Melrose: The Place Where Disbelief Dies

The new Melrose Place is darker, grittier and perhaps even a bit sexier than its predecessor. It also tests America’s ability to suspend its collective disbelief. And it wins.

Television—and the entertainment world as a whole—require viewers to ignore reality and focus on the flashing images. Obviously no one believes Vampire Bill exists or that an ugly girl like Betty Suarez would get hired into the wild world of fashion. Those premises require a standard amount of disbelief, an amount that’s given a little leeway when dealing with soap operas, where the unbelievable becomes a regular occurrence. But Beverly Hills, 90210 and its popular spin-off Melrose Place largely eschewed aliens, evil twins and the like. At least they gave us some wiggle room to pretend the happenings were, well, happening.

Tonight’s premiere, however, pushed the envelope and successfully shattered our childlike ability to believe, if only for a moment, that the idiot box speaks the truth. The reality of this remake’s quest to dazzle becomes abundantly clear. But we suppose that’s the place to which the entertainment world was meant to land.

First and foremost, there’s the well-publicized return of Laura Leighton as Sydney Andrews. Avid fans immediately scratched their heads at the news. Sydney, of course, was run down on her wedding day by a run away car driven by Jo. It was all very sad and she was very dead (see photographic evidence, above0. The unbelievable explanation put forth in this evening’s episode? Michael Mancini helped her fake her death. Now, why would he do that? She was about to get married. But, never mind, because all this—and SoapNet reruns—reminded us that Leighton once played another character in the same universe, the original 90210’s “Sophie.” This brings us to our second point…

Actress Jessica Lucas appeared on 90210 last season as undercover cop Kimberly. 90210 and Melrose exist in the same fictional universe. Yet, here we are, less than a year later, and Lucas is playing a new character, Riley. For shame, producers! Yes, we know this is make believe, but at least make an effort to make our lives easier and not reuse the same actresses, especially since Kimberly’s love interest on 90210 will reportedly be making the move to Melrose. Surely there must be more actresses in Hollywood. Oh, wait, there’s Ashlee Simpson-Wentz.

It’s here that the viewer pushed to very nearly abandon any shred of disbelief they may still possess. No, we won’t rag on her sub-par acting ability, for we doubt we could do any better. But that’s hardly the most glaring problem in this casting call. Not only are we forced to look past young Ashlee’s previous life as a pop star, but we’re meant to swallow that tripe they call her nose. Puh-leaze!

While we’re on the subject of appearances, let’s discuss Stephanie Jacobsen, who plays medical student and soon-to-be whore Lauren Yung. Clearly her surname’s meant to indicate an Asianic background, yet her race appeared to change from shot-to-shot. One second she’s white, the next she’s Asian, the next she’s vaguely brown. We understand America’s supposed to be post-racial, but even Barack Obama’s presidency isn’t going to change the fact that we, the viewing public, still see race, and expect it to be consistent.

Yeah, the show’s totally bad and has the makings of a new guilty pleasure. God, we’re easy!