Welcome to the Melrose Place Update. Every two weeks, the finest writers in the world gather in one place to compete for the ultimate reward: Melrose Place Update gold. Each competitor spends a lifetime preparing for this single moment, the chance to prove to the entire world that he above all others is worthy for the gold medal. Sure, there may be other competitions. There may be other games. But throughout the Internet world there is only one Melrose Place Update. No sweat, no agony, no Connie Chung. Let the Update begin!
The shower in my house has an annoying drip. The fitting between pipe and showerhead leaks like sieve. It is not a major issue, but at 6:00 in the morning, any irritation threatens world peace should it persist. While I am content to possess one or two minor skills, I am definitely not a plumber; it took several repair attempts before I realised the pipe was just screwed up. Well, at least it seemed like replacing the pipe was the easiest fix.
My father gave me many memories and values that I carry today. One of those memories is of trips to Canadian Tire, Homeric quests for the perfect fastener or do-it-yourself gadget. While my dad is not a mechanic at heart, he usually figured out how a failing contraption worked [or did not work] in time to save face and family harmony. The Canadian Tire store was packed to the gills with trinkets and gizmos, half of which I didn't have a clue what they were. I just knew they looked cool.
The store also sold hockey sticks, and when we tracked down the elusive #6 wood screw my dad and I would wander by the hockey display to ogle the year's crop. My first hockey stick, a white and orange "Howie Meeker Deluxe", came from Canadian Tire. I wore its blade, along with my knees and elbows, down to nothing during countless hours of road hockey in front of our house. My current stick, a black graphite Koho, was a recent Christmas gift from my dad. I think he got it at Canadian Tire.
I used to stare at people in the checkout line at Canadian Tire and wonder about them. Who were they, why they were buying that item, and how they could know so much about all the incredible baubles for sale? It seemed so elusive to walk into the store like my dad, knowing what little item you needed out of the millions and millions of available contraptions. These people, I assured myself, were wise beyond measure; certainly Canadian Tire was *the* measure of a man.
It is depressing that I can FTP a document from halfway around the world but cannot figure out why the showerhead drips. When I ask myself the shockingly-fundamental question of "what do I make? What do I do?" I am silent. I have no response. The software industry does not make anything. We automate and repackage information, wrapping the old in the new. A fresh coat of paint and some snazzy screen doors later, out pops version 2.0. In a remote-control world, I am lost with a screwdriver and saw; any tool that requires direct contact with an object is beyond my comprehension.
I now live in my own home, and live near my own hardware store. Alas, the Bellevue Eagle Hardware is several football fields larger than the Canadian Tire I grew up at. Nestled between its outstretched aisles, depilating Boomers nuzzle up to cold steel and preformed plastic moulding, content on the teat that connects them back to a universe they can control. Here I am lost, a digital Yankee in King Arthur's analogue court. I look for a terminal where I can query on "showerhead" and "leak", and nearly miss a large display sprouting informative and helpful "How-to" brochures like so many hair plugs on the patron's heads.
The plumbing brochure sat next to another leaflet extolling the benefits of "Starting Your Own Lawn". On the cover, a pleasant Caucasian male puffed smugly on his pipe in the middle of a bold, golf-course green lawn. His wife, blonde, pert and wearing a virginal white dress, stood beside him, cherub-like, staring in pride at "her man". Here was a man who knew what he was doing, a real "Go-Getter". Here was a Man Of Action.
With the aid of a map and several obnoxiously-helpful salespeople, I soon found the necessary pipe on aisle 29, some Teflon tape on aisle 44 and a new chrome-plated, environmentally-friendly WaterMiser II showerhead on aisle 31. Eagle may carry #6 wood screws by the tonne, but I've never seen them sell a hockey stick.
It has been many years since I last stepped inside the Canadian Tire store. I avoid it like a plague when I happen to go home. I nearly went with my dad last Christmas, but I balked at the last minute. I am not sure exactly why. I ended up showing him a copy of Word on my portable computer instead. I don't think he really understood.
