Ode Upon a Sydney Andrews

Syd is dead.  Long live Syd.  Oh, wait.

The new Melrose Place quickly established a kinship with Melrose Classic by exhibiting a willingness to pile indignities upon Laura Leighton's oft-frazzled redhead.  The old Sydney Andrews was a self-defeating wannabe.  She coveted her sister's sloppiest seconds, blackmailed herself into a loveless marriage, haplessly traded her scratch for cash.  Got lured into a cult by Traci Lords.  Last the world saw her, she'd finally tied the knot with a designated himbo-of-her dreams; she exited the church to meet a hailstorm of uncooked rice and an oncoming truck.

Poor Syd.

All great tales must be retold, so The CW has resurrected Aaron Spelling's briefly thrilling nighttime sudser.  It's impossible to tell how it will go.  People tend to forget that Darren Star's 90210 spin-off was earnest and dull in its early eps.  MP didn't get tolerable until special guest star-for-life Locklear found the show's balls and grabbed them, MP didn't get good until its dual-action carrot-topped wrecking crew wielded its kung-fu grip.  Marcia Cross' psycho Doctor Kimberly Shaw was the show's screwy head, Leighton's Sydney Andrews was its stomped-on heart.  And lo, they were good.

For a while.  Of Melrose's seven (!) seasons, only years two through four were Cracker Jack.  Diminishing returns set in as the producers both exhausted the couplings among its core cast and revealed themselves incapable of holding their liquor.  When the show got wild, they were unwilling to turn into the skid; instead of spinning off into the absurd wonder their creation wanted to be, they shuffled their deck faster and faster.  There was no longer a reason to care, nothing at which to wonder.

(More than the real thing I miss my own imagined Melrose Place, a world where Mole Men came up through the haunted courtyard pool, where everyone knew that Jake was a robot, where a disembodied hand was a central character, where Dr. Peter Burns was really the supernatural reincarnation of dead talk-show host Bert Convy.)

While it was good (a for a little while after that) I watched that show religiously.  I also drank religiously.  The two went well together.  My recollections are spotty but intense, everything's been internalized.  The bad things -- the Parezis, rapey Richard Hart, Lisa Rinna's lips -- cramp my colon.  The reliably awful things -- Biwwy and Alithon, every single Matt storyline -- have taken refuge in my appendix; don't know why they're there, but they're a part of me all the same.  Kimberly is the big evil grin carved into the side of my skull and Syd -- poor, put-upon Syd -- keeps pushing the blood through, ka-thump, ka-thump.

When Melrose II was announced, Leighton got paraded around as a link to the legacy.  Other olds will cash a check -- Tom Calabro's Michael Mancini (oh, that Michael, I hate him, he's just so smug) has been given both screen time and spawn, so far, it looks like Jane and Jo are scheduled to pass through.  But Leighton was special because Syd was special.  Of all the characters, she maintained the biggest gulf between perception and reality, but her frustrated fantasies were very small and human:  She wanted to be loved and accepted for who she was, that's all.  She was punished for this.  The first time Syd got sent out as a whore, she thought she was on an honest date with a successful man.  As she left in tears, the show showered Maria McKee down upon her.

Maria McKee - Why Wasn't I More Grateful (When Life Was Sweet)(mp3)(buy)

(The new Melrose has already ventured into this territory with tuition-craving med student Lauren Yung (Stephanie Jacobsen, late of Battlestar Galactica: Razor, here having American accent troubles).  She got The Killers' "The World We Live In" as marching music.)

Syd's failures could manifest as tragicomic naïveté -- again, Traci Lords, cult -- but they could also ground a show intent on being ridiculous.  Leighton got some beefy scenes of rejection and despair, played them close to her chest.  Syd was special.

Syd was also dead, of course, but this was/is Melrose Place.

The new show very summarily explained her resurrection -- Mancini Jr. blurted that Mancini Sr. helped "fake" her death, oh, whatever -- then set about being cruel to her all over again.  Sydney Andrews 2009 is the Melrose Place landlord.  She is a pathetic, manipulative alcoholic who had an affair with the drug-dealing son of her former husband.  And... she's dead, again, already.  Found with a knife in her back, floating in the pool.  Like ten minutes into the pilot.

It gets worse!  She might have been killed by a boy named "Auggie."  (Though, as her corpse was discovered right after we were forced to suffer through a lengthy courtship video set to Bright Eyes' "First Day of My Life," I suspect suicide.  God knows I was contemplating it.)  And the only other redhead currently in the cast will probably turn out to be her daughter; that character is "acted" by Ashlee Lipsynch-Rhinoplasty.

