A Man. And His Blog.

The CW's glamour soap aired during the TV season 2009/2010.

In an elegant Spanish-style apartment building in the trendy Melrose neighborhood of Los Angeles, a diverse group of 20-somethings have formed a close-knit surrogate family. Sydney Andrews (Laura Leighton) is the landlady, still beautiful at 40, and a central figure in the lives of all her tenants, especially handsome and rebellious David Breck (Shaun Sipos). Sydney started an affair with David despite her turbulent history with his estranged father, Dr. Michael Mancini (Thomas Calabro). Both father and son learned through experience that Sydney was not above using blackmail to control people.
Another tenant, high-powered publicist Ella Simms (Katie Cassidy), once considered Sydney her mentor, but their friendship was destroyed by betrayal, and Sydney threatened to evict Ella and ruin her career. Sydney also played a pivotal role in the career of Auggie Kirkpatrick (Colin Egglesfield). After they met at an AA meeting, she became Auggie’s sponsor and encouraged his dream to become a chef. Now a successful sous chef at the trendy restaurant Coal, Auggie has been avoiding Sydney since she began drinking again.
The other tenants include Lauren Yung (Stephanie Jacobsen), a medical student in desperate need of money to pay her student loans, and Jonah Miller (Michael Rady), an aspiring filmmaker who has just proposed to his live-in girlfriend Riley Richmond (Jessica Lucas), a first-grade teacher.
The newest tenant, 18-year-old Violet Foster (Ashlee Simpson-Wentz), has just arrived in L.A. with her own secret connection to Sydney. When a bloody body is found floating in the courtyard pool, David is the leading suspect. However, as the police are soon to discover, almost everyone living at Melrose Place had a reason to want the deceased out of the way.

Episode 01: Pilot
I wrote a pilot episode review back in September 2009, when all the pilots were airing. Click here for a quick read. 5/10

Episode 02: Nightingale
The episode could have been better, when the writers would cut the boring Jonah/Riley relationship slash engagement story, because it is not only boring, but I already know that this is bringing absolutely nothing. For Ella it is just a game to separate the two, she has other interests than Jonah. Or Katie Cassidy just acts bad.
Well, the rest was pretty much alright, but I couldn’t care less about the characters. Auggie is a really bad written character, and Colin Egglesfield is definitely not an actor to watch in the future. At least he fucked Sydney in the flashbacks, but for what use are they anyway? Just to show a character from the old series? Just to hint the viewer that Auggie is one of the suspects for the murder?
Lauren had another paid tête-à-tête, and the last scene with the guy just looked like she was a real escort girl. She handled it like a pro and jut played to get the money. But for me Lauren doesn’t have any feelings about her new “job”, which results in bad writing. Again.
Violet could be more crazier, while David is still a boring character. No, the show won’t be successful to entertain me. Not even the trash stories are working properly. 5,5/10

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