Welcome to the Melrose Place Update. It is 12:49 a.m. Thursday morning. The Melrose Place episode slowly fades away into a distant blur. The quotes are in. The summary is complete. The Update staff winds down; the remaining stragglers huddle next to the fire's embers, their faces glowing blank with silent thoughts. If we're lucky, Dr. Ferreud will send his comments early. Perhaps we'll get the Update out on time. Jay Leno just finished making a fool of himself. Despite his valiant efforts, he will never be David Letterman. It's ironic that Letterman once wanted to be Jay.
You can tell what time it is by the commercials on television. Right now I'm surfing through an ocean of Hair Club for Men, Maaco and diet ads. Was Ann Jillian really that big? In the background, a "Magnum p.i." episode winds its way toward completion. I used to watch the show religiously as a kid; my sister loved the star, I just wanted his car. It is barely ten years, but the show really looks dated. It must be the hair.
While dunging out some boxes yesterday evening, I stumbled across several copies of Life magazine. I collect old magazines primarily for the advertising. Nothing defines an era more than its advertising. In one glance, you can see a period's values, its goals and ambitions. Advertising depicts the next outcrop of rock society reaches for.
The Life magazine is dated March 17, 1952. My brother turned seven that year. The United States detonated the first hydrogen bomb, innocuously named Mike, as part of Operation Ivy. The Mau Mau revolution exploded in Kenya, sparking the end of British colonial ties to Africa. Simone Weil's books were translated into English. George VI died at Sandringham. It would be another seventeen years until I first see the light of day.
A woman on the cover is touted as "The Prettiest Showgirl on Broadway." Her name is Dale Strong, and she is a twenty- two-year-old dancer who dreams of making it big in movies. Forty-two years after that picture was taken Dale Strong is still a beautiful woman. The hairstyles have changed, but her eyes are magic and her stare will not let go.
Dale Strong, if she is still alive, will be sixty-four this year. She may be hideously overweight, watch Hard Copy and America's Funniest Videos religiously and live in a trailer park outside Granger, Indiana but in my mind she will always be twenty-two. She will always have that pensive, wide-eyed gaze. She will always be beautiful.
The advertisements in that magazine sell the dream of Lost America. Big cars with features like "Glide-O-Matic" suspension, "Touch-O-Matic" overdrive and "Fire Dome 8" engines. Men worry about having "Handsome Hair" while women concern themselves with time-saving Jell-O recipes and bras that fit. The war is over and Bob Hope is everywhere, selling grapefruit juice, movies, and hamming it up with singing twins in Sioux City.
People ride trains in this world, pausing long enough from the hectic post-war pace of peace and prosperity to enjoy the countryside view from their Pullman car window. The ads read "You're shown to your own special part of a wonderful world on wheels." America is a wonderful world on wheels where the worst things to worry about are the Reds and tire blowouts on the highway. By god, U.S. Royal Master LifeTubes with the Blow-out Prevention Core will protect you from at least one of these threats.
Fast-forward, for there is no alternative, to the Melrose Place world. The names and details change, but the goal remains the same. Present a lifestyle and sell, sell, sell. Each character works toward the dream. Alison wants success. She wants the house on Elm Street with the picket fence and shady tree. The adoring spouse with perfect children. The big car with safe tires. So do Jane, Billy, Jo and Jake. Yes even Jake. He's not that dumb. Or maybe he is that dumb.
You may argue that even Amanda wants the dream. She at least wants to belong, whether she has to buy or blackmail her way in. And Sydney. Above all others, Sydney wants the dream. She lives and breathes and dances the dream. She is trapped in the dream.
Older Melrose Place shows featured the gang gathering around the pool to celebrate their quest. They had the barbecue and their archetypes which each played to perfection. The barbecue is cold now, and covered with neglect; each character lives a solitary life. They had the dream, but now it is blurred. That is the problem with realising dreams: each time you miss, it is harder to forget. You can fool yourself for only so long.
The Magnum p.i. episode is finally over. Magnum cleverly discovered that the actress tried to kill her husband while faking it to look like a suicide. Magnum didn't catch this at first because he had a secret crush on the older actress; he let her manipulate him until the end. "A classic case of illusion versus reality", he muses, gazing out the hospital window as she walks to the police car. "Except reality always wins."
