Welcome to the Melrose Place Update: *Quality* email that reminds you no matter how great you feel about life today, an hour of Aaron Spelling television can blow it all to hell.
Melrose Place is rapidly becoming a tradition in our house. And as George "Lemme at 'em!" Bush will remind each of us next week during his quadrennial Sermon on the Mount from Houston: "traditions are good". (Particularly if they involve repeat terms.)
Why, I remember when I was but a wee sprout in Toronto, every Saturday night my father used to take me on his knee and our family would munch on cheeseburgers, watching "Hockey Night in Canada" together. I could sense the Republican Party's loving arms around my happy and humble home.
Well, Manifest Destiny may have died in 1812, but its evil twin lives on in American pop culture. With Melrose Place, those warm and tender feelings are back. This time they have nothing to do with Guy Lafleur rocketing down the right wing on a breakaway; his few remaining strands of hair waving in the air like so many silken wisps of gossamer. No, these feelings hail from those amazing skirts and bikinis Texas Gal barely squeezes into. (Before I am summarily roasted in effigy, I would like to point out that Jake lost his shirt in Episode #2 and has not found it since. What is good for the gander...)
No matter which Freudian hell you watch this pinnacle of quality acting from, Signor Spelling seems to have tapped the 1990's zeitgeist with uncanny clarity; NBC, ABC and CBS each have Melrose Place clones on tap for this fall...
I can hardly wait.
- Your Humble Yet Ever-Ebullient Scribe
Boy, it was a tearjerker. Spelling broke from his three-story format and ran with two. I am guessing the writers were just too worn out after scripting some of those sabre-sharp lines you'll read below.
We started out with a classic Melrose Place "Party 'Round The Pool." Our illustrious writer cum taxidriver Billy has (somehow) landed a prime job at the local freebie newspaper. There was a fair bit of Good-Natured Bantering betwixt our fine crew; I felt like I was in a Nancy Drew book where George Fayne needles Bess Marvin about her weight problem and all the girls giggle in unison. Sure, they each have problems, but they're *friends* dammit!
Billy suddenly discovers that his life is "boring" and he will have nothing to write about. He wanders around the episode looking for something to spice up his life and settles on Bungi-jumping. He scams Jake and Steve into accompanying him, but chickens out after some great David Lynch-style flashbacks where his parents taunt him to jump off a high dive platform. There was a great nightmare scene thrown in here. Allison wakes up to hear these horrific moans and groans coming from Billy's room. Hey! They're friends, so she just marches in to comfort her Troubled Warrior. (Great sweaty chest shot for the ladies.) I would keep Billy away from those kitchen knives for a few more episodes...
The meat of this episode was Jane's discovery that she was pregnant. Seems the Happy Couple ran into a Night of Unbridled Passion and the, er, Bridle fell off. (A clever Tip O' The Spelling Hat to safe sex *and* a woman's right to avoid chemicals.) Of course Michael, who is already working 18-hour days, does not want a baby, so Jane decides to Hide It From The Hubbie and Deal With It Herself.
Now, this storyline has been dealt with 10,000 times before. Lucy was always hiding stuff from Ricky and Dick van Dyke ran into the same problem with Mary. Of course, it wasn't usually a *baby* they were hiding...
Jane can't keep a secret, so soon every woman at Melrose knows Jane's Shocking Terror. Jane decides to go to The Clinic with Allison (Our Happy Advertising Receptionist who is on the Fast Track to Success...) to take care of this Problem. Of course, they just "happen" to run into Sandy (Texas Gal) and the Workout Queen who join them. (I think they needed a mini-van to bus everyone in to the clinic.)
Once they arrive, there are several Female Bonding scenes, especially between Allison and Sandy. Jane discovers it just isn't as easy as she thought, especially since the counsellor is asking so many Probing Questions. Luckily, they cut to Billy's flashback in the middle of this scene which *really* lightened things up.