The checkout line was short tonight. The fellow in front of me had an even larger stack of plumbing supplies, and decided to pay with a cheque. He tossed a half-embarrassed, half- resigned smile in my direction. I glanced around the store as I waited for him to fill out the details. It was a quiet night. Another shopper had his cart heaped high with about six gross of fluorescent light bulbs. A lady stood by the wallpaper display comparing paint chips as though she weighed the fate of humanity. And over in the corner, next to a stack of garden supplies, a little red-haired boy watched me with a disturbing stare.
The showerhead still drips, but I'm getting used to it.
- ian
Domination was the name of the game as Reed tried to dominate Jo, Billy tried to dominate Alison, and Sydney dominated Michael; only Dr. Mancini loved every second of it. As always, the core nerve running down the lateral line of Melrose Place screams control.
Behind Plot #1, we have Jo afloat on a boat with Reed and a few keys of Colombian Pixie Dust. Jo is tied up the Hole as Reed delivers the Nose Candy and takes his Stash O' Cash. Reed still thinks everything will work out with Jo. She plays "cool" all the while searching for ways to escape. Her few lame attempts (searching the kitchen for a Vegematic and trying the short-wave radio) only toss her back in the Hole.
Reed's Crafty Plan backfires when Jo manages to kick her way out of The Hole while he is topside driving the boat and cranking Seventies tunes. She grabs a harpoon and nails him through the window as he walks by to adjust a tarp on the bow. He falls into the water, and Jo struggles to start up the boat all the while wondering why she can't get the words "Cape Fear" out of her head. Of course Reed climbs back on the boat. Jo grabs the shotgun. Reed comes at her with a flare gun. Jo blows him away. Fade storyline and Reed's vision to black as the Coast Guard arrest Jo for leaving Rotting Trash on the back of her boat. Gee, I wonder if the plot next episode will mention Jo's previous conviction for carrying a concealed handgun?
Billy and Alison bandy back and forth with the relationship thing. Chipmunk Chick, it seems, never really left New York and Cheese-Boy runs into her while Walking the Mean Streets. [Ya right, sheer coincidence in a city of 7.5 million...] They kissy-kissy, until Billy starts assuming Alison's stay is permanent. Cut to fight scene with each party accusing the other of being immature, manipulative or insensitive.
Alison goes back to L.A. and Billy immediately feels pangs of guilt [co-dependant dork that he is.] Filled with remorse, he quits his cushy job, tosses Andrea into the dustbin of failed Melrose Place Romances, buys some cheap brass ring from a street vendor, and runs back to Alison. With Jane's assistance, Billy lures Alison to a swanky restaurant where everything is kissy-kissy again and he sells his soul to the Devil, er, uh, proposes marriage.
Meanwhile, Michael tries to avoid marriage as Sydney tightens the screws. They meet at a restaurant, [Melrose Place plots consistently use "food" as a substitute for sex, similar to the imagery of the Hardy Boys, or at least that's what Dr. Ferreud told me] and Sydney lets Him Know That She Knows. Michael plays coy until Sydney produces her star witness, the maitre'd from the restaurant Michael and Kimberly ate at before the accident. [He remembers how much Michael drank that night.]
Michael gets upset as Sydney torments him at work and finally blows up at Shooters. She puts him in his place and in the next scene moves into the beach house with him. Michael struggles to restart his life, while wondering why he can't get the words "Fatal Attraction" out of his head.
Matt, Jake, Amanda and Jane showed up as window dressing.
Another episode yields a bounty crop of situations, allegories and intrigue. Indeed, these images spill from the screen as vegetables cascade from the cornucopia at harvest time. And as we all know, Melrose Place can be quite a harvest.
