan's stories sucked.

[j swift]

Perhaps what we learned from Melrose Place is that there is a natural cycle to primetime soaps. 

 

(1) Season 2 is always better than Season 1, because it takes time for the show to find the right tone (i.e. Dynasty, Falcon Crest, Dallas). (2) They are hard to maintain in quality for more than four seasons, especially after an excellent cliffhanger is poorly resolved (i.e. Dynasty).  (3) The magic of the original cast is hard to replace, unlike daytime it is difficult to get an audience to accept new faces after watching for awhile. (i.e. Falcon Crest, Dynasty).   

[titan1978]

One of the few exceptions is Knots Landing- it really takes that show almost 3 full seasons to hit it’s stride, with strong runs for several seasons, then a couple seasons lull, then it picked back up again during the first season of the Sumner Group stuff, the show had kind of reinvented itself. Then it kind of fell apart.

 

I think Melrose was one of those burned too bright kind of shows.  They burned through so much good story and really chewed characters up in their plot machine in those super long seasons.  It was appointment television for me in my teen years.  Way more than 90210.

 

I really wish we had gotten a season with Alison really on top of her game and giving Amanda a run for her money.  I think it could have been fun after she had been gone for her to return and wreck a little professional havoc on Amanda.  And let it bring out the best and worst in each other like it always did, but with the dynamics a little more tilted towards an Alison that had her life together to really rattle Amanda.

 

[Vee]

Someday, when they put Knots Landing up on streaming, I'll give it a real shot. It remains the undiscovered country for me but so many people I respect view it as the gold standard for classic primetime soap.

 

 

I agree. It could've worked.

Edited February 4, 2021 by Vee

[carolineg]

Yeah Melrose burned through so much in such a small time period.  And there was so much bed hopping their wasn't a lot left for the original crew after season 5.

 

I would have loved Alison to truly get her life together and have that dynamic with Amanda.  With Alison, it always felt like the other shoe was going to drop and she would drink again.  Realistic, but sort of sad for a soap character.   Her ending just seems so pathetic-not CTS's last show-but the post-Alison mentions after.  Hopefully Billy found her at some point and they are happily married lol.  And let's all be honest: her role in Ally McBeal was lame af.  I know it helped her career, but she honestly would have been better served just returning to MP.

[j swift]

I agree that Melrose was always superior to 90210, and much less preachy to the audience.  And while their seasons were long, sometimes those summer breaks can be brutal to try to maintain the energy from the cliffhanger to the resolve. 

 

The movement away from the apartment felt inevitable because once the characters obtained enough success to show the type of glamour that Spelling shows likes to portray, it made no sense that they would still be living in their starter apartments in mid-city.  At one point, Amanda was the head of an ad agency,  Jo was a major fashion photographer, while Jane ran a design firm, and even though Amanda owned the building, it defied logic that they would stay there.  On the other hand, a show about people struggling financially into their 30s would probably not attract many advertisers.  So, the writers were between a rock and a hard place (or reality and a Melrose Place, if you'll excuse the pun).

Edited February 4, 2021 by j swift

[FrenchBug82]

 

That's the key moment the show lost its balance for sure although I personally still very much enjoyed S5/6 contrarily to a lot of fans. Only S7 was a chore for me to sit through and only my love for Jamie Luner made it fun at times (although I believe Lexi was SO much more interesting when she was written as complicated in her first season than as simply the later-times relentlessly-bitchy antagonist against Amanda which felt like a poor attempt at reproducing Savannah's Peyton).

Anyhow I disagree with your point inasmuch I actually don't think the producers really knew what to do with the OGs anymore by the time most of them walked so I seriously doubt hanging on to them would have done much good.
They clearly hadn't known what to do with Sydney for at least an entire season - LL is so brilliant that she made it work but she was reduced to being comic relief rather than the layered character she initially was. As others have said, that Allison/Jake pairing just didn't work and stayed stuck in neutral for most of its run. They hadn't known what to do with Matt, well, his entire time on the show. And the Billy/Sam/Jennifer triangle lasted longer than most relationships in the early seasons.
I think the point is best proven by Jane's later return. I loved Jane and JB but honestly did anything interesting happen to her after she came back? It was nice to have her on but the show didn't get better for having her back.
I think they just had exhausted the amount of material they could - several personality changes included - and while the show would have been more comforting had it been mediocre but with familiar characters rather than mediocre with unknowns, it would still have been mediocre.

I think ultimately the show's problem was it treated its first few seasons as a sprint - and definitely won that - but that wasn't sustainable. 

[carolineg]

Agree to disagree on the OG's.   I felt like the writers stopped writing for them on purpose once they knew they were leaving.  Alison absolutely could have broke up with Jake, went back to D&D, and been involved with Billy/Sam in season 6.  Grant Show is very likable.  He could have been paired with a newbie.  Maybe Sam and make it a quad.   Craig/Sydney were very good.  The show could have expanded on that.  I don't think any of the OG's were ever done, although I agree Jane in 7 was a bore.  But then again I always thought she was boring so I may not be the best judge of that.

[Chris 2]

If I had been writing Melrose 2.0, I would have brought Alison back for a short arc where she tangles with Amanda - again - professionally. With no mention of her personal life. And at the end of the arc, I would have had a final scene of Alison arriving home with Billy waiting for her, and it’s clear they’ve been married for a while.

[carolineg]

I would have loved that.  It just was never possible with CTS's very decent  post-Melrose career.  I would have taken a casual mention on screen that Billy/Alison were married.  The show evolved in so many ways, but the core to me was always Billy/Alison ending up together for so them to just fade away was sad.  From the first episode on that was endgame to me so it's weird it didn't happen at all.