Again With This: Dawson's, Melrose, 90210

We pick back up where we left off with the last episode: Amanda and Jack, tussling at his house. In the process, Jack ends up flying off a third-story balcony onto the hard floor of the foyer, and since Amanda doesn't think she can call the authorities, she enlists Peter to help her deal with the situation. His scheme to get Jack admitted to the hospital with a minimum of questions from other pers...

Psychological torture is the order of the day: Brooke harasses Amanda by taking on Jack's new cable company as her latest client, and Jack lets Amanda know that if she tries to take too hard a line against him, he will retaliate by coming after her friends. Meanwhile, Peter tries to walk Kimberly through a therapeutic process that involves apologizing directly to all her bombing victims -- at a pa...

Now that Jack's told Amanda he tracked her down so they could officially get divorced, she's eager to get the process completed so that he can leave town; she doesn't even want any of his assets or their community property -- not even that big-ass painting!!! But as he keeps hanging around, she starts to worry that he's going to resume behaving in ways that made her fake her death to flee him in t...

Once Peter brings in a sketch artist to draw a portrait of Henry (fka Schmob) from Kimberly's description, he is determined to find out who he is -- a real person? a stand-in for someone else she knew? Kimberly can't summon the memory, so he calls her mother, who is clearly stricken at the sound of his name, and comes to L.A. to tell Kimberly the whole sordid story. Elsewhere, Peter gets subpoenae...

Since discovering Amanda PAREZI's Florida driver's license, Brooke evidently hasn't stopped thinking about what it could mean and how to use it to her advantage. So when she heads off to Miami to (as far as Billy knows) investigate a commercial real estate investment, she quickly turns up Amanda and Jack's wedding announcement and Jack's home address, where she meets the man himself and determines...

Remember the last episode when Matt punched Paul at the hospital and his lawyer Alicia was like "Please don't" and he was like "Cool, cool," and we thought he understood why such actions would NOT be good for his case? Well, in THIS episode, he's just decided to wire himself up and try to maneuver Paul into confessing to all his crimes so that he can get it on tape. Alicia destroys the first, not-...

Things are starting to get back to normal-ish at the complex: with the place under construction, Amanda has arranged for the tenants in the intact apartments to billet the ones whose apartments were ruined...and invited herself to Sydney's place. This is only one of Sydney's problems this week, however: instead of talking to Jo, the only other person affected by Jess's death, Jake is self-medicati...

The Season 4 premiere picks up where the Season 3 finale left off: with Kimberly setting off an explosion at the Melrose Place apartment complex!!! In the immediate aftermath, we kind of just have to sort out who lived and died, but don't worry -- there are way more of the former than the latter. Peter has Kimberly (justifiably) committed to a psych ward; it doesn't seem like Schmob is still bothe...

Incarcerated at the county jail, Michael gets help from an unexpected visitor: DR. PETER BURNS. Apparently the whole time he's been gone he was just lying low on the advice of his excellent attorney, who's cleared him on all legal charges. Peter does still need to convince the medical board not to pull his license, which is why he's going to bail Michael out: to extort him into extolling Peter's s...

Just in case Amanda wasn't fully convinced in the last episode that Michael was stalking her at home, Kimberly ALSO shows up in the parking garage at D&D to creep Amanda out by following her to her car, which Kimberly has also tagged with a gigantic "Die, Bitch" on the driver's side. Amanda then gets on board, threatening Michael herself if he doesn't leave her alone, not knowing that Kimberly...

Jake is still not okay with Jess and Jo's burgeoning relationship, so much so that he kicks Jess out and fires him from Shooters -- and, when Jo tries importuning him on Jess's behalf, lets her know he's not interested in seeing or talking to her as long as she and Jess are an item. In retaliation, Jess hits up a local pool hall and picks a fight with some toughs, apparently to determine whether t...

Sydney's gotten approached with a business deal from a couple of guys who just want to use the label to import and sell their pantyhose from China, and who know she used to work for Lauren. What could go wrong?! (You can probably guess.) She also happens to be home for the latest installment of Jess's attempt to bone Jo against every wall in Los Angeles, and since she hears everything on the other...

