RED ALERT: Melrose Place Might Be Coming Back?!?

Actually there's a lot of Aaron Spelling Content in here.

I interrupt my own regularly scheduled broadcast of What Am I Going To Write About This Week to bring you breaking news from Wednesday: CBS is shopping around a Melrose Place reboot starring OGs Daphne Zuniga (Jo), Laura Leighton (Sydney), and HEATHER FREAKING LOCKLEAR (Amanda Woodward, the eternal GOAT).

I cannot imagine we suddenly have a bunch of megayoung whippersnappers reading this newsletter, but should you need context, Melrose Place arrived in 1992 at the apex of Aaron Spelling’s powers. It began as a spinoff of Beverly Hills, 90210, and — as with its parent show — turned out an excruciatingly earnest first season that included stories like Rhonda Breaks a Promise, and Billy’s Screenplay Is Bad!!, and the classic, Will Billy Take Over His Dad’s Carpet Company??? It also, like 90210, included a wildly punchable and smug male lead character in Andrew Shue’s Billy (IMAGINE if he’d ever had a scene with Brandon Walsh), although at least they eventually leaned into that and made him evil, and brought in Heather Locklear to rip shit up and burn the place down — although, if you want to get technical, it was Marcia Cross’s Dr. Kimberly Shaw who actually did blow up the building. People died, or maybe didn’t, or were (ineptly) buried alive while presumed dead; WIGS WERE RIPPED OFF in ways that made us all scream in our dorm rooms; Josie “Jane” Bissett repeatedly said “DEEEsigns” and “DEEEsigner”; and Dr. Michael Mancini had sex with basically anyone who drifted past the apartment complex. It was awful, and then it was GREAT, and then it was awfully great, and then, in the end, like most aging soaps, greatly awful.

The CW tried to bring Melrose Place back from the dead a decade after its death, in 2009, on the heels of its reasonably successful 90210 revamp. They cast Katie Cassidy, Ashlee Simpson, that guy from the Traveling Pants movies who played Alexis Bledel’s cute Greek boyfriend, and some other Hot Youths of the Moment; they also roped in Leighton, Locklear, Zuniga, Bissett, and Thomas “Michael Mancini” Calabro, all in limited work. But Melrose Place 2.0 was, charitably, NOT GREAT, BOB, and only lasted 18 episodes before the axe fell. Here we are, 15 years beyond THAT, and Melrose Place is once again in the conversation. That is impressive.

The logline for this reboot, as written in Deadline:

In the new installment, when one of their dearest friends dies suddenly, the OG residents of Melrose Place gather to honor the deceased. But the pressure cooker of a reunion soon uncovers old traumas, rekindles old romances, reignites old resentments, and reveals new secrets… throwing our characters into chaotic drama that’s reminiscent of the past, but with a much more modern perspective.

I have notes.