Still the Place with Laura Layton, Courtney thorn Smith and.
Daphne's Aniga an iHeartRadio podcast. How much fun was it? Amazed with Vanessa Williams.
It was a amazing. She's such a goddess.
She looks amazing, her energy. I almost fell over.
And when I walked in the rain and her when she looks better than thirty years ago. And I'm not exaggerating, I'm not lying, I'm not going she's.
Oh, my God's beautiful, so filled with like, joyful energy, positive person. Yeah.
Yeah, And you know what I really liked was, you know, we were getting fan stuff and kind of this resentment of how she was let go so early on our show, and so I was kind of worried about, like is she going to have that. She so transformed herself and her story and that incident so beautifully and spiritually that she carries the opposite energy. Absolutely, I know. I love that too. She didn't avoid it, she didn't shirk it.
She talked about what a difficult time it was and how she leaned into it and really healed.
She's so so open and honest and lovely.
Yeah, so open and honest and actually deepened her spiritual life, and she really used it for her good and to really work on not letting her worth be defined by her work, which is such a powerful message.
And I think everyone can relate to us. Yes, we certainly can in our industy, absolutely, because we're at the mercy of so many other things that we have no control over. But I think people in general can relate to that absolutely. And you are not what you work, You are not your list, or that you're bigger than Yes, you're no one thing. Yeah.
Right.
It was just so interesting to have that experience with her and then have this episode where she It was just such an important start and we'll get to it. We're going to get into the recap, but it was just so interesting to have that conversation with her first when we originally thought we were probably going to do the recount first and then meet with her after that. It is so interesting to.
And maybe, uh, now the audience will get to see what she meant when she went to Darren Remember to change some of her lines and to change the story according to Rohnda's perspective down in South Central, et cetera. So I thought that was really cool, And you know, this this episode now is different than it was originally to me. Yeah, it's cool, it's great.
Well, the last time we were together we were in person, and we're back on zoo.
Yeah, outs as you were out of town, Laura. How's it going out of town?
Yeah, it's good.
Yeah, on the East coast.
Yeah, I'm in Connecticut to see Doug and his play.
How was it. How's it going?
It's going really well, amazing. Yeah, he's gotten over the opening. You know, the first couple of performances, those those jitters are out of the way, and now it's just like regular jitters. For you know, every subsequent performance.
Doesn't make you play do a play? The play is.
Terrific and it's yeah, I mean it's that it's a very exciting feeling in the theater and I get really like the butterflies when the lights go down, you know, before they're coming back up. I'm like that that whole thing is just in my body too. So that's been really fun. It's a new play and it's called Fever Dreams.
It's three characters. The other actor is Tim Decay, along with my husband, Doug Avon and an actress Lang Young, and the three of them are on the stage the entire time, and it's there's so many twists and turns. It's really almost hard to describe a little bit of a triangle, but a lot of tension, and it must.
Be so much fun. Written by Jeffrey Leeber television series Lost.
Yes, and I just was so nervous. Yes, So Jeffrey Raper is the play, right, and it's a terrific script. He was co created Lost.
And wow, that's exciting. It's a wonderful play. How much have you ever seen him on stage before?
I've never seen him in a play before. He hasn't done one in so many years. So yeah, this was This is a big, gutsy thing to do. And I'm really proud of him.
It's so exciting because that's where we got our love of acting, right, and TV and film are so different from stage. It sounds so exciting. You can tell him all, did you do theater?
Courtney? I did? I did you do it? I really loved it Northern California? Oh yeah, okay, but not.
Since I've been acting in TV and film. It terrifies me. But I love hearing you say it, Laura. It makes me think maybe I could Maybe that would be because it's such so much fun.
And Marcia Cross just finished doing a play and so the same thing, like she said, oh my god, this is a wonderful feeling.
But yeah, I think it's a I think it's daunting and exciting. It's both right, the idea of getting on stage and using more of your instrument than what TV asks for, which is kind of here, and then film like a little bit more. But I or it's so intimate, you know, it's like and anything. Yeah, yeah, you're just everything can happen, that's right. Yeah.
I've only done one movie in my career that's shot in order, in sequential order, so you were actually evolving with your character. But usually it's in bits and pieces here and there. You're trying to remember where you're coming from and where you're going.
You get another take. In television and film you get another take, and in theater you do not you do you do.
Tomorrow night, though you get the next night and the next you get a whole take.
You feel a long take, you get that. I did a play here in La years ago. I've done a couple. We had a strike, I don't know, fifteen years ago or something, so I went up to Sanrancisco and did a play, and before that, I did one here at the Odyssey in West La Tartuffe, and I remember that immediate connection with the audience. There is nothing like it because it's so it's you just don't know. You're on
a type rope. You can't plan anything. You can rehearse and rehearse like a take, or there's certain a moment that you all rehearse this moment and the audience hopefully they'll respond to it, but they could respond to something else beforehand, and then you got to respond to them, and I just it's so exciting.
