The Young and the Senseless

By Richard Zoglin

When last we dropped by Melrose Place, in the summer of 1992, the show was brand new but already looked tarnished: it was a craven spin-off of Beverly Hills, 90210, set in an L.A. apartment complex, where all the people were beautiful and all the plots recycled from daytime soap operas. After a slow start in the ratings, however, Melrose Place has become perhaps the hottest show on TV. College-age fans have made it a weekly viewing ritual; magazines do cover stories on its stars; the Fox network is already gearing up a spin- off.

What happened in a year and a half to turn Melrose Place into a hit? Let's look at a few recent episodes and see what we can learn about the show:

Billy (Andrew Shue) and Alison (Courtney Thorne-Smith) are riding out a bumpy relationship. He moves to New York for a job; she flies there for a visit, but catches him with another woman. They make up and spend a passionate night together -- so passionate that Billy calls L.A. and orders all her belongings packed up and moved to New York. Then he can't understand why she's upset. "How many guys do you know," he insists, "who are as sensitive as me?"

Melrose Fact No. 1: These people are not sensitive.

Michael (Thomas Calabro), newly divorced from his wife Jane, is being blackmailed by Jane's conniving younger sister, Sydney (Laura Leighton). Sydney knows that Michael is hiding evidence that he was driving drunk the night of a car accident that killed his girlfriend. Sydney moves in with Michael, prints up wedding invitations and forces him to marry her, even though he hates her guts.

Melrose Fact No. 2: These people are not romantic.

Jo (Daphne Zuniga) gets involved with a guy who turns out to be a drug dealer and who kidnaps her while she is aboard his boat. Trying to escape, she shoots him in self-defense, then narrowly avoids being tried for murder. When the whole sordid affair is over, Jo discovers that she is pregnant by the sleazebag. Yet she moonily declares, "Now that I'm pregnant, I realize that I really do want a baby."

Melrose Fact No. 3: These people are not smart.

Evidently, the success of Melrose Place cannot be explained by its likable characters or believable story lines.

The cast probably deserves more of the credit. The actors lounging around the swimming pool on Melrose Avenue are as drop-dead gorgeous as any on TV. Unfortunately, looks aren't everything. Andrew Shue, the chief male & heartthrob, is a nebbishy nonentity who seems disengaged and scarcely able to mouth his lines. ("In thole world, all I really care about is you.") And Heather Locklear, whose addition to the cast last year as bitchy Amanda is credited with turning the show around, doesn't have the evildoing pizazz of a Joan Collins or Larry Hagman. In a typical act of mischief, she pleads with Billy not to tell his fiance Alison about an affair he and Amanda have had. Then she tells Alison herself and acts shocked that Billy never mentioned the matter. What's next? Short-sheeting their bed?

Yet Melrose Place does have something that sets it apart from most of the failed prime-time soap operas of recent years: modest goals. The show does not set out to capture a historical era (Homefront) or reproduce the glitzy New York high life (Tattinger's) or create a parable about going home again (Angel Falls). The characters on Melrose Place have a bland, modern universality. Indeed, watching the show again for the first time since its debut, one is struck by how the personnel have blended together. There was once a black neighbor (Vanessa Williams); she has moved away. Michael and Jane were initially struggling young marrieds; in short order they became free-lancing singles just like everyone else. With the exception of one gay character (whose plot significance is minimal), the pieces for mixing and matching are interchangeable, and thus the combinations are unlimited.

That sense of infinite possibilities may be the show's chief appeal. In most TV dramas, as in life, people are bound by their pasts and by forces outside their control -- family history, social status, money. Nothing like that for the footloose Melrose gang. They start relationships and end them, move to New York and back again, become prostitutes and shoot ex-boyfriends -- then dust themselves off and start on the next life adventure. Melrose Place is full of the bustle of people to whom things constantly happen, yet who keep reinventing themselves. It's TV's ultimate declaration of independence.