Again With This: Dawson's, Melrose, 90210

Before launching into Season 5 of Melrose Place , we're taking a quick break for something very silly: Thunderdome! You all know Thunderdome from the feature film Mad Max: Beyond Thunderdome , right? If not, it's an arena where combatants are sent to fight to the death. So we're engaging in a thought experiment where we throw in 18 90210 side characters, talk through who would probably prevail in...

Obviously, Sydney knows her bargaining position is weak, but she really attempts many different arguments to convince Jane not to follow through on her whole Richard-killing plan. None of them works. A Hail Mary to get JAKE to talk to Jane and urge her not to make any "funky" decisions -- not that she specifies what those might be -- does bring Jake to the design studio just in time to see Jane tr...

Peter is down bad at Willowbridge, but not out: he decides to try to work his magic on the soft-hearted, lonely, apparently horny Nurse Benson (Priscilla Presley!), offering to "make [her] happy," wink, if she'll just help him leave the hospital -- even just for one night! Meanwhile, on the outside, Amanda and (to a much lesser extent) Michael make pretty decent amateur sleuths, as Amanda tracks K...

Peter gets a lot of bad news right away: Alycia's dead, Kimberly's in the wind, and all evidence points to him as Bobby's murderer. At least he convinces Amanda that he didn't kill her ex, even though she, you know, obviously knows he definitely DID try to kill AMANDA HERSELF. But never mind! He's very pleased when Kimberly appears at his house out of the blue, but despite criticizing MICHAEL earl...

How do you follow up an episode that closed with one partner in a medical practice getting arrested for sexual misconduct while the other -- who was actually guilty of the crime -- was left unconscious and possibly dead from a hammer blow by one of his wife's Dissociative Identity Disorder alters? It seems unlikely but "MELROSE UNGLUED ACTUALLY TOPS IT." Amanda finds a way to buy Peter out of his...

Teri has decided to sidestep charges and just sue Peter over the Brandi affair. Almost everyone is telling him to settle -- like Michael, who offers to pitch in, and Alycia, who...is representing him despite their rather recent and quite acrimonious breakup; only Amanda is urging him to defend himself. Perhaps given all this trouble, he's a bit distracted when Kimberly begs for his help with her m...

Though we might find it impossible to imagine D&D without Amanda, it seems that her jerk boss Arthur Field doesn't think she's so integral: he still hasn't renewed her contract, even though she's still boning his golden boy Billy and fending off Peter's advances. Stung, Peter agrees to do Kimberly a favor by getting Michael out of town for a few days, and brings him to San Diego to judge a bea...

It's time for the social event of the year: the Coastal Advertising Conference! And Billy has been preparing by going being Amanda's back to her boss, Arthur Field ("...Who?" exactly) and lobbying him to let Billy make the keynote speech even though Amanda has done it for the past several years. Amanda decides to spite both Arthur AND Billy by giving the assignment to Alison...and from there thing...

Now that Alycia has succeeded in pushing Bobby out of the company, Peter (whose injuries from that four-foot fall over the railing in the previous episode were not serious) is ready to part ways with Alycia: there's nothing left to scheme about and they don't really like each other. But she isn't ready to let him go, and informs him that buying his way out of both the cable company and their sham...

It's not only that Billy continues to be the absolute worst -- which he absolutely does. It's that Amanda keeps coming right up to the edge of shutting him down and then doesn't, because even though he's a pig, he's a pig who's bringing work to the agency. This time, his risky gambit is to take a vodka client he and Alison are pitching to get a true "American" experience at a strip club with mud w...

This plot to bring down Bobby's cable company is turning out to be a real drag for everyone behind it! First Alycia has an attack of conscience about making Bobby look like a mobster when what he wanted most was to go legit. Then Peter hears from Amanda that she's on the company's board of directors, so if Bobby goes down, he might drag her down with him. Will Peter be able to get this scandal tra...

You know how when you have one ex-wife working for you and then pick back up with the ex-wife you actually haven't divorced yet and this one lets you know she wants you to fire the other one? Well, Michael does! After Kimberly uses her wiles to convince Michael to let Sydney go, Sydney fires back with sexual harassment lawsuits Peter and Michael are kind of forced to take seriously. At the same ti...