The primary plot between Jo and Reed is rife with psychosexual icons. In this story, the ocean represents (as all large bodies of water do) Life while the boat characterises a quantum or distinct Environment. Notice that the Environment is alone in Life; Spelling here alludes to a focused exploration of one individual's existence. In addition, several weeks ago we identified Jo as the Modern Woman and Reed as Danger so our story is set with characters, potential actions and the necessary arena.
We start with the Modern Woman facing Danger in her life within a closed environment. In typical male fantasy imagery, the Modern Woman is entranced by Danger, swept off her feet flush with desire and blind to the peril he poses. (Note that this is completely out of character with the Modern Woman's pre-established qualities.) The Modern Woman is confined by Danger within her Environment as soon as she recognises him for what he is.
The cocaine is an unmistakable symbol for Money and Power; any viewer who lived through the Eighties will recognise this. Once Jo discovers the Money and Power, Reed can no longer trust her; she has seen the Man Behind the Curtain. Spelling, with thinly-veiled piety, sermonises that women should not allow themselves to be held victims within their environment, but rather they should defend and even offend to assert themselves. "The time as come" he pronounces, "for women to cast free the chains of male domination and power reinforced over countless centuries of Western, Euro-centric male ascendancy."
Jo's visual Freudian pun of killing Reed with his own shotgun plays on traditional psychosexual interpretation of the gun as symbolising male virility. Reed asserted his manhood and authority with the gun, much as macho youths strut up and down the boulevard or cruise the streets in their waxed and buffed penile extensions. Reed's despotic turn at the helm of Jo's environment eventually acquiesces to moral authority, yet even after Modern Woman destroys Danger, she faces continued oppression from other male-dominated elements in society. She will never truly be free.
The story is an obvious analogy to rampant crime within our cities and the valid concerns of women who must encounter it every day. Regrettably, while it promised to be a striking exploration of modern social issues facing women, the story digressed into a scene cut from some prepubescent male's fantasies. It only lacked Mr. T.
The Billy / Alison relationship tennis match grows more wearisome with each episode. Billy remains traumatised from his association with Alison. He does not feel love, but rather regret and a resigned sensation of emotional fatigue. Alison, as a result of endless badgering at work, uses Billy as a lightening rod for her internalised anger; he becomes the whipping boy on whom she vents her frustrations with Amanda.
Billy's decision to marry Alison is a desperate move, wrought in the furnace of his torment. He finds pleasure in agony, this pattern of self-destructive behaviour increasing since his father died last season. I see a young man trapped in his own restrictive environment, and frantically searching for any escape. Billy is intent on building up, then destroying, much as a child builds a sand castle only to obliterate it.
Billy is discontent with any form of success and pleasure, and seeks discordant elements to throw his life into chaos. I would conjecture Billy lived in a severely dysfunctional family where cleanliness was law and the oppressive parents strictly enforced an ordered environment. It is likely that during Billy's toilet-training period, his parents violently punished any mistake.
I suggest this for now, later in life, we see the latent parental anger manifested in Billy's desire to "break down" and "destroy"; in effect, he forms immature temper tantrums striking back at the parental martial law. Normal relationships are impossible to maintain for as soon as Billy finds comfort, he finds Sisyphean oppression. It is very likely Billy suffers from an anal repression dementia, probably linked to his maternal domination fixation. This delusion is quite treatable, I deal with it on a regular basis.
As for Michael and Sydney, well, Lord knows there is nothing I could do for them at this stage. They are too far gone. They would make an fascinating Ph.D. dissertation, though...
1) Reed's boat had the fenders out during the entire "speed cruising" scene.
2) Where was the light in "The Hole" coming from? Some shots showed a vent with light, but the vent was not on the correct side of The Hole to be an outside vent. (It also emitted light during a night scene.) Did Reed go through all of the trouble to "hide" The Hole while venting it to some interior room of the boat? Gee, how long would it take search dogs to find a VENTED cocaine stash?
