Melrose Place

Not only don’t I care about Heather Locklear appearing on the “new” Melrose Place, I don’t even care enough to write about how much I don’t care.  But it does remind me that Locklear has spent most of her career being added to the casts of shows that already started, and she has one of the better track records on that score. I’ve called her a “reverse Ted McGinley,” which of course is unfair to McGinley. He’s usually been added to long-running shows after a major cast member leaves, so the shows wouldn’t have gotten better with or without him (some would argue that he improved Married With Children). But Aaron Spelling kept adding Locklear midway through the first or second seasons of shows that had potential but weren’t quite there: he added her to Dynasty — though it was the addition of Joan Collins that saved that show — then TJ Hooker, and most importantly Melrose Place. Then she joined Spin City, not exactly improving it but probably giving it the boost it needed to survive the departure of Michael J. Fox.

Tonight was the premiere of the new Melrose Place, and I’ll be interested to hear what the reactions are. I had a negative reaction to the pilot, finding that it wasn’t fun enough to make the trashiness work, and that the most loathsome characters were the relatively “nice” ones. (In particular, the filmmaker-wannabe who won’t grow up and his wonderful girlfriend. They say cute things and watch cute videos and they’re just a horrible example of what Hollywood thinks of as a cute couple. The only time I had any affection for the guy at all was when it looked like he might take up a career in blackmail.) I guess other people were more favourably disposed to it. But as for me, what I said a few months ago still sums up my view of this pilot.

Let critic Jaime J. Weinman be your fall TV guide

I watched the pilot of the new Melrose Place (which may or may not be the version that finally airs) over the weekend, and don’t really know what to say about it. It seems closer to the style of original than the new 90210 does, and unlike that revival, this one wants to start off on a high melodramatic note. Though that may not be a good thing: it just points up the ways in which it falls short of the original’s wonderfully insane Aaron Spellingosity. But what really struck me about this new show is that I just don’t feel like hanging with any of these characters, and the ones I hate the most are the ones who are supposed to be the “likable” ones. Maybe that will change when the series starts.

When I first saw this story I thought the headline was a cruel, cruel joke. But it’s actually the cruel, cruel truth.