As we probably all assumed after the last episode, Brooke is not coming back from her fall into the pool. Billy does his best not to let his estranged wife's sudden passing affect his life at all -- with a funeral to plan two days after her death, why wouldn't he still go to work and continue trying to get Alison to sleep with him? -- but it's not up to him: Brooke's restless ghost simply will not...

While Sarah takes one more week away, we are thrilled that Heather Cocks and Jessica Morgan of GoFugYourself.com can join us once again.... As Brooke's life rapidly unravels, no one cares except her mortal enemy Alison, who encourages Billy to help Brooke out financially (he does; she refuses) before finding Brooke living in her car and ordering her to come live with Alison instead. Brooke repays...

Sarah is out this week spending time with family, so we welcome Heather Cocks and Jessica Morgan -- authors, fashion bloggers, and longtime Melrose Place fans -- as our guest co-hosts.... It's pretty wild how Sydney's choice to abandon a partially paralyzed woman on the beach and leave her at the mercy of the tides has really sent everyone in their orbit into a tizz! Sydney herself is worried that...

Jane's ongoing paralysis storyline basically embroils everyone this week, so let's run down the list. Peter, because Michael has made good on his threat to move out of the beach house as long as both Andrews sisters are there, and is now Odd Coupling it up at Peter's place. Bobby and Amanda, because their story branches off from Peter's. Matt, because Jo has brought him the pills she found in Rich...

In the aftermath of Brooke's suicide attempt, a guilt-ridden Billy does everything he can think of to fulfill what he thinks are her wishes: he tells her he loves her; he gets rid of Alison; he demands that Amanda give Brooke her job back; he even cleans the bathroom floor! So if Brooke assumes they're fully back on track and that she can resume using him to try to make that baby she needs, who ca...

It's about to be New Year's Eve, but not everyone's in a celebratory mood -- like Peter, who's getting sued for malpractice by some patient we don't know. Bobby invites Amanda and Peter to his house in Palm Springs, and though it seems like it'll be awkward with just the three of them there, Amanda rooks Alison into going, too. It's not like Alison has much going on back home: she starts out icing...

Just in time for Jane to decide she should try to mend fences with her antagonists at work, Jo goes soft and asks Richard not to go through with his plans to push her out of the business -- at least not so close to Christmas! Richard agrees, but doesn't consider whether he should put the damning paperwork into a drawer or cabinet that locks. Kimberly continues treating Sydney, giving her actually...

Look, at this point is it even worth trying to figure out what's going on with Kimberly's whole legal situation? Apparently the administration at Wilshire Memorial has given up, because they've agreed to let her work there again -- as a psychiatric intern, but still. The hospital turns out to be the nexus of a lot of new drama: Bobby makes a gigantic anonymous gift, crediting Peter as the rainmake...

Once Amanda recovers from the shock of (a) seeing Bobby after seven years and (b) seeing the gun in his waistband, she agrees to let him explain himself: he still truly loves her, does not intend to kill her, and would never hurt her in any way. She's ready to say goodbye and part on friendly-ish terms...or so she says, but the single tear that falls down her cheek after her flashback to a night o...

Between her great new radio gig and the removal of her wrist monitor, Kimberly is really feeling herself. And it turns out she'd like men to feel her too -- as many as she can get! She's so busy scoring that she maaaaaay not devote enough concern to Vic, who keeps calling the show to tell her how bad he thinks her advice is. However, she DOES take a break from her sexcapades to warn Sydney that re...

Remember when the Jo/Jane/Richard/Jake/Shelly situation was merely a love pentagon ? WELL. Jane tries a power play on Jo upon her return, with Richard, to the studio after their Hawaii sojourn, leaving all of Jo's photography gear in the lobby and informing her that she's fired. Richard then informs Jane that in a 50/50 partnership, she can't unilaterally fire anyone. After seeing Jo and Richard l...

After Jack kicks off in the cold open, everyone who knew anything about the circumstances surrounding his death braces for possible consequences. Michael thinks he can delay the autopsy results from getting to Nick, Jack's lawyer. Peter ignores whatever Kimberly's up to so that he can support Amanda. But she's mostly just happy the only person she ever feared has died...until Sydney gathers both h...

Inconveniently, Jack continues to live. Amanda is still keeping vigil at his bedside while also strategizing with Peter on how to get them both out of this, but when she tries to self-medicate with Halloween party shots, Peter intervenes...and then gets everything he wanted, if not quite the way he wanted it. At the same time, Sydney has determined that Peter and Amanda are doing something shady,...