Yeah, there was a funny moment in the play last night. It was it was a release. It was a serious moment and like sort of a bomb of information was dropped, and on that line, the entire audience went oh audibly together and then then they all just started laughing because they couldn't believe that there was such a collective response out loud the audience. So it turned a very heavy serious line into I'm laughing. It was I mean, I was imagining on stage like that must have been.
So confusing, but there was themselves.
The audience was so amused by like how collective. The response was, that's great.
That's a great sign for the play too, that they were all so invested.
Yeah, it came out of.
The one organism made a little mini or really fun to see that, Yeah, and unexciting, completely unexpected to everybody on stage and in the audience.
Yeah, the audience tells you the truth, right, Like I've done a lot of sitcom and there will be a joke that you laugh at all week, you can't wait to get to it. You think it's brilliant, and the audience is just crickets, and you go, I guess we were wrong. You have like think of something you want to fly. You're like, one thing, I know this joke is gonna hit and just dead air.
Yeah yeah, well comedy anyway, we could this is a whole podcast on itself.
Anyway, we're supposed to be doing a recap this.
Week one because this is another episode, like we've been saying the beginning, where the whole group is in everything and in several scenes. So they'll do like a three shot, you know, and you know as an actor that that could be after lunch sometime you're still shooting the same scene and they're like Ronda getting closer to here. So you have Ronda, Sandy, and you know Billy or you have whatever. It's different every time, and you go it just to me, is you remember those move in move in? Okay?
Now you got to like seem natural, like you're all naturally hanging out in this group, you know, when not seem they got to get their shot because they're not going to do individuals. So I just noticed that a few times in this one. Yeah, it was cute, all right.
So we're on episode episode ten of season one. The episode title is Burned, directed by Janet Greek and for context, this aired in September mid September of nineteen ninety two.
Wow.
So we open in the core aired Sandy greets Jake as he returns home from work. She invites him upstairs for beer.
He declines.
She then offers some pizza, which he changes his mind, so he follows her up the stairs. The inside scenes apartment. He is then surprised because the gang is there. They're surprising Jake for his birthday, and then mid party, there's a knock at the door and the door opens, revealing Jake's mother flaming red hair sort of the fabulous, fancy pants, fabulous, and she's looking for Jake.
And I remember her. I remember her on the show.
I was so fascinated by her skin, which is like orcelain. It has never seen son like she is never seen in her entire life. It was so beautiful up close and you can still see it on the screen, but in person you can't even believe it.
Well, she was a huge Broadway star. She starred in nine, that huge. She was nominated for a Tony. She started what she starred with Roald Julia and nine, if anyone remembers, they made a film of it too, with Helpie Cruise. But she was in that kind of like fishnet floor all see through thing, and it was she was the sex bomb, which was sexy for its time even and I think before that she was on Jesus Christ Superstar.
You know, she was a huge Broadway legend and the fact that she came to do our show was really cool to see it. And you but you saw, I thought in all of her scenes this sort of presence, this presence, this theatrical presence, and with all those that curvy, remember those shoulder blades with the shoulder.
And a little a.
Little sex spot even Yeah.
Yeah, Well there's a cute scene before she walks in where she runs into Billy on the stairs.
Yeah, and she's walking like, hello, are you his date?
Because she's right the moment, she's a gettle older and it's kind of confusing.
Yeah, and did you notice this subtle like she left her suitcase at the bottom of the stairs.
I did notice that.
Yeah, Like she goes up the stairs, but like she's not can bring her suitcase. She doesn't want him to know just yet, so she leaves her suitcase at the bottom stairs, follows him up the stairs to this point.
Yeah, she's I'm not sure how she's going to be received, right, And.
Then very good scene between her and Amy. Yeah, we're sesting each other out, trying to figure out what's happening.
Well, you notice this whole episode and at the party they're that that parallel like Sandy's a younger version of Jake's mother.
Absolutely, how did I both know that until you just said that, because I'm like, of course that's so fu yea.
And they're both waitresses. How did I right over my head? Thank you, Daphne right over both sun tanning by the pool and like the older version and the younger version of course, which kind of explains all the Sandy Jake stuff that they're constantly you know, because there's like a.
A little I'm here to represent our slower fans.
That's okay, we're here to recap the entire episode for you. We'll remind you and then you'll go, oh yeah, Bertney.
You play Alison, okay.
And Alison was there at the party. And so they're having this party for Jake and he's very uncomfortable because his mom is making herself a little comfortable with all of his friends, and it's clear that he doesn't really want her there.
And you see the hysterical scene when it must it was improv and and she's talking to.
