Seasons of Melrose Place

This is a summary of the seven seasons of Melrose Place, an American prime-time soap opera which was broadcast on Fox from 1992 to 1999. In 2004, Soapnet began repeating the series, and all episodes have been released on DVD.

Season one: 1992-1993[]

Season two: 1993-1994[]

Season three: 1994-1995[]

Season four: 1995-1996[]

Season five: 1996-1997[]

Cast[]

The season was produced by Chip Hayes, supervising producer Dee Johnson, co-executive producers Carol Mendelsohn and Charles Pratt, Jr., and executive producers Aaron Spelling, E. Duke Vincent and Frank South.

Summary[]

A detective tells Amanda (now married to Peter and incarcerated for Bobby's murder) that Peter is not who he claims to be. Jane and Sydney are concerned that the truth will emerge about what happened to Richard, who harasses and threatens the sisters (who do not know that he is alive). Jake and Alison begin an affair behind Billy's back. Kimberly couldn't remember her dinner with Peter, and his trial was only a few days away. Two characters are introduced: Taylor McBride (Lisa Rinna) and her husband Kyle (Rob Estes), a Boston restaurateur. Learning of Peter's arrest, Taylor goes to Los Angeles for answers, rents Jo's vacant apartment and persuades Kyle to move their restaurant to L.A. She seems to have a secret involving Peter, and clashes with Amanda.

Richard stalks Jane and Sydney. Artist Samantha Reilly (Brooke Langton)—Jane's new roommate—suspects that something is wrong. He is killed by a police officer when he tries to shoot the sisters at a rural convenience store, and the police let them keep the money he stole from Jane.

Kimberly begins to remember the dinner, and the waiter who waited on her and Peter is found. Peter is released as Taylor grows closer to him. Drinking heavily, he spends time at Kyle's restaurant. Alison declines Billy's proposal; she and Jake grow closer, and Billy's jealousy increases. When Jane learns about Jake and Alison's relationship she throws a brick through their bedroom window, slashes Alison's tires and obtains a restraining order against Jake. Taylor tells Peter that she is Taylor Davis, younger sister of his late wife Beth. Amanda begins to lose Peter as his interest in Taylor increases.

Another new character, Megan Lewis (Kelly Rutherford), meets Michael when he runs on the beach. They begin an affair, since Kimberly has been ordered by her psychiatrist not to have sex. When he learns that Megan is a prostitute, Michael wants to be the only man in her life.

Amanda meets a co-worker, Craig Field (David Charvet), whose father (Michael Des Barres) is her boss. Craig learns that he inherited the company from his mother, and harasses Amanda. His father dies of a heart attack after Amanda learns that he was involved in Craig's grandfather's murder.

Michael finds Megan and Kimberly talking, and learns that Kimberly hired Megan to sleep with him. Michael makes Megan give up prostitution (assuring her that he will pay her living expenses), and Kimberly learns that she has a brain tumor and three months to live.

Jane discovers that she was adopted and meets her mother, Sherri (Donna Mills). After she is robbed, Jane leaves her apartment and business to Sydney and visits her family in Chicago.

Alison learns that she is pregnant with Jake's baby. Ambivalent about the pregnancy, she returns to D & D and has a miscarriage which leaves her infertile. Despite this, they marry.

Matt's drug use becomes known and he enters rehab, beginning a relationship with director Dan Hathaway (Greg Evigan). Dan is domineering and physically abusive, and Matt leaves him after Peter threatens to have Dan fired if he does not address his behavioral problems.

Taylor and Kyle's marriage is troubled, and Kyle has a one-night stand with Sydney. Sydney is in a relationship with millionaire Carter Gallavan (Chad Lowe), which ends when he learns about her attraction to Kyle. A con artist fakes an accident at Sydney's store and, left penniless after a trial, she becomes a con artist herself.

Michael and Kimberly divorce as she coaxes him towards Megan. After Kimberly tells Megan she is planning suicide, she and Michael are injured in a car accident. Although Michael has a dream where Megan pulls him into heaven as Kimberly pulls him into hell, he promises Kimberly he will spend his last days with her and they reconcile.

Billy and Samantha begin a relationship after her fling with Craig. After they move in together, her father (who has escaped from prison) appears, demands money from them and takes off; the police tap their phone.

