‘Melrose Place’: Who let the dogs out?
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Oh, Ben. That dog. He went and broke up with Amanda because he was bored with her, and now he’s turned on by Riley’s earnest quest to better the public school system.
I cannot fathom how Riley, with all her years (months?) teaching kids, could be so naive when it comes to her love life and didn’t see this coming. Still, she sees the pot-kettle-black parallel to her messy situation with Jonah and Riley and doesn’t want to hurt Amanda, ‘the very person who got [her] this job’ (and got her fired from her teaching job and helped botch her modeling gig).
But it’s not like Ben’s the only hound in this episode: Riley’s speech didn’t stop her from a few lip locks and gushing to Lauren about how great Ben is. It’s hard to imagine that Ben could have dated Amanda Woodward for so long and run a successful business of his own without suspecting that she wouldn’t at the very least send a private investigator to snap a few photos of said canoodling. Maybe this is part of some Ben-Amanda master plan aligned with something Chuck and Blair would dream up on ‘Gossip Girl’ to destroy Riley’s spirit. Maybe Riley’s just the new Allison?
Since tonight seems to be about nothing but relationships, it’s only fitting--and I’m sure completely realistic--that there was also a pool basketball scene with boys with their shirts off talking about girls. Sigh. Sometimes I miss Auggie.
But here, at least, we learn that David loves Lauren so, so much that he’s going to go legit and use his dirty money to buy Coal from Rick Fox. Yet he doesn’t seem so bent up when Lauren dumps him to save her own hide from Dr. Mancini’s wrath that he can’t enjoy a hookup with the crazy, bored rich girl who was able to track him down after he stole a ring from her mother’s bedroom.
Despite being in a similar line of work, David also doesn’t seem to notice that someone sneaked in and subbed out the Sydney painting for a duplicate, so that Amanda can see if Syd’s painted over the missing artwork that started her latest (and presumably last) riff with Amanda. But now that Amanda has the painting, shouldn’t she take it to a professional art historian to check to see if someone’s painted over the original instead of trying her own luck?
Drew, with his impeccable comic timing, tries to get to know Lauren, but hits a bit too close to home when he says his other job is a male escort. If his ego were a bit smaller, he might have been able to figure this one out. But instead, he just thinks she hates him and gives her a dart board with his face on it.
So what is Dr. Drew’s second job? He’s in a band. And they’re playing at another contrived example of Hollywood elite nonsense -- this time an agent’s dog’s birthday party -- where Jonah and Ella just happen to be celebrating/fighting about their coupledom as she gets to be his plus one. But things don’t go as planned when Jonah catches Ella flirting to advance her own career while he’s schmoozing to advance his. Although I have no sympathy for Jonah as he comes to terms with dating a ladder climber, I figure it’s only fitting that Drew’s band sang Baha Men.
-- Whitney Friedlander
Top photo: Amanda reminds Riley that they’re not really friends. Bottom photo: Skin is in for the ‘MP’ guys. All credits: Patrick Wymore / The CW