I gave up on Melrose Place for a while. I posted my Season Three review on September 30, 2011. Yeah, last year. After completing that post, I got six or seven episodes into Season Four and just stopped watching. There are a few reasons why this happened. First, I began watching Law and Order (the original) more regularly. Second, I was preoccupied with submitting poems like a crazy person and helping plan our move. And third, the most important of my reasons for stopping watching Melrose Place, was Brooke.

I complained about Kristin Davis in my Season Three review. Her Brooke is manipulative and obnoxious and screws up everything. She is the reason for the two week hiatus I took while watching Season Three, and she is the reason I took this FOUR MONTH hiatus in the middle of Season Four. I can’t stand her.

I resumed watching Melrose Place because I finished watching all of the available Law & Order seasons on Netflix streaming (all eight. Where are the other ten+??? That’s for another entry). I watched Melrose Place only out of my Law & Order heartbreak and a sense of obligation to this website, as Melrose-related keywords bring me a lot of traffic for some reason. I powered through only hoping that something could happen. Brooke made everything worse and worse. It even got to the point where none of her fellow characters liked her anymore. I disliked Billy for being a Brooke-fan; once he became a Brooke-hater, I rooted for Billy again.

And guess what, the Melrose Gods stepped in and killed her. Brooke is dead. She fell and hit her head. Then she drowned. In the pool. I have wanted a pool death forever! I have been very very careful about avoiding spoilers in all past season reviews, but I don’t even care. I hate her! She’s gone. Since she died, I was able to power through the rest of Season Four easily, watching sometimes four or five episodes in a row without a shred of anxiety or angst.

Ignoring Brooke, Season Four isn’t a bad one. Dr. Peter Burns has grown on me. Dr. Mancini is always my favorite, and he had a lot of good moments with his never-changing trio of women: Jane, Sydney, and Kimberly. I also enjoyed some of Jake’s romances this season, and he’s a character I’ve been bored with for a while. Season Four brings a few celebrity cameos (my favorites being Priscilla Presley and Denise Richards) that I wasn’t expecting (perhaps because the show was more successful by this point?), and I hope that more celebrities show up in Season Five and beyond. So now that I’ve knocked this entry out, I’m starting Season Five immediately. My love for Melrose has been restored. I’m so excited!