7 hours ago, te. said:

I remember feeling that for a show about a community, characters felt from the start oddly isolated in their own little bubbles. It kind of seemed like an after thought from everyone involved (from Spelling to Fox), which didn't help.

I agree. PP should've been a younger, more upscale version of KL, helped by the fact that several who worked on it - Peter Dunne, Joel J. Feigenbaum, Lynn Marie Latham and, of course, the Stanleys - also had worked on the earlier series (although, not at the same time). Yet, when I watched it, I just felt like I was watching another MP or CPW.

Edited 47 minutes ago47 min by Khan

3 minutes ago, Khan said:

I agree. PP should've been a younger, more upscale version of KL, helped by the fact that several who worked on it - Peter Dunne, Joel J. Feigenbaum, Lynn Marie Latham and, of course, the Stanleys - also had worked on the earlier series (although, not at the same time). Yet, when I watched it, I just felt like I was watching another MP or CPW.

I don't think the issue was that it felt like another MP/CPW - I think the issue was that everyone felt isolated. I think community soaps should have interaction - early Melrose had that, the first 13 episodes of CPW had cast interactions over the canvas (though I feel they were building for more and then Darren Star essentially got sacked). Pacific Palisades felt later seasons of Melrose, or Knots, in the sense that in those shows characters started living in individual bubbles but at least dynamics had been established between characters before that.

If I were to compare it in "feel", I'd say Paper Dolls is better where you it sort of felt tonally mismatched and like you were entering a fifth season show. A lot of story bubbles that never seemed to interact or connect, which I think is important in the early years.