Episode Report Card Pablo G: B- | Grade It Now! YOU GRADE IT Trying To Be Complex
By Pablo G | Season 1 | Episode 1 | Aired on 09.08.2009
In a hurry? Read the recaplet for a nutshell description! Finished? Click here to close.Before we even get a chance to learn everyone's name, Sydney is dead. Yeah, that Sydney. From the original show. If you didn't watch the original show (neither did I), she's one of the old faces making way for the new ones. She makes a lot of room when she ends up face down in the apartment pool. This freaks everyone out to have all seen their landlord taken away in a body bag, but not enough to derail these new characters from returning to their own problems so we can get to know them. Convenient.
The only character of the lot who really seems troubled by Sydney's murder is David, supposed illegitimate son of Dr. Michael Mancini from the original series. The grief might be because David happened to be the last person to see her alive. He had a thing going on with Sydney and was the only one to respond to a distress call the night of her death. He's detained as a possible suspect until his friend Ella bails him out with a fake alibi, saying he was with her all night. A flashback tells us that Sydney was planning to evict Ella because she told David that Sydney was sleeping with his father. Motive? Maybe.
Then, there's the cutesy couple, Jonah and Riley, highlighted mainly by Jonah's man-child antics. He's a filmmaker who uses his iMovie tricks to propose to Riley who is hesitant to accept because of the aforementioned immaturity. The proposal is also conveniently interrupted by a scream upon the discovery of Sydney's dead body, allowing it to become a story arc. See how that works, melodrama writers? It takes the rejection of a $100,000 offer from Thomas Sterling -- another throwback character -- after Jonah accidentally catches him on film cheating on his wife to get Riley to say yes to Jonah. She's so easy.
We also have a struggling doctor, Lauren, who can't afford to go to medical school and sinks to accepting an indecent proposal from a patient's son after wrestling with the moral dilemma of sex for money. Come on. Could there ever be any doubt she would accept the offer? Where's the predictable, sordid plot twists we've come to expect from a show bearing the name Melrose Place. Oh. Never mind.
Then we have the characters that are touched on lightly, which you know means they are hiding something. There's Auggie the cook. Ashlee Simpson-Wentz's character Violet is the new girl in the complex and happens to be the one to stumble upon Sydney's corpse. Her words of wisdom (you know there's a problem when Ashlee Simpson-Wentz's character is the one doling out wisdom) lead Lauren to mull over her hooker potential. That looks like the start of a beautiful friendship right there.
Everything becomes a jumbled mess at the end as the episode tries to connect everyone. There's some sort of odd, makeshift memorial held for Sydney with all the new characters in attendance, which only consists of a brief toast. It becomes quite clear that Ella has a thing for Jonah when she reacts in disgust at the announcement of Riley's acceptance of his proposal. David tries to mack on her and gets shot down. He goes and does some cat burglary instead to cool off. Ella goes out and gets freaky with some random woman while being tailed by police. Violet asks out Auggie, but he blows her off to go dispose of some bloody clothes. And... wait, what?! It's always the characters you don't develop.
Welcome to the new old Melrose Place where everything is still sleazy, but covered with the glaze of 2009.
-- Pablo G. is a guy who lives in San Antonio, Texas. Check him out at Space Monkeys!, Obscure Sports Reference, and follow him @PendejoJoe on Twitter.
Want more? The full recap starts right below!We open with quick zoom cuts through a jumping nightclub. A lot of beautiful people doing dimly-lit beautiful things. As the camera provocatively cuts through the club trying to make things seem way edgier than they are, we end up in a cramped corridor where there's some heavy making out going on between two blondes. A guy and a girl. We're starting off simple, people. That is, until the guy's iPhone goes off with a text. Make-Out Girl tells him not to even think about it, but he sneaks a glance after telling her of course he won't. Wow, the lying has already begun. We're not even five minutes in. The text reads: "In serious trouble. Come. Now!" Let's ignore that choice of punctuation for now.
Cut to an attractive blonde having a cocktail conversation with two hipster-type guys about their client who has gone "from Inside the Actors Studio to outside of Coco De Ville doing blow with somebody else's boyfriend." Sounds fun. Hipster #1 points out that they're agents, the hipsters are, not baby-sitters. Attractive blonde responds that their client needs a new publicist. They need her. Make-Out Guy from before interrupts to tell Attractive Blonde, "Ella, Sydney's in trouble." Now, all of this paragraph happens in roughly 2.5 seconds. Without a DVR, you'd miss Ella's name and profession right out of the gate. We'll see if that really matters in the long-run. Make-Out Guy tells Ella that he has to go despite her protestation that he's her ride. He hands her a $100 bill and tells her to "cab it." Gotta love the attempt at hip dialogue there. Exit Make-Out Guy who still has no real name. Ella looks at the money, turns to Hipsters #1 and #2 and asks if they want another shot. I wish I was a hipster still.
