Melrose Place' remake collapses

    Hot off the success of the  teen soap remake "90210" that aired in 2008, the CW brings yet another ‘90s remake to their schedule this fall, this time chronicling the lives of hot, young, Californian twenty-somethings in "Melrose Place." The combination of sexy actors and no small amount of drama is the key to success for many shows, but "Melrose Place" fails to entertain. The dialogue and acting make the show straight-up boring; the only joy to be had in watching this show comes from laughing at its mediocrity.
    While the show's mediocre acting could amble its way through some standard, prime-time soap opera plot, it falls completely flat when faced with anything more challenging, a problem when the main focus of the series is a grisly murder.
    Intrigue begins for the new incarnation of "Melrose Place" when Sydney, the infamous landlord of the titular apartment complex, played by original series member Laura Leighton, is murdered. David, the son of another original Melrose Place character, is a rich-boy-gone-cat-burglar and the prime suspect in the murder case though his friends believe the violent, former-drug-dealing bad boy incapable of the crime.
    Among these skeptical friends is Ella Simms (Katie Cassidy) a take-no-mercy publicist with a hidden romantic side, as evidenced by her not-so-secret love for Jonah Miller (Michael Rady), an aspiring filmmaker. Jonah's morals prevent him from blackmailing his way to success, but win him a tardy "yes" to his marriage proposal from the mysteriously reluctant Riley Richmond (Jessica Lucas).
    Meanwhile, Lauren Yung's (Stephanie Jacobson) father leaves her to foot her own medical school bills, rendering her vulnerable to a proposition by an out-of-town businessman to have sex with her for money. She insists that she is "not a prostitute," leading to the most unintentionally funny scene in the pilot episode when she explains the situation to the slightly loony Violet Foster (Ashlee Simpson-Wentz.) All that the audience can gather about Violet is that she may be Sydney's daughter, and that she has some serious crazy eyes.
    Simpson-Wentz brings the only relief from the series' generally boring and tiresome characters, though only because her breathy line renderings and lack of acting skills are positively hilarious. The weakest link in the chain, Simpson-Wentz makes the show almost worth watching, inspiring a kind of sick fascination in viewers.
    The new "Melrose Place" goes wrong where its precursor must have gone right. The show's first problem, setting aside the alternately wooden and melodramatic acting, would be the unsympathetic characters. Why should the audience root for Jonah and Riley to overcome a vague and inconsequential obstacle to their relationship when they make such a boring couple? Lauren's dilemma between her unpaid school loans and her insistence on not becoming a call girl could have been fun. But she transforms from an interesting character in the first episode to an almost completely unlikeable one in the second.
    Viewers can't even root for the villainous Ella even though she is almost convincing gutsy witch the series evidently wants her to be. Ella needs to up her bad-girl quotient and get some better catty lines — or at the very least improve her fashion sense and wear something more flattering than the lumpy white sheet she tries to flaunt in the second episode. She does have potential, though, and has already shown signs of becoming a deliciously fun character to watch — maybe the show's saving grace in the future.
    This murder-on-the-Orient Express-meets-SoCal revolves around callously self-absorbed characters that aren't even interesting, which is really the show's central problem. At least other CW shows such as "Gossip Girl" present audiences with morally repugnant characters who also happen to be incredibly fun.