I want to make one thing perfectly clear: AfterElton.com didn't pay me enough to write a feature about the first season of Melrose Place, released today on DVD, considering I watched 30 hours of television to do it.
To be fair, I don't actually think they expected me to, but once I started I, ummm, couldn't stop. It's, you know, extremely good in a manipulative, stupid, unrealistic, big-haired, shirtless-boyed, Heather Locklear kind of way.
Anyway, there are some great comments from Darren Star, the creator of the series, and Doug Savant (currently in Desperate Housewives on ABC), who played gay eunuch character Matt Fielding.
The truth is, Matt was TV's first regular out gay character, as opposed to poor lost Steven Carrington on Dynasty):
“I felt like if the show was going to take place in West Hollywood, there had to be a gay character,” series creator Darren Star said. “I really think he was the first sort of very out, unapologetic gay character.”
Star continues: “I think it was an enormous milestone. I don't think anybody had seen a character like that — an unapologetic, out gay character that had self respect for who he was. He wasn't used as the butt of jokes; he wasn't there for humor; he was just living his life.”
That would be more meaningful to a gay audience if he weren't the only character on the show who was “just living his life.” Of course, if Matt had been as promiscuous, deceitful and mentally unbalanced as everyone else on the show, critics would have accused the show of demonizing one of the few gay characters on network television. The reality is, Matt was the most likable — some might say the only likable — character on a show where concepts like “psychopath” and “sociopath” were a regular part of character development.
The rest of the article and some really juicy quotes from Savant here.
(Note to Gina: If you read the whole article, I didn't write the "according to" part, my editor put that in. I can give you his phone number if you want.)
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