3) When Reed falls overboard, the scene cuts between Jo roaring the boat away and Reed hanging on to an errant boat fender for dear life. Too bad there was no bow wake in Reed's scenes...
4) Reed's gunshot wound had at least a 6-inch spread pattern even though the shotgun muzzle was about four feet away from him when he was shot. And for someone who just had his back blown out with a shotgun, where was the blood?
5) In Sydney's "Meet the Doctors" scene, she's talking to seven, yes SEVEN doctors hanging out in the lounge. No wonder health care is so damn expensive.
6) Reed picked up the cocaine last week after a short boat run. The people with the cocaine spoke English. He then drives the boat for TWO DAYS and drops the cocaine off with Spanish-speaking men while making references to the Baja coast and someplace named "Estado" being "real close". Is Reed the first man in history to smuggle cocaine FROM the United States INTO Mexico?!?!
7) The establishing shot of the hotel Jane takes Alison to meet Billy at is the same shot used for the hotel Alison stayed at when she was in San Francisco with NerdMan Steve. The stock footage is of the Fairmont Hotel in San Francisco. Many thanks to Keith, who works San Francisco and walks by the Fairmont every day on his coffee break, for pointing this out. We are still trying to find out if Update reader "Keith" is in the ecology business and spends time in Seattle...
8) Jo is tossed in The Hole with bound hands and feet and tape on her mouth (why couldn't it have been Alison?). Too bad her hands were IN FRONT of her face; she could have easily pulled the tape off her mouth and probably untied her hands and feet to escape. Kudos to Matthew, Jere and Greg for noticing this.
9) Watch closely when Jo tries to use the offshore radio and Reed catches her. When Jo initially comes out of the bedroom, she is putting on a button-up sweater. The sweater remains unbuttoned in the next scenes right up to the point Jo is thrown in The Hole. The shot of Jo falling into The Hole shows her sweater completely buttoned. Carol, who writes to us from Duke, spotted this one with some very sharp eyes.
10) Lewis from the University of Pennsylvania noticed another problem in this scene, this time with Reed. Jo leaves Reed, who is obviously topless and fast asleep in bed. She sneaks out of the bedroom and dinks with the radio for perhaps ten seconds before being accosted by a fully- dressed, wide-awake and sweaty Reed. The only thing Update staffers can imagine is that Reed is not only a victim of his environment, but a fashion victim as well.
11) Reed confronts Jo totally-dry and without obvious injury even though he was just stabbed by a harpoon and fell overboard, probably along with the continuity for this entire episode.
"Shut up and do it." - Sydney to Michael. Where was Sydney when I was going through puberty?
"The rendezvous is tonight..." - Nefarious Criminal Reed lays out The Plan, unaware that Frank and Joe, clued in to the dastardly scheme by Pretzel Pete, are hiding behind that convenient pile of crates. Oh no! Joe feels a sneeze coming on!
"Save your ersatz sympathy." - Alison vomits up a word most people cannot pronounce.
In addition to our popular "Melrose Place Sashay to the Slammer" watch, we would like to start monitoring the Melrose Place Trek to the Tomb. Although there are only four characters in the Melrose Place Morgue, we anticipate this number swelling as the writers paint themselves into more plot corners. So far, the list includes [killer is listed in square brackets]:
"This is big business." - Reed suggests Jo look into distributing Amway products.
"It's gonna find its way into our country one way or the other." - Reed rationalises his Amway connection.
"You took my money; you lied to me!" - Jo expresses her displeasure at how well "See-Spray" cleans her apartment windows.
"I'm outta the business now." - Reed, glancing nervously at the 55-gallon drums of "See-Spray" in his garage, tosses in the Amway towel.
"Just sit tight and try to relax." - Reed to Jo, tied up and gagged in the Hole, as he pours the wine and lights a few candles.
"You locked me in a dark hole for two days; what do you expect?!?!" - Jo lets Reed know that She's Not That Kind Of Girl.
