Darren Star
Melrose Place

The Nineties. Dark years, when the kingdom of shadows was more powerful than ever.

Why? How should I know. I prefer to leave sociological discussions to the sociologists. Perhaps because of the common perception that the world was about to end, with ominous omens like Chernobyl, the fall of the Wall, Tangentopoli, the Millennium Bug... especially the latter, a catalyst of doubts and paranoias like no other event.
Everyone knew what had been before, which was clear: the war, the Fifties and the return to normal, the Sixties with the economic boom, the Seventies with everything they brought along, the myth, a sort of new Golden Age, the shiny and plastic Eighties with the ring of decadence that I like to see summed up in the New Wave and New Romantic movements, and finally the Nineties, when the catchphrase was that "life sucks" which Cobain was able to summarize better in a single gesture than in several albums; but no one could know what was about to come, and it would have been legitimate to expect a change, starting from the four digits, 2000 and no more a thousand, "A thousand and not more than a thousand" to unseat Nostradamus. Then the universal flood didn't happen, leaving us in the total void of these years, which, try as I might, I cannot define. Void and chaos together are the only things that come to mind.

Leaving aside these, which are my thoughts before falling asleep, one fact remains: the Nineties and the darkness. As much as I am truly a wretch and the time I should spend on study or having a social life I spend compulsively thinking, it's undeniable that there's a connection. Grunge, Twin Peaks, X-Files, Millennium, the introspective turn of Nick Cave, I don't think it's a big coincidence. Darkness, in my opinion, reigned supreme. So supreme that it was felt even where it never was.

Indeed, "Melrose Place" was nothing but this, a pure entertainment series, without any visionary pretensions, only with a more adult target audience than what "Beverly Hills" had and/or had had, the elder brother. Even the time slot suggested so: initially, it was broadcast in the late evening.

Substantially, then, an adult program, a generic concept when not banal. Everything revolved around a handful of young, more or less young, and more or less hopeful individuals, residing, precisely, at "Melrose Place", Los Angeles, among which Thomas Calabro, Dr. Michael Mancini, the only character and actor to remain for the entire duration of the series, a Marcia Cross of Desperate Housewives memory, in the role of the schizophrenic Kimberly (perhaps one of the highest points reached by the series), a Courtney Thorne-Smith of According To Jim memory, in the role of Alison, a Jack Wagner of Bold and the Beautiful memory in the role of Dr. Peter Burns, a Heather Locklear in the role of a ruthless yet beautiful Amanda, are worth remembering.
The object of the matter was nothing but the more or less dramatic vicissitudes involving the same.

So far, nothing to tear your hair out about, but here the purpose of the premise reveals itself: the darkness. Was there one, of these here, who did not have a dark side, a double personality, a fundamental ambiguity; one who, for as sunny, cheerful, and carefree as he was, did not foster revenge, did not hate, did not despise, did not envy. And so the plot was essentially a succession of double games, deceitful tricks, reprisals, perpetrated by more or less crazy characters at the expense of more or less evil ones. People being run over, kidnappings, extortions, murders, houses blowing up, admissions to asylums, affairs as if it rained: all of this was the order of the day.
And a "disturbed" component truly typical of the years. Two standout scenes at random: the blonde Jane who, aided by her sister, kills her boyfriend with a shovel and buries him, only to walk away and make way for the "cliffhanger" with his hand surprising the audience by popping out of the ground; and, above all, the delirious Kimberly who, looking in the mirror, removes her wig revealing a horrible scar. The veil that falls, the mask, the theme of the double, good against evil, light and shadow. The darkness, indeed.

Unfortunately, the Nineties ended and left things like Melrose Place to be remembered only by a few dimwits who spend their time among petty existential doubts and useless considerations on the past like myself. Nostalgia for a time that, as dark as it was, as depressing as it was, as much as perhaps only pleased and pleases me, at least it was a time and it meant something.

Genre: Drama