Brooke and Amanda's plot to depose Alison gets a convenient boost when a rep for D&D's latest very important client happens to have a connection to Brooke's father: she's able to leverage what she knows about his past to manipulate Alison into pitching a concept that will, shall we say, not land. Meanwhile, Amanda is ALSO being set upon constantly by Michael, trying to talk her into seeing him...

Michael's having a perfectly pleasant evening at home waiting for his wife to hurry up and die already when Sydney unexpectedly shows up and foils his plan. He's so distracted pretending to try to revive Kimberly that he doesn't notice Sydney stealing the suicide note for future blackmail purposes! Once Kimberly is conscious again, Sydney tells her about the scene she walked up on, but Kimberly de...

As Amanda battles back to consciousness, Michael's got his own fights: Kimberly reveals that she's returned early from Minnesota, she doesn't buy his stories about why Amanda's lingerie is all over the beach house, and he is officially on notice. This just convinces him to accelerate his exit plans, but then Kimberly runs into the city's insurance guy at the hospital before Michael does and takes...

The members of D&D's board of directors have taken notice of Amanda's increasing number of absences, and they've decided on a course of action: canning her and installing Alison in her place. It takes less than a day for Alison to learn that part of what made Amanda so surly in the role was the demands of the job. Desperate not to run into Alison, Amanda begs Michael to get her out of the comp...

Amanda and Michael are back from New York and navigating their new circumstances. Kimberly tells Michael she knows he and Amanda shared a room. Amanda doesn't think their dalliance should get in the way of her treatment. And yet...this guy does enough fancy footwork to get himself and Amanda to a resort in Santa Barbara AND Kimberly's sign-off. Amanda leaves Alison in charge of submitting D&D'...

Amanda having entrusted her treatment to Michael, the two of them head to New York so that they can doorstop the famous Dr. Steele and convince him to admit Amanda into his cancer study. But it's going to be hard once Kimberly calls Dr. Steele first and defames Michael, claiming his ultimate goal is to undermine Steele's study and get himself set up with one on the same treatment plan instead. And...

Once Sydney gets to see daylight again, she assesses her options and decides to stay at the compound. Martin takes this as proof that he's broken her, apparently, because he shows her where they keep the Abbot Way arsenal and starts right in on small arms training. What they don't know is that, back in L.A., Jane's been doing some research on Martin, figured out he's bad news, and convinced Jake t...

Though Amanda has apparently spent the entire time since we saw her last trying to ignore what Michael told her about the lump in her neck, he is refusing to let up, and another doctor at the hospital confirms his findings: Amanda does have Hodgkin's Disease. She resists Michael's forcible attempts to continue necessary testing, bitches out everyone who steps in her path at the office, but finally...

Someone puts sugar in Jo's gas tank. Someone slashes all the samples on the rack at Jane's studio. Someone breaks in at Jo's and steals all her cameras and gear. Jane points the finger at Sydney (who did, after all, have access to the motorcycle and the garments), who denies it...but the crime spree isn't over, and all the crimes do seem to target people Sydney considers her enemies. If not her, w...

You thought a standard Season 3 episode of Melrose Place crammed in a lot of drama? STRAP IN, because here comes a for-no-reason midseason double episode, and it is a doozy. Amanda and Peter are still pretending to be a couple while secretly plotting against each other. Peter and Caitlin's plan to pry Amanda out of her contract is to arrange for everyone at the agency to take a drug test for insur...

Amanda suddenly has some competition for Head Bitch In Charge at D&D when she walks into her office and sees JASMINE GUY sitting at her desk. Guy plays Caitlin Mills, an efficiency expert Peter has hired to shore up operations at the agency; Amanda is immediately suspicious -- and, as with every decision Peter makes, she has good reason. Amanda develops a scheme to try to blackmail Peter regar...

Already in a rage about Peter's controlling behavior, Amanda adopts a bah humbug attitude she takes out on everyone around her. And we all know the remedy: Bruce's unquiet spirit comes back to warn her about what will happen to her if she doesn't change her ways. Now that Jo has confirmed her maternity of the baby Kimberly's been raising, she apparently has no compunction telling everyone about it...

Alison tries to commit to treatment at Twin Oaks, but keeps getting static from Terry, an NFL star in her group who thinks she's being resistant to the process. After she confronts him about his third-grade-calibre attention-seeking, he admits that there's something to it: he's lashing out because he's also sexually compulsive, and he's drawn to her. When Billy doesn't appear at a special meeting...