In the club's kitchen, things are busy and they're cooking up lobster. Mmm. Make-Out-Guy-Without-A-Name-Still walks up to the cook with the lobster, who we find out is named Auggie, and asks him to come back to the penthouse with him because Sydney was totally trashed earlier. We haven't met Sydney yet (or have we?), but I already like her. "You're the only one who knows how to deal with her when she gets like this," he tells Auggie, but Auggie can't leave because they're swamped in the kitchen. He tells... jeez why doesn't he have a name yet (?) that if Sydney is really in trouble when he gets there, to call him and he'll try to get out of the kitchen. The guy that isn't Auggie walks away.
Jarring cut to a hospital from a rolling stretcher medical drama point-of-view where a young female doctor is comforting an older woman who is being carted along with that stretcher cam. She meets up with her supervising physician and gives him the rundown of the patient before her phone rings. It's nameless guy on the other end asking the doctor -- whose name is Lauren -- when she gets off if she can meet him at the penthouse. He says she's in pretty bad shape as if it's assumed that there can be only one person they could be talking about. Lauren says she can't get out because she's working the graveyard shift, but stops to give some advice. "Listen to me, David," (his name is David!) "If you can't wake her up, or if her eyes don't dilate, don't waste time calling me, OK? You gotta call 9-1-1." Yeah, David. Don't bother me with your potential life or death situation when I'm a health professional. Ass.
David arrives at The Complex and there's a trying-way-too-hard-to-establish-something drop crane shot as he enters the archway with the famous address of 4616 Melrose Place. This is immediately followed by a soap opera-style establishing shot of Sydney lurking in the dark of her apartment, staring out her window past David as he walks up the steps to her door. He opens the unlocked door and cautiously searches for Sydney. He finds her having a drink at her little bar and looks more pissed off than relieved. She lounges in her seat and tells David she knows this is the last place he wants to be right now, but she's done something really, really bad. David's like, "Yeah, whatever. Adios," and turns to leave, but she implores him to stay. He asks her why he should after all her lies, and she goes into nostalgia mode about how when she lived here before it was like a big family. She thought if she came back she could have a family like that again, but everyone has abandoned her. David says he isn't going to feel sorry for her and he has a life now that doesn't include her. He starts to leave, but Sydney's last gambit is to threaten David with some things he might've told her when they were still close. He perks up and asks her what she wants. Sydney asks him just to stay. He obliges. David, that's the first thing they teach you about dealing with manipulative cougars.
CGI transition from night skies over The Complex to fake, pink, morning skies. A young couple spoons in bed, practically fully clothed as their alarm clock goes off. You're already starting to lose me, MP. Female half of the couple asks what the occasion is for the early wake-up. Is male half going to help her teach the pledge of allegiance to her students? A teacher. That could get interesting... Ok, maybe not. They do the brushing teeth thing together as male explains he has some film editing to do and a birthday party to shoot. Female asks what's on tap for tonight with an obvious agenda and male brushes past her with way-too-obvious male obliviousness. A screening of a new print of Reservoir Dogs is tonight, he says. I wish you weren't just being a cheesy boyfriend and you were really going to that, male. We could be friends. There are way too many pop culture references in this scene. I skipped over Halo because I hate Halo, but there's that, Reservoir Dogs, Lord of the Rings and then the píèce de résistance. After trying to get male (revealed to be named Jonah) to acknowledge their anniversary, he plops down in front of the TV for misdirection and begins playing a sappy home movie of the couple set to Bright Eyes' "First Day of My Life." Lame. I don't care what your film credentials are, that's the laziest romantic gesture I've ever seen, and I once gave my girlfriend a Ren & Stimpy T-shirt for her birthday. And question: who was filming these shared moments between them? They're together in practically every shot of this iMovie travesty. He does manage to pull off some impressive (actually, I think it's rather scary) misdirection again when his film self says "Happy 5 Year Anniversary, Riley Richardson. Oh, and one more thing..." She turns to see Jonah has disappeared from his seat on the couch (see? scary) and is now kneeling beside her with a ring. He asks her the question and there's a scream. Not a scream of joy, mind you, but a shriek from outside. They rush out of their apartment to find a deer-in-headlights redhead (Ashlee Simpson-Wentz) staring down in fright as they are joined by the rest of the new cast around the swimming pool. Something tells me we're going to see that look a lot from Ashlee. The camera pulls back from their faces to show Sydney face down in the pool, her blood mixing with the chlorine and who knows what else in the Melrose Place swimming pool of indiscretion.
Cue logo title card floating... underwater. Classy.
Commercials highlighted by the Melrose Place Premiere Party. Or lowlighted, depending on how you look at it.
Back to the scene of the crime and there's a forensics team police-taping off the area. Everyone's blaming themselves for not answering the call-to-arms the night before. Auggie says he should've come back with David. Jonah asks Ella what the police had to say. They say she was stabbed in the doorway, there was a struggle down the stairs and she collapsed in the pool. Wow, how did they know all of that? Was it the trail of blood which anyone could've seen roped off by police tape? The group feels sorry for the little redhead who happened upon Sydney's corpse because she's a new tenant. Jonah wonders aloud how this could happen and Ella gives a cold response about stabbing people in the back and karma returning the favor. Ella, c