The Seattle Times reported in Wednesday's paper on the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. At the convention, researchers presented studies showing that the 1980s were "great times for the elderly and tough for the young, who will likely never achieve the financial success and security of their parents." It is bad enough that this is so, but do they really have to tell us?
I am drawn back to that face watching me from the magazine cover. I feel the look in her eyes. The heady dreams and innocence contrast with that headline "Prettiest Showgirl on Broadway". I wonder if Dale ever found her dream.
Ex cathedra.
- ian
Faster than you can say "Perry Mason", Melrose Place found itself in a peck of legal troubles.
Jo is in jail, tended by the most cliched "Angry Dyke" representation of a prison matron I have ever seen. Lipstick- less and scratchy-voiced, she visits with Benjamin Skyler, her "public defender". Ben thinks she was in cahoots with Reed and pressures Jo to cut a deal with the D.A.'s office. Jo refuses to, proclaiming her innocence and right to self- defence.
Quentin Benson pops by, representing the D.A. and is frustrated when Jo keeps singing the same chorus. He tells Jo she will be charged with first-degree murder unless she cuts a deal. Of course Jo still refuses and Quentin gets A Mite Ticked Off. Jo demands her "one call" and gives Jake a ring back at Melrose. Jake appeals to Amanda for help, but she backs off, worried that the police will drag her into the drug investigation.
Jake enlists Billy and Alison to help pool cash (from credit- card cash advances) to make bail. At the arraignment, Jo still refuses to cut a deal and the D.A.'s office pushes for no bail. The situation looks grim until Amanda whisks into the courtroom with SuperLawyer Walter Kovaks. Within seconds, (well, it takes another arraignment hearing) he has the charges dismissed and Jo is a free woman, indebted to Amanda.
Think I'm solving this problem a little too quickly and neatly? Feeling rushed and out of breath? You should have watched the episode, it was even faster there...
Billy and Alison continue their dysfunctional relationship in high gear following Billy's marriage proposal last week. Alison says "yes" during an Oh-So-Romantic Promenade through the Park leaving Billy to overact his "joyful" scene. After watching Billy and Alison develop over the season, I now know what kinds of people have babies to save their marriage.
Alison swears Billy to a life of truthfulness and forthrightness, although she doesn't exactly word it that way (too many syllables). Billy freaks out in private since Alison is unaware of the fling he had with Amanda, and Amanda is dropping hints about it in front of Alison. Billy swears Amanda to a life of lying and cover-up, which means she immediately tells Jake all about the tryst in the next scene. Jake of course, responds with a hearty torrent of testosterone and anger.
Jake proceeds to punch Billy out at the "Engagement Party" held at Shooters. Aptly-enough, he nails Billy seconds after Cheese-Boy asks him to be his Best Man. Bravo! Alison finds out, Billy gets a sore jaw, Amanda gets bitched out, and Jake spurts adrenaline all over the set. Not a pretty sight. Oh! And if you look real close in this scene, you can actually see Matt! You remember Matt, don't you?
Alison forgives Billy since she was sacking down with Steve that same weekend, (shouldn't these types of problems tell the Love Birds something?!?!), and Billy confronts Jake by the Melrose Place Pool, to no avail. Shift the Marriage Planning Machine into high gear with a Matron of Honour (Jo) and one very-angry Best Man (Jake). Interesting how that pairing occurs, isn't it?
In the third storyline (does this ever end?) Sydney tightens the screws on Michael. Facing high rent and a no-name job at Melrose Place, Syd moves out of her apartment and in with Michael. Alas, as she leaves, she cannot help telling Jane about the set-up; Jane is Less Than Amused and emotes profusely. Michael, returning home to find Sydney moving in with stacks of new furniture purchased on his credit cards is also Less Than Amused and emotes profusely.
Sydney manages to scam Michael back on the "real doctor" rotation, schmoozing his supervisor to rescue the Wandering Gland from administrivia. No sooner is he back in the Scalpel Saddle, however, than the phone rings with an urgent emergency call from Sydney. Rushing home, Michael discovers Sydney feeling fine, she just called to tell Michael that she loves him and oh, by the way, their wedding is next week...
It must be spring.
Michael and Sydney stumble down the aisle of matrimonial bliss, but not before Sydney and Jane get into a catfight in the Melrose Place pool. Look closely for a cameo appearance by their mother and the Pool Boy...
Pool Boy's back! I guess after five episodes, the pool was getting pretty dingy...