Jake reconciles with his son and ex-girlfriend after her husband leaves them, and Alison (who sees that he needs a family) pretends to start drinking again so he can leave her. Alison leaves for Atlanta, and Jake sells Shooters and moves to Ojai to join his former girlfriend and their son.

Peter and Taylor begin an affair, and Kyle and Amanda both file for divorce. Peter begins making Taylor look and act like his late wife, which she detests. Michael and Megan marry; this is his fourth marriage.

He and Taylor drug Peter, convincing him that he has epilepsy. Michael cheats Peter out of the chief-of-staff position by tricking him into signing a contract. When Peter learns the truth he throws Michael through a window, cutting the surgeon's hands, and tries to push Taylor off a lighthouse in the season finale when she tells him she is pregnant.

Sydney plots against Amanda, falling down a spiral staircase during a party at D & D and faking injury. Although Craig pretends to be concerned about Sydney to save D & D from a lawsuit, a genuine relationship develops.

Kimberly's brain tumor in remission, she tries to break up Michael and Megan before dying in her mother's arms from a ruptured aneurysm. Amanda loses control of D & D after Craig and Sydney launch a new advertising agency, and Sydney accepts Craig's proposal.

Michael's troublemaking younger sister, Jennifer (Alyssa Milano), appears. The woman with whom Kyle had an affair in Boston, she tries to break up his marriage to Taylor and (later) his romance with Amanda.

Matt's teenaged niece, Chelsea (Katie Wright), moves in with him after her father's death. Her estranged mother, Denise (Nancy Lee Grahn), initially wins a custody battle with him for his niece, who decides to stay with Matt anyway.

In the season finale, Sydney and Craig marry; Kyle leaves in the middle of the wedding to find Amanda, who plans to move to New York, and they reconcile. Working as a grocery-store cashier, Samantha is taken hostage by her father and in a high-speed police chase. As Craig and Sydney stand outside the church Samantha and her father (with the police in pursuit) plow into the wedding party, crash through a bus stop next to the church and run Sydney down. The episode ends with Craig sobbing over Sydney's body.

Note[]

• Hunter Tylo, of The Bold and the Beautiful fame, was originally cast as Taylor McBride. However, because of her pregnancy, she was fired before she could film any episodes. This led to the actress suing Aaron Spelling as a result. She was then replaced by Lisa Rinna.
• Five cast members left the show during this season: Josie Bissett, Marcia Cross, Courtney Thorne-Smith, Grant Show and Laura Leighton.

Season six: 1997-1998[]

Cast[]

The season was produced by Chip Hayes, supervising producer James Kahn, co-executive producers Carol Mendelsohn and Charles Pratt, Jr., and executive producers Aaron Spelling, E. Duke Vincent and Frank South.

Summary[]

The season marks the departures of Andrew Shue, Brooke Langton, Lisa Rinna, Alyssa Milano and Linden Ashby (6.34).

At the beginning of the sixth season, the show's ratings steadily fell. During most of the first half of the season, Heather Locklear's pregnancy was hidden from viewers with most of Amanda's scenes showing her from the chest up or hidden by props.

The day after Sydney's death Craig blames Samantha, but he later apologizes. In the season opener, Michael recommends Matt for a job at an AIDS clinic and Matt moves to San Francisco with his niece Chelsea. Before leaving, he says that he wanted to say goodbye to everyone but "nobody's home".

Two new characters are violent, vindictive Dr. Brett "Coop" Cooper (Linden Ashby) and his seductive ex-wife, snobbish heiress Lexi Sterling (Jamie Luner). The season focuses on Kyle and Amanda's troubled relationship; Amanda returns to her nasty ways after starting her own agency, Amanda Woodward Advertising. With Jake Hanson gone after selling Shooters, Kyle (backed by Amanda) opens the Upstairs Jazz Club and the bar becomes the group's new hangout. Amanda and Kyle's ex-wife, Taylor, continue their rivalry over him.

Kyle ignores warnings from Jennifer, Michael and Taylor that Amanda is untrustworthy and incapable of love. Amanda's mentor from a New York advertising agency, Eric Baines (Jeffrey Nordling), arrives in Los Angeles for a visit and tries to seduce her. When Amanda spurns his advances, Eric purchases the building with Kyle's restaurant and the jazz club to shut them down. Amanda then agrees to Eric's proposition, keeping it a secret. When Kyle finds out, he attacks Eric and threatens to kill him; Eric then returns their property and leaves town. However, Kyle is angry with Amanda for keeping Eric's proposition a secret and agreeing to it.