As an aside, I think Spelling was trying to link the two plots together with Billy/Dante's Descent To Hell On A Bungi provided as an analogy to Jane's inner battle. Both were dealing with entirely foreign situations; one by choice, one with choice. Each chose to deal singularly with the problem, rather than accept the support of those around them. Billy's fatal flaw was his inability to place trust in the Bungi's resilience; Jane could not trust the resilience of her marriage, the "vinculum matrimonii" was, in her opinion, too weak to support her. The fear of death and loss pervaded this episode and I was so depressed by the end of it, I actually tuned into NBC so I could listen to the Olympics play-by-play announcers. (If you believe this paragraph, then you probably have read Steinbeck's "The Pearl" more than once...)
Predictably, the Workout Queen accidently spills the beans in front of Michael who has a small coronary in the kitchen. Luckily, he has that whiskey bottle left over from last week when his wife decided to Trip The Light Fantastic at a nightclub. (At this rate, he'll need a new bottle next week.) Jane returns home; they fight, they bicker and they separate into sexually-segregated groups to lick their wounds.
I was disappointed that Spelling chose to further support the age-old stereotypes that a depressed man seeks alcohol and a depressed woman seeks Hostess Ding Dongs for comfort. Whatever the cure, they do end up together at home, resolute and steadfast in their decision *together* to Have The Baby Whatever The Cost. Spelling was clever. He presented the Choice option, where Jane could have had an abortion, but he slyly sneaks in Michael's "Damn the Torpedoes!" speech so they keep the baby and don't piss off the Pro-Lifers.
We end with Billy working on his Emancipation article where he casts off the bonds of Male/Macho Behaviour and proudly announces he is His Own Man and does not subscribe to the stigma of Fearful Man As No Man. Next week I am sure he will be dancing naked around a fire while Jake beats a drum and reads John Bradshaw quotes...
Jake and Allison bump nasties. Oh my my! Will these writers *ever* stop teasing us?!?!
Anyone notice that Billy was using a Macintosh SE to write his newspaper column at the beginning of the show, but at the end of show he was using a Mac Plus?
Or that his Mac Plus does not have a hard drive?
Or that there was no paper in his StyleWriter even though he was "printing"?
(The fine HouseMates and I argued this point last night, luckily some of you were kind enough to verify that yes indeed, Billy's computer is rather schizophrenic.)
Oh, and one final problem. When Jane and her Entourage went to the Abortion Clinic, the sign out front read "Womens Medical Arts Centre." Evidently, possessives are not in style anymore...
For the past three episodes, the scene opening after the first commercial break has used stock footage of a garbage truck driving by to the left, followed by three happy youngsters walking by Melrose Place pushing a bicycle. I think they are trying to tell us that it is Morning At Melrose Place. I will make no suggestions for the garbage truck's symbolism...
As predicted, this was the Angst/Pathos episode. To keep the serious tone, we were *way* down on Gratuitous Short Skirt Shots. We'll get 'em next week.
"What's up; tough day at the boutique?" - Allison to Jane
"Are you O.K.?" "Ya; I'm just pregnant, that's all..." - Exchange between Allison and Jane
"Writers go through women like Kleenex." - Billy to Allison
"Marriage is like a doughnut. There's this circle of love and dependancy around you, but there's always this hole in the middle." "Ya, well when I'm married, I'm going to make sure that hole is stuffed." - Exchange between Michael and Jake revealing Jake's inner sensitivity.
"Every marriage has its secret." - Jane to Allison. [She should know...]
"I've got to take a risk." - Billy to Allison
"You don't sleep with a man to get anything unless you want to get pregnant." - Sandy to Allison, revealing that She Knows More Than She Lets On...
"I'm always afraid that if I tell someone something in private, they'll use it against me. [sic]" "Not if they are your friends." "Are we friends?" "Absolutely." - Exchange between Sandy and Allison. It was delivered with such gripping conviction I *knew* they were friends. I cried...
"You don't know me at all!!" - Michael (pissed) to Jane
"You don't know Michael." - Jane to Supportive Women by Pool (while eating a cupcake.)
"You don't know them." - Billy to Michael, (referring to "women")
"I've got just two words for you: 'Don't trust 'em.'" - Jake, handing off some Very Valuable Advice to Michael.
"Do you love her?" "I probably shouldn't; but I do." - Exchange between Jake and Michael revealing that deep down, Michael's a little trooper...
"Good night, mom." "Good night, dad." - Sappy exchange between Michael and Jane.
Good night, John Boy...