Melrose Place: Sixth Season, Volume Two

What do you do when your long-running prime time soap is running on fumes? Throw anything you can at the viewers that are still hanging on in a desperate attempt to keep them around. That was the scenario with the sixth season of Fox's "Melrose Place." With the final twelve episodes of the series coming out on a Volume 2 package, the stories twist and weave like any good soap but without the joy and over-the-top flare that made the show so popular in the early seasons.

In the sixth season, growing pains had set in for the Beverly Hills 90210 spin-off and original cast members like Courtney Thorne-Smith, Marcia Cross, Laura Leighton, Grant Show, and Doug Savant were all gone, and replacements like Lisa Rinna, Brooke Langton, and David Charvet tried to take their places, to no avail.

Two saving graces in the weary cast was Alyssa Milano who brings her spark to the role of Jennifer Mancini (Michael's trouble making younger sister) and the always-reliable Heather Locklear as Amanda Woodward. But a villain is only as good as her victims, and whether it's romantic problems or crafty business dealings, by season six viewers had seen it all, most of their favorite characters were gone, and ratings were dropping.

Melrose Place would live on to a seventh and final season, but even a revival by the CW in 2009 (that brought on Locklear to bolster dismal ratings much as she did in the original series) proved that maybe some shows just need to know when it's best to say goodbye forever.

MELROSE PLACE: Season 6, Vol 2
DVD
$42.99
www.paramount.com/dvd