Billy and Samantha become engaged, and he asks Craig to be his best man. The couple have a falling-out after Samantha's old friend, Connie (Megan Ward), arrives in town. Although they reconcile and marry, Billy soon cheats on Samantha with Jennifer. Despite the affair, Billy is committed to making his marriage work. Samantha begins an affair with Jeff Baylor (Dan Gauthier), a minor-league baseball player.

Jennifer tries to attract Craig, who is grieving for Sydney, and he agrees to a physical relationship. Craig enters a business partnership with Michael for a mechanical surgical glove, an idea Michael stole from Cooper. Michael betrays Craig, using Jennifer to break up with him so Michael could dissolve the partnership and keep all the profits.

Craig attacks Jennifer after Michael ruins him, but she is helped by Billy after Billy destroys Craig's new advertising company. Craig escapes, steals Jennifer's car and commits suicide.

Peter ends his romance with Taylor after learning that she cooperated with Michael to trick him into thinking he had epilepsy and unseat him at chief of staff at Wilshire Hospital. Taylor tries to win Kyle back, pretending to be pregnant with his baby and asking Michael to impregnate her to make her story believable. She becomes pregnant, has a change of heart and tries to attract Michael, her baby's father.

Kyle is confronted with the return of Christine, his former Gulf War partner who was reported missing in action (and presumed dead) in Iraq, and Amanda is jealous of their friendship. When Christine attempts suicide before Kyle and Amanda's wedding, he abandons Amanda to save her. It is later revealed that Christine is not actually Christine, but she is actually Tiffany Hart (Susan Walters), a woman who Nick hired to pretend to be Christine (telling Kyle she had reconstructive surgery). In the psychiatric ward of Wilshire Hospital Tiffany is manipulated by Nick (another war buddy of Kyle's) and the jealous Taylor. After "Christine" sends another suicide letter to Amanda, Amanda visits her and threatens to kill her.

Tiffany (as Christine) escapes from the hospital to find Kyle and Amanda and tell them the truth about Nick and Taylor. However, Nick runs Tiffany into Kyle's car, accidentally killing her, and he and Taylor bring her dead body to a railway line. After their wedding Kyle and Amanda receive a desperate letter from "Christine", and rush to the railway to rescue her. They are too late; she is "killed" by a train.

Amanda, guilty about Tiffany/Christine's "suicide", breaks up with Kyle. When she marries evil businessman Rory Blake (Anthony Tyler Quinn), Kyle ruins the ceremony after discovering that the woman he saw killed by a train was actually a swindler. Taylor and Nick had manipulated the fake Christine into working for them; the real Christine had been killed by a bomb in Iraq. After Rory tries to kill Amanda for her money, Kyle kills him in self-defense and they remarry.

Peter begins a romance with Cooper's ex-wife, Lexi, who asks for his help getting more alimony from her ex-husband (who had a brief affair with Kimberly Shaw when she was recovering in Ohio years earlier). Lexi is addicted to antidepressants, and Peter saves her from a lethal overdose. Her father, who disapproves of her relationship with Peter, dies of a stroke during an argument with him. Blaming Peter, Lexi breaks up with him and reconciles with Cooper (who tries to help her run her late father's business). Cooper forces Lexi to remarry him, ostensibly to protect her from prosecution for her late father's business deals but also to kill her and get her father's money.

Michael faces off with Cooper, who tried to ruin his life because of Kimberly's death. Megan divorces Michael over his manipulation in unseating Peter as the hospital's chief-of-staff and begins a relationship with Cooper. Fired from the hospital, Michael opens a clinic in a poor Los Angeles neighborhood and avenges Megan and Cooper by ruining their plans to move to Philadelphia. He reconciles with Peter after saving his life when they were fishing, regaining part of the Burns-Mancini practice and his job at Wilshire.

Michael attends his high-school reunion and reunites with Jane, his first wife, who followed him to Melrose Place. Samantha and Jeff try to break up Billy and Jennifer by sending a fake fax from Alison in Atlanta, which breaks Jennifer's heart because she thinks he still cares about her.