"... not unless she [Sydney] knows how to bring Kimberly back from the dead." - Michael to Matt as Sydney walks by with her new boyfriend, Lazarus.
"I was the one who got the wrong idea." - Alison tries another tactic, but Billy still defers comment.
"'Will you walk into my parlour?' said the spider to the fly." - Mary Howitt, "The Spider and the Fly", 1844.
"Things are very wrong between us, Billy." "No, things are wrong with you." - Saccharine exchange between Alison and Billy.
"Where on earth did you ever get that idea?" - Alison is taken aback when Billy pulls out the figure skates, collapsible baton and inflatable thighs. Ever since he dated Amanda...
"Kiss my ass." - Michael mails in his tax return, SWAK.
"I'm sorry, I was a little upset." - Michael apologises when the I.R.S. audits him for filing his tax return as "Ben Dover".
"You grow up; become an adult." - Jo struggles with being a single parent and raising Reed all by herself.
"I will be outta your hair by tomorrow." - Alison packs up and moves to the South Seas with Mitzi Gaynor.
"I'm also very attractive." - Billy continues morphing and ends up in Ted Koppel.
"Suddenly, it's all very clear to me." - Alison epiphanises all over the floor.
"Think about it." - Reed counters with an incredible lease plan on a fully- loaded Jeep Cherokee that includes the optional sport racks and custom trim package.
"What will you do?" - Sydney, guest-hosting on "Let's Make A Deal" asks Mrs. Louise Johnson from Canoga Park if she wants keep her winnings or risk it all for what's behind Door #2...
"What's the big deal?" - Amanda, dressed as a giant potato to go with Jake's rutabaga suit, bets the farm on Door #2...
"I'll slap them with a lawsuit." - Amanda discovers that she traded thousands of dollars in cash and valuable prizes for a year's supply of bird seed.
"I'm really thirsty." - Jo burns in the fires of Hell...
"Bring me a beer." - Reed rubs it in. If only he had Budweiser, Jo could open a bottle and the boat would suddenly fill with scantily- clad white women...
"I'll take mine right outta the can." - Reed was raised by dogs; just make sure the seat is up...
"Outside of a routine check, there's nothing I can do." - Mr. Coast Guard Man plays it by the book.
"I thought this was the kind of talk you only hear in chick movies." - Greg pegs down the "Well, the emotional crap sucks but if I go with her, I'll look sensitive, warm and caring and probably get laid" genre of movie every man despises. Steven Seagal is as close to a romance flick as I go...
"You only live twice." - James Bond movie title. Or so it seems. One life for yourself, one life for your screams...
"I am going to kill you." - Alison looks Pained and Chipmunky while Billy works on Poor and Stupid.
"You're not gonna die." - Jo ignores the big gaping hole in Reed's stomach and the lack of emergency medical personnel and falls back on lessons she learned at the Ronald Reagan School of Thinking Happy Thoughts. Band-aid please!!
"Good luck and have a great life." - Alison stands on the Love Boat gangplank and waves goodbye to Charro and Sonny Bono. Hoochie-koochie!
"I'm scared." - Reed checks out of the "It's Been Your Life" Motel without leaving a forwarding address. Check his luggage for towels and ashtrays...
"Will you marry me?" - Billy points the gun at his head, gulps heavily, and pulls the trigger...
(c) 1994 Ian Ferrell. The Melrose Place Update is published weekly and distributed via electronic mail and the Graces of Internet. Each article contains a summary of that week's Melrose Place episode with analysis and commentary.
Melrose Place Update is an all-digital production. There is no hiss. Analogue copies of previous Melrose Place Updates are available.
Send comments to ianf@microsoft.com
To subscribe, send email to ianf@microsoft.com with "subscribe" in the subject line and your email address in the message body. To cancel your subscription, send email to ianf@microsoft.com with "cancel" in the subject line and your email address in the message body.