Let's start with the gay character, Caleb. He really hasn't really been on very much so far. We see him in one or maybe two scenes a week, at the office with Ella. Honestly, there isn't much to say about him at this point, other than that Victor Webster is still as smoking hot as he was when I first saw him on Days of Our Lives back in the day.
Maybe in the coming weeks, we'll learn more about Caleb, but right now he's not exactly a leading character on the show. In fact, he's far less of one than Matt Fielding was at the start of the original series.
As for the other characters, the show for me is still primarily about two of them: Ella and Jonah. Not only are they the most watchable and interesting of all the characters, but Katie Cassidy and Michael Rady are so far the only actors on the show who seem to be completely comfortable with their characters in every scene (other than Thomas Calabro, of course, who had the whole run of the original series to get into Michael Mancini's head).
Honestly, the two of them (and some nice eye candy) are what keep me tuning in so far. I'm hoping that we'll be building up to some great campy, over the top moments as the show progresses, moments like those that the original Melrose was famous for. With Heather Locklear returning as Amanda in the near future, things could be looking up. In fact, the only non-Jonah and/or Ella moment that I've really been excited by so far was when David found files on his father's hard drive labeled Jane, Jo, Alison, and Amanda, after the original series characters.
The rest of the cast I can take or leave at the moment, for the most part. David is growing on me a little with each passing week, while Riley seems to be an incredibly dull character. Lauren, meanwhile, is caught up in a story that I feel we've seen plenty of already and should retire forever: the struggling fill in the blank (in this case, med student) who becomes a prostitute to make ends meet.
Didn't we see this story in the first series, in fact? My memory of which character it was is hazy, but I do remember that Kristian Alfonso, who plays Hope Williams Brady on Days of Our Lives, played a Hollywood madame on the original show in that storyline.
The worst of the bunch so far are Auggie and Violet. Colin Egglesfield is an incredibly gorgeous man, but his acting hasn't improved in the slightest since his stint as Erica Kane's suddenly no longer aborted son on All My Children. Still, as long as they have him stripping down as often as possible, I won't complain too much.
As for Ashlee Simpson-Wentz... well, I'm praying that Violet really did murder Syndey and will be exiting the show in a body bag after a standoff with the cops, if that gives you any clue as to my opinion.
The return of original series character Jane Andrews this past week was a mixed bag. I will always welcome any connection with the original show, but Jane spent half her time on the first series as a rather boring doormat and then suddenly went over the top crazy before being written out.
Her return this week gave us a Jane who was bitchy for no real reason, a blackmailer, and completely cold towards someone who may or may not be her only living relative. Jane now owns the apartment building so we'll probably be seeing more of her, but even so, I was sad that they didn't put her in any scenes with her ex husband, Michael, in her return episode.
Most new shows need time (which they rarely get these days) to figure out what's working and what isn't. The first series wrote off a few of the original characters who were proving to be dead weight early on, and if this show gets a chance to continue, I'm sure they will, too.
In the meantime, there are always moments like this (borrowed from Superherofan):
And, yes, even like this:
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