Samantha, Jennifer, Billy, Taylor and Coop leave by the end of the season. In the season finale, Taylor gives birth to Michael's son (Michael Junior McBride) and agrees to share motherhood with the returning Jane. She then reconsiders, returning to Boston to raise the baby alone. After Coop's attempt on Lexi's life on a fishing boat, he leaves town to take a job with a man who had tried to con Megan into sex.

Note[]

• Only Thomas Calabro and Andrew Shue are original cast members to remain. Shue left in season finale.
• Doug Savant left after season premiere.

Season seven: 1998-1999[]

Cast[]

The season was co-produced by Heather Locklear and Antoinette Stella, coordinating procure Robert Del Valle, supervising producer Peter Dunne, and executive producers Aaron Spelling, E. Duke Vincent, Carol Mendelsohn and Charles Pratt, Jr.

Summary[]

New characters were added for the series' final season, including Kyle's younger brother Ryan McBride (John Haymes Newton) (whose daughter lived in a New York convent after her mother's death) and Eve Cleary (Rena Sofer), Amanda's friend from school. Matt, who had moved away a year earlier, is revealed to have died in a car crash on his way to a reunion dinner at Kyle's restaurant. He kept a coveted journal of all the secrets the residents shared with him.

After her sham remarriage to Cooper, Lexi apologizes to Peter for blaming him for her father's death and they reconcile. However, Peter realizes that he still cares for Amanda and Lexi dumps him again, and this time for good. Lexi then launches a campaign against Amanda, buying the Melrose Place building from her and opening a new advertising agency, Sterling-Conway Advertising, which drives her out of business.

Amanda and Eve Cleary were high-school cheerleaders in Dallas, Texas. An ugly encounter ended in the death of Eve's boyfriend and her 15-year imprisonment. Kyle learns about their past, agreeing to keep it from Peter (Eve's new husband).

When Kyle and Amanda try to conceive Peter accidentally gives him the wrong test results, indicating that he is sterile. Kyle descends into alcoholism; Amanda is depressed by his behavior, until they reconcile after Kyle finishes rehab. Although Amanda agrees to sell the building to buy their dream home, their marriage ends.

Josie Bissett returned to the series as Jane in 1998, and plotlines centered on her rekindling relationship with Michael. She slept with a client of Amanda's the day before her wedding to Michael, leading to his distrust of her as they decide to marry again. After exchanging vows again, they are estranged and on the road to divorce within hours. They have a brief reunion at Christmas.

Megan and Ryan begin a relationship, marrying in the series finale. Jane joins Kyle (the actors were married in real life) and Amanda joins Peter (despite his marriage to Eve). Lexi becomes sexually involved with Michael, but they break up after she rejects his proposal (realizing that they cannot be faithful to each other).

By early 1999, Fox decided to cancel the show due to falling ratings and high production costs. In the final episode, Amanda and Peter face mounting scrutiny; he is investigated for embezzling from the hospital, and she learns that Amanda (not Eve) killed her boyfriend 15 years ago. When they flee the country their hideout explodes, apparently killing them both. Eve cracks at their memorial service, throws Peter's ashes on Lexi and is jailed. Michael becomes Wilshire Hospital's chief-of-staff. Kyle and Jane discover that she is having Michael's baby, and an anonymous envelope appears containing Amanda's locket. At the end of the series finale Amanda and Peter marry on a tropical beach, rejoicing at their success in faking their deaths and paying Michael a million dollars in hush money. In the final scene, they walk along the beach to "Closing Time."

Notes[]

• Thomas Calabro and Josie Bissett are the only original cast member to appear in season seven.
• Thomas Calabro appeared in the most episodes of Melrose Place, 222, sixteen more than Heather Locklear (206) and twenty-four more than Andrew Shue (198).
• On January 31, 1999, FOX announces Melrose Place cancellation.^[4] Lot of tributes were released by Los Angeles Times, New York Times, TV Guide and Entertainment Weekly.
• This also marks the final appearances by Rob Estes, Jamie Luner, John Haymes Newton, Kelly Rutherford, and Jack Wagner in the franchise. Estes later played Harry Wilson in the 4th spin-off 90210.

References[]