From the description of a fraction of the plot, it might seem like this new Melrose has a lot going on.  Maybe it does, maybe it has to have that.  Culture kept accelerating as generations crept past X, everything's bulletpoints and acronyms, On Beyond Balzac.  (Yes, the pilot mentioned Twitter.)  There's nothing here for me right now, I don't care which muppet sleeps with which other muppet, I can already see them shuffling.  I am not young and not drunk enough to want to watch this.  I was giddy when 90210-2 appeared, giddy until I realized I just needed a quick nostalgia fix and that they were just bringing back Nat to do the same old nothing.  Maybe I'll like New Melrose Place eventually.  Maybe once it finds its bearings and realizes they're off the map.  Maybe when it finds its Locklear and its Cross.

But it already had a Laura Leighton and it tossed her away.

I quit the original Melrose long before I quit alcohol... but I quit that, too.  In a couple weeks it will be ten years since I had my last drink.  Kids, you want to feel old?  Someday they will remake a show you watched as a dedicated goof after you graduated from college.  And they will tease you in with one of your favorite characters and then they will shove something sharp in them and fling them over a railing.  You and me, Sydney Andrews, we are old.  One of us is probably dead.  And suddenly my back doesn't feel so good.

Sonic Youth - Superstar (mp3)(buy)

Yeah, I know, maybe she isn't really dead this time, either.

Here's a weird bit of trivia for you:  For a good long while -- I'm thinking from the time Syd got her own apartment to the point where the building done blowed up -- Ms. Andrews had a poster for the 1994 Carpenters tribute album If I Were a Carpenter on her wall.  I don't know that any of the songs from it were ever featured in an episode.  None of the tracks were on the official Melrose Place Soundtrack.  But there you go.

It features a weird mix of performers - American Music Club, Dishwalla, Cracker, Redd Kross, 4 Non Blondes, Grant Lee Buffalo, Babes in Toyland, The Cranberries, Shonen Knife - and like all collections of this sort there are hits and misses.  But if you have someone in your life who can't stomach an actual Carpenters record, it works as a decent gateway drug.  A lot of the songs weren't originally recorded by Karen and Richard C., just "made famous" by them.

"Superstar" was first a Delaney & Bonnie ditty, came to the Carpenters via Bette Midler.  The Sonic Youth version (which cropped up later on the Juno soundtrack and... seriously, you're better off with If I Were a Carpenter) is classic, simultaneously expansive and reverent, Moore's vocals so contained and moving. 

That one's for you, Syd.

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I haven't seen Shilpa Ray (myspace) in a long time - my fault, not hers - but the record I wrote about back in January (or some variation thereof) is set for release on 9/22.  The show she's playing this Thursday (9/10) with Boss Hogg (tix) at the brand new reconstituted Knitting Factory (formerly the reconstituted Luna Lounge) is "an official record release party" according to the official PR e-mail I got.  You should go because I cannot.

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'Reznor doesn't have a particularly grim backstory-he grew up with his grandparents, liked to pole fish with his grandfather, took piano lessons, and played Judas Iscariot in his high school's production of "Jesus Christ Superstar"-but he has written some very durable "Fuck you, Man!" songs.'  Sasha Frere-Jones was at all four NYC NIN shows, will be hosting a chat with about Reznor at 3PM today (Wednesday, 9/9).

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 You know who doesn't need any more of my money?  The goddamn motherfucking Beatles.

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"Advances in consumer protection rules and fireproofing technology have led to a drop in the frequency of fires, so medical emergencies have helped keep firefighters employed."

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'What I hadn't expected was that A.A. was virtually theater. As we went around the room with our comments, I was able to see into lives I had never glimpsed before. The Mustard Seed, the lower floor of a two-flat near Rush Street, had meetings from 7 a.m. to 11 p.m., and all-nighters on Christmas and New Years' eves. There I met people from every walk of life, and we all talked easily with one another because we were all there for the same reason, and that cut through the bullshit. One was Humble Howard, who liked to perform a dramatic reading from his driver's license--name, address, age, color of hair and eyes. He explained: "That's because I didn't have an address for five years."'

Personally, AA meetings only ever made me want to drink.  But I'm happy they're out there for the folks who need them, and a big shout-out like this one is a good way to deflate twelve-step cynicism.  Also, hey, Roger Ebert, who knew?

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I envy this creature.  It has so much nothing ahead of it.

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Don't Blink:  Neil Gaiman is writing and directing a silent short about statues that fall in love for YouTube UK's Sky Satellite TV.

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Post-Happiness:  " At a hotel along the way, he has an extraordinary sexual encounter with a lonely, chillingly blunt woman, which alone is worth the price of admission; the writing here and the performances by both actors are spellbinding."

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"What's the sound I hear?  Jimmy Fallon crying?"  (Warning:  Big scary Craig Ferguson puppet face, no musical number.)

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"I'm not building a Frankenstein who can't speak English."

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Britney Spears, "You Oughta Know."  (via)

tags: melrose place  maria mckee  sonic youth  rip  

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