1) When Jake and Billy confront each other at the Melrose Place Pool, Jake is initially dripping wet. (He just got out of the pool.) Well, he's only wet in all the "head-on" shots. In "over-his-shoulder" shots, Jake's hair and body are nice and dry. Why do they always screw up the pool scenes?
2) In the same scene, Billy's injured face, which the makeup people did up real nice to look bruised, "heals" during the same "over Jake's shoulder" shots. (The bruise is still there, but very faint.) I wonder which camera angles shot last?
3) While this is not really a problem, what the hell is the picture hanging over Amanda's fireplace? It looks like a black-velvet painting of Elvis done by Picasso. Suggestions?!?!
4) When Jo gets back to her apartment, there is already a light on. She may have left it on, but since she planned to go sailing all day with Reed when she left, I highly doubt it.
5) Alison calls for a toast at Shooters and the entire bar quiets down. Are we right to believe that the whole bar, at least 50 or so people, were there for the engagement party? Does this imply that the Melrose Place "family" includes thousands of people we haven't met yet?
6) Watch Alison's engagement ring appear and disappear from her finger throughout the episode.
7) Where does a cretin like Michael get off using a word like "chichi" in public? Put that vocabulary away before someone sees it!
"Why don't you come by Shooters?" - Ever-tactful Amanda to Jo, seconds after Jo is release from prison after being charged with first-degree murder with a shotgun. There's no way you can plan a line like this, and I cannot prove it was intentional, but it was damn hilarious...
"He was trying to kill me." - Jo freaks out in Pescadero State Hospital as the Terminator stalks the halls.
"Come with me if you want to live." - The Terminator [Arnold Schwarzenegger] to Sarah Connor [Linda Hamilton] in Terminator II: Judgement Day. 1991.
"I suggest that you talk to me." - Quentin, aka Dr. Silverman, tries to gauge Jo's sanity.
"You do not need to leave your room. Remain sitting at your table and listen. Do not even listen, simply wait. Do not even wait, be quite still and solitary. The world will freely offer itself to you to be unmasked, it has no choice, it will roll in ecstasy at your feet." - Franz Kafka, Reflections on the Great Wall of China.
"I didn't have a choice." - Jo agonises over tea with Franz Kafka and John Calvin, definitely an unsympathetic audience.
"There is no accident in our choice of reading. All our sources are related." - Francois Mauriac, "Memoires Interieures", 1959. Oh, how true it is.
"You walked out of the choice of a lifetime." - Celia berates Billy, a real winner, for foolishly picking Door #2.
"I'm sorry about all of this." - Alison hops back into her body.
"I love you." - Alison switches masks from "Bitchy Girlfriend" to "Loving Girlfriend."
"I'm sorry." - Blind Man Billy to Alison. They were made for each other.
"I love you and I don't want to lose you. I'm sorry..." - Amanda accidentally picks up Alison's script before her scene with Jake.
"He asked me to marry him." "Oh what a nice gesture." - Alison, fishing for a Friendliness Flower, tells Amanda about Billy's proposal.
"I'm saying this as a friend." - Amanda turns over a new leaf and collects her Flower.
"I am an adult now, in an adult relationship." - Sydney pouts.
"This ain't a hotel kid." - Jail clerk to Little Man Jake.
"I keep thinking I'm a kid. I keep thinking my dad will come along and put me in his arms and it will all be OK." - Jo reveals A Bit Of Herself to Alison. Melrose Place is about maturity, about growing up and throwing temper tantrums. Ladies and gentlemen, John Hughes has just left the set...
"I love it when you're tough." - Billy reveals another side of his Real Manhood.
"I just want to forget about the past." - Billy remembers Amanda.
"All of this will be a part of the past." - Alison forgets Steve and Keith and Jake and...
"I was very angry and upset." - Amanda apologises for the stain on Jake's carpet.
"I was just bringing you a cappuccino..." - Sidney to Michael. $100 says she's an Aquarius...
"I have been sitting here since five in the morning trying to figure out what's going on." - Alison, stale bread in one hand, forgets to check the toaster's power cord.
"I've been thinking." - Alison tries to cover up the smell of burnt toast. Hey, she's trying!
"You're unbelievable." - Billy waves his equine mane in Amanda's face.
"I love an appendectomy in the morning." - Doctor Michael Mancini starts up the chopper and heads into the operating theatre accompanied by Wagner's "Ride of the Valkyries".
(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.
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