Five Gloriously, Inimitably Stupid Things About The Original 'Melrose Place'

So, yes. The CW is bringing back Melrose Place, kind of, and it premieres tonight. The prevailing wisdom about the '90s-era original is that it was dully stupid until Heather Locklear arrived, at which point it became aggressively crazy, what with people ripping off wigs and blowing up buildings and hitting their heads and dying in the pool.

There is some truth behind this theory, yes. No one can deny the greatness of the Locklear addition. No one can ignore how utterly, magnificently, operatically crazy that show became, particularly in the hands of scenery-chompers like Marcia Cross and Thomas Calabro — the latter of whom was hired to play Michael Mancini as a good husband and only later turned out to be a wonderful faithless and sociopathic nutbar (with extra nuts).

But recently, after being mercilessly seduced (hey, it's a theme!) by a deep discount at Target, I have been indulging in the old original Melrose Place — the part of Season 1 before Locklear — and breathlessly noting some of its unique pleasures, which deserve to be remembered. (Kind of.) The CW reboot is clearly going for late-stage Melrose, with the super-soaped-up sleaze factor, but here, I raise my glass to early-stage Melrose, complete with people who were gone really, really quickly.

1. Amy Locane's original accent. Poor Amy Locane. Cast to play Sandy, the beautiful blonde actress and Southern belle, she was the first to get the boot as the show was retooled. Who would have thought the hot blonde would be thrown out the door? And replaced with Daphne Zuniga? It's a world gone mad.

According to her Wikipedia page and her Internet Movie Database entry, Locane was born in Trenton, New Jersey, which makes perfect sense, because her southern accent was hilarious. If you could convince Scarlett O'Hara and Foghorn Leghorn to get married, this was the baby they would have had. Over the course of her 12 episodes (before she got the boot), she gradually dialed it back, which was for the best, but a little sad.

Four more, after the jump...

 

2. Andrew Shue in general. The aw-shucksy male lead at the outset was Andrew Shue as Billy. Here's his first scene.

Unfortunately, I was not able to locate a good clip of Shue getting angry, which is by far the most hilarious thing he does, but this will do. This fellow, remember, had a regular job in prime-time television for years after this. Years. Just remember that the next time someone tells you it was a meritocracy until reality shows came along.

3. Social issues. You wouldn't think so from the later explorations of issues such as The Heartbreak Of Running Over Brides With Your Car or How Hanging In A Sweat Lodge With Mackenzie Phillips Can Help You Get Your Husband Back. But early in the show's run, they cared about things that mattered. In the first season alone, we saw racism, violence, homelessness, stalking, hate crimes, job discrimination, exploitation of vulnerable young actresses by lecherous film producers, and — this is the absolute truth — the tragedies of the American health-care system, when poor Alison couldn't get her fibroid tumor removed because she didn't have insurance. This show had its finger on the pulse of America, I tell you, and they were squeezing as hard as possible, desperately hoping to cut off the supply of blood to the brain.

Oh, and lest I forget: Poor Rhonda (the doomed Vanessa Williams — not the Miss America one, but the other one) went out on a date with a seemingly awesome guy who took her cardio-funk exercise class (that's right: cardio-funk), only to discover that he was merely trying to pull her into a pyramid scheme to sell herbal remedies. The evils of get-rich-quick schemes and unregulated pharmaceuticals! You can kind of see how they concluded that a dose of Locklearean energy might be a good idea.

4. People with pasts that make them afraid of getting hurt. Every soap mines this area heavily, but just in the first season, practically everyone on this entire show eventually revealed a painful past that led them to fear being hurt. Bike-riding bad-boy Jake grew up with a flaky mother, so he was afraid to trust. Alison's mother had breast cancer, so she's self-conscious about men's magazines. (SERIOUSLY.) Billy's father had always wanted him to take over the family's furniture store, leading to his insecurities about being a writer. Rhonda once gave up her chance at dance stardom because she choked before an audition. The mysterious Jo was running from a bad marriage. Theoretically Gay Matt (who was gay in theory, but never got a date) wasn't sure his parents could accept him. Nice doctor's-wife Jane had been forced to be the perfect sister while her bad-girl sister Sydney (the late-arriving Laura Leighton, who was kind of a pre-Locklear hint of the Locklear to come) got all the attention.

Eventually, it seemed like it might have been more efficient to just sit everyone down for a barbecue and agree that they all have miserable pasts and terrible secrets, they are all afraid of getting hurt, and so everybody is even.

5. Random celebrity sightings.