Doug and they're talking about parent just loses it. He loses it.
He Belli laughs because she's she says something about it's just really plumping and pumping up. His head goes back and he knows I'm plumping.
He can't even get it out.
He didn't see it coming.
Yes. What I love is that the director and the editor kept that in, like I know, yeah.
So Jake is uncomfortable, but she's you know, making herself very comfortable in the middle of the party, Billy has to leave. He has to go to work, so he leaves the party to go drive his cab night. He's driving a passenger with groceries into a neighborhood that the passenger as she's getting out, she remarks that it's difficult to get a cab to drive to this neighborhood and she thinks him and she says, also, yeah, in a part of South LA And she says, ever since the trouble,
he feels afraid to ride the bus. And the trouble she's referring to is the La riots that were earlier that year, in nineteen and two. So the La Riots in Los Angeles were April of ninety two, and this was since this episode was airing in September. It was written, you know, shortly after, probably in July.
Whatever are you here during the riots? Both of you? Yes, yeah, I'm sure it was really scary, So it was I think this was This reminded me, Laura that Melvoe's the writers did this a lot. They took stuff from that was very sort of going on in the real world, and they took stuff from the you know, head often and this was. Yeah, this was you know, the riots started because of the Rodney King beating.
Where the verdict, Yeah, the verdict that was announced in April.
After a video tape. It was the first time it was videotape, the beating of a black man. So this is just for the audience who maybe doesn't remember or doesn't know that, you know, this is what it's being revisited in this episode, and that the origin which isn't talked about in the episode is from that the Rodney King beating.
Yea, and the cops who beat him to a pulp.
It was horrible to watch got off. The video went by and yeah, yeah, and then they got off.
They got off. That verdict was announced and these white cops were you know, not charged.
The la riots happened and there were fires and the just looting and trashing and we were all here.
Yeah, lasted for five days. It was very There was a lot of outrage and it was.
Yeah, understandable outrage.
Yep.
Absolutely. So he drops off his passenger and she has said she's you know, thanks him, She's afraid to ride the bus. Billy then clocks a group of men watching him as he drops off his passenger. He nervously gets back in his car to drive away, and the men also get into their car and they start to follow
Billy as he drives away. Billy then makes the mistake of turning into a dead end street, and the car full of guys follows him, blocking him in, and then they get out of the car with baseball bats and they start smashing up Billy's cab.
Smashing up the car shield. Yeah, the WM shield right into that. The camera there and Mary.
Cuts away right on that smash, and then we go back to the birthday party, where Jake is still feeling uncomfortable with his mom while she makes herself more comfortable. I think this is where she says the plumping comment, because then Doug laughs big and Sandy's talking to Jake and says, you know, you should cut her some slack. She's really trying, and Jay tells her to butt out.
Then the phone rings and Allison answers to learn that Billy is at the police station and was rob so she leaves to go meet.
Him there, which could have been a lot worse. I got to say, after that last scene, very few hundred.
Percent we're glad to hear that that's all it is, so we go to the police station with her. Billy's talking to an officer who tells him that he was lucky it was only the car that got hurt and that Billy should perhaps be more picky about his fares who he picks up. Billy is frustrated the officer doesn't seem to think he's going to do with anything more to find the guys who did it. Billy says, come on, I know where they hang out. Alison then arrives. She's
very relieved he's okay. Billy expresses his frustration, saying, I don't get it. These people are trying to make me feel like I committed the crime by going down there.
So we go back to Jake's apartment. Jake asks his mom why she is here, and we learned that it's been five years since they've seen each other, and he wonders if she needs money, and that's when his mom reveals she's left the guy she's been with, this guy Hank, because he was drinking and maybe some abuse, and she's looking for a place to stay, and Jake sort of calls her out for kicking him out when he needed her, saying she never wanted him, and Stella claims she's changed and wants Jake.
And that she never did kick him out. She never kicked him out, but that's how he perceived it. I thought this storyline was so interesting how a child his point of view or her point of view to the parent, and the parent was a young mom and she is how she is and you know it's not doesn't say in this scene, but later she says she was nineteen. That's so young. Can you imagine being nineteen and have and she was terrified that she was she going to do it. So but that's not his problem, his problem.
He experienced what he experienced. So it really is just something that I think we can all relate to that our our parents, you know. And this I liked this storyline. It was tough too, and.
It gives us a lot of insight into why Jake moves through the world the way he does. Yeah, he's so independent and he's so tough, and he doesn't really trust women and doesn't it really intimate relationships because he felt like he couldn't really trust his mother, right.
And I thought Grant's performance for this episode was really good and he wants and yeah, I agree because he had to play a lot of colors and just the torment of and doesn't wanting a mother but maybe not this one with this type of behavior, and how it broke his heart. And so that was a real struggle for him to try to figure out how to yeah move for.
