Tuesday, September 8, 2009

Melrose Place - Premiere Recap and Thoughts - September 8, 2009

The CW & AT&Ts Melrose Place Premiere Party - ArrivalsTonight was the reboot of Melrose Place on The CW. I was eager to check out the pilot episode and see what happened. Just like last year with 90210, I was a huge fan of the original series. Well, I was always a much bigger fan of 90210 but I loved Melrose Place too. I was happy with the 90210 reboot last year so I was hoping for the same this year with Melrose Place. I’ve got to say that I liked the first episode tonight. Good story set up and I’m curious to see where they go from here. Lots of character development, ties to the original series, and a murder mystery right off the start of the show.

We learned immediately about Sydney’s role in Melrose Place. She is the new Amanda and is the landlord. The episode opens with David in a panic calling the roommates that Sydney is in trouble. David does arrive and talks to Sydney and she is ok. He goes to leave but she makes threats at him to reveal secrets which insults him. A few minutes later in the episode, we see that someone is dead in the pool. Is it Brooke????!!!! Ok, I couldn’t resist the original series reference. No, Sydney is found dead in the pool. The police investigate and she was found in the pool by Violet who is the new tenant. Everyone comments about how bad that they feel for her that she just moved in and has seen this. Violet is very much being played up as the good girl. I guess I’ll go ahead and discuss the characters of the rest of the tenants.

We have Jonah and Riley. They are a dating couple that have been together for five years. He is an aspiring filmmaker. She is concerned about him not having grown up as much as she would like. He proposes to her at the beginning of the episode but she asks for 24 hours to give him an answer. Jonah gets hired as a videographer at a kid’s birthday party. Another one of the tenants, Ella, talks Jonah into giving his movie that he had done to the father of the birthday kid. He is a movie producer. The guy is completely turned off but later he sings a different tune. Jonah accidentally catches him cheating on his wife. He talks to Jonah but Jonah assures him that he will erase it. He can’t give him the copy of it cause it was captured on a video card. Jonah had no intention of using the footage for anything but the guy offers him $100,000 to buy his movie just as a way to help keep the secret. Jonah arrives home to Riley who is excited about getting six messages about the movie buying offer. Jonah said that he had agreed to sell it explaining the situation of how he had caught him in the act. The reason that he wanted to sell it was to show Riley how serious that he was about getting his career going and also how serious he was about Riley. He then said that was also the reason that he decided to not go through with it. He isn't selling. She said yes to the proposal.

That gets us to Lauren. She is an aspiring doctor. She has a patient who is the mom of a guy named Toby. Toby flew into town to see about how his mom was doing. Toby thanks Lauren for all that she did for his mom and offers to take her out for dinner. She originally says no but Riley talks her into it later. Lauren also gets the news of financial trouble which hurts her chances of continuing to her dream of becoming a doctor. Riley also mentions how they had all offered to help her with money with a loan. The date goes well for Lauren until he offers her $5,000 to help her continue her career despite him leaving to go back home with his mom the next morning. She storms out over the offer and she later talks to Violet. Violet talked about how they are good girls and don’t do things like that. At the end of the episode, we see Lauren on her way to his hotel room so we’ll see what happens there.

We didn’t get a lot of background on Ella and Auggie. Ella clearly has a thing for Jonah with her looking very jealous over the proposal news. She kind of has an Amanda type vibe going as far as personality. Auggie is a chef and talks of how Sydney was the reason that he had become that. We later saw that there may be more to him but I’ll get to that in a minute.

Let’s get back to the main story. Ella gets David out of the police station and she made up the lie of an alibi for him on where he was during the night. Her excuse was that he was with her. Also, David blacked out during the happenings with Sydney and has no clue what happened while he was out. He later tells Auggie about it to which Auggie assures him that he knows he didn’t do anything. We get our next original character as Michael shows up. David is Michael’s son. We see plenty of flashbacks of Sydney with different characters including her kicking Ella out as a tenant, blackmailing David, and threatening to reveal her and Michael’s affair to Michael’s wife. How is Sydney alive? That is what I have been wondering!! In the car ride with Michael and David, Michael reveals that he helped fake her death eleven years ago. So, Sydney apparently made many enemies. She made several comments about how the original crew that used to live there was like a family. She wanted her return there to be similar but everyone “abandoned” her. The closing music montage showed Auggie burning a bloody shirt in an alley. Hmm.

Overall thoughts. I liked the first episode. Wow, Sydney sure didn’t last long which was really disappointing to me. I always liked that character and was looking forward to seeing what would happen here. However, her death did provide a big murder mystery right out of the gate. I’m glad that they explained her return although not giving any in depth clues. Maybe we’ll learn that later in some flashbacks. I’m glad that they did at least acknowledge it. I like the characters of Jonah and Riley. Nice to have a couple of likable characters right out of the gate. I just now figured out who the actress is that plays Riley. She was in 90210 last year and was involved in the Mr. Matthews storyline. That was driving me crazy on trying to figure out where I had seen her before. Ella is definitely going to stir some drama so I expect that. What is going on with those Mancini’s? You just never know. LOL. So, what happened to Sydney? Hmm, I wonder if it could have anything to do with Ella since they do seem to have her poised as a major villain on this show and there was that flashback. I clearly think that Violet knows more about Sydney’s death than she is letting on. I loved the close of the episode set to The Killer’s song “The World We Live”. I loved the song with how greatly it tied to the montage. I knew others would want to know the song too so if you’re searching for the song title, there is your answer. Good mixture of music throughout the episode. I’m happy with the premiere. The show jumped in with an interesting storyline to hook viewers. Hopefully, they can follow that and continue to make it interesting. Season one was kind of slow of the original series and felt very different from what the show would end up being. This pilot episode did a good job of introducing characters and personalities while leaving us wanting more on where the story is going. Thumbs up from me. I’ll be continuing to watch.

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