He's really great at the tough guy with the heart of gold. That is so a sweet.
Spot for him because it's who he is, right, He's like kind of a tough guy, he's a sweet guy and I love it when you get to see him. That's a hard thing to play, to play so well.
So then Billy and Allison at are returning home. They come to the courtyard and the gang wants to hear what happened, and they're all relieved that Billy is okay. Billy sarcastically says maybe he should write a note to the gang the gang bangers in gratitude for not hurting him, and that the police were very unhelpful, perhaps because he
is victim ten billion and one. So Billy describes feeling very powerless that he had to just sit there and take it when he was being attacked, and he says, those people can have that part of town if they want it because I'm never driving down there again.
They all hold our collective breath. We go take it back, take it back, take it back.
Which then Ronda questions him, what do you mean down there to the jungle?
She asks, Well, first of all, she says, what do you mean those people? Right? Is the crux of this whole episode, the other rising and the making a certain group of people, whether it be in this case it's blacks to be all what they call a monolith like those people. Well, you wouldn't say that about white people. They're not, because our experience is that we're all different, we're all different experiences. So that's to me that that is the crux of the whole Yeah, and really brave.
I thought brave for the writers to do this because we had one African American character and to tell this story I thought was really brave. And I liked the way they did it where she's rightfully angry and asking these questions and Billy is such.
A good, sweet character.
He didn't mean it, but that's how bias works, right, You're unconsciously biased.
And well, I didn't mean that.
I meant he's saying I played ball with these guys. But his language still was wrong. And I and also really like, we're aware of this now, this was thirty years ago. I really impressed that they were at such a time, so close to the riot totally if they were willing to take this on and voice that they really were ahead of their times.
It really was ahead of act really was you didn't? Now? I do want to point out that maybe everyone knows, but they did not have a black writer on the writing team. Did they bring someone in to right now episode?
Well?
I don't.
Now they would like today they would say this is a story, but the staff when Yeah.
So the point I'm trying to make is that this is our point of view. This is a white a male, white writer's point of view. And I looked up because I was hoping the name uh that I saw and the writer was he was going to be a black guy. It wasn't. But the point is, I wonder if it would have been written differently if it were if there were a black writer on there, someone who because this is a point of view. This is a POV. Everything we see on TV and in the world is somebody's
or a group of people's point of view. There the story through their eyes their experience. So you know, melrose Place had one black character, ron the and no black writers.
They really did have all those things that you that you've all just said. Is that he's saying, wait, I didn't say that. It's just that those people, and he started he doesn't fin in. Ronda says, what do you mean those people?
What people?
People like me? And and so it's he Billy's saying things he doesn't. He's like, that's not what I said. And she's saying, but that's what you meant, and all of that, all of that is in here, all that is in the scene and the dialogue and everything, and she's, you know, she's upset by it, and she leaves the scene. And the next morning, Billy's just replaying this over and
over in his head. He's he's envisioning the guy who smashed his car, and then he expresses frustration to Alis and saying, although he just loved this experience and he remembers everything, he can't seem to get it out on paper. He really wants to write about it, and Alison assures him and he CA's yeah, and Billy says, he hates feelings, so angry and frustrated then we cut to Jane and Michael who are having a conversation and Jane says she's
been having nightmares about someone breaking into their apartment. Michael comforts her. Jane says she's nervous about raising a child in these times, and then she reminds Michael that they have a baby seminar that night.
Yeah, so we have three storylines in this episode, which is very rare.
And not only that court. You know how last time or in the past we've said how there's a serious storyline and then a very light one. We're saying, like, hey, you really juxtaposed. I didn't think there was one light one in this one. This was a very serious, heavy loaded episode.
I think Jane and Michael was supposed to be lighter, but it is serious. But it was supposed to be sort of with the I don't know for that way time.
We're not the baby. Yeah, when they get that was a comic scene, but it wasn't to me. It just didn't seem that light.
Yeah, it wasn't as like the light as it's been in the past.
That scene is funny, Yeah.
There was. They were all consequential like all of.
That, you know, big like dealing with big issues ye arrent relationships. Am I going to be a mother and father? That was huge?
And then this so so then the kitchen scene where Jake's mom is cooking at his in his kitchen and Jake's sort of skeptical and tells her, you know, not to get too comfortable, and she promised that she doesn't have anything up or sleeve, but that, you know, hey, maybe Jake, you should admit that you're not as tough as you think. Maybe I might get to you after all sort of thing, which I thought was sort of.
A so I just thought another you know I brought up in the past, like Melrose Place just have has these quintessential Melrose lines, and I wrote down one here. He's like, let me show you how to make an omelet.
Mom, Yeah you got.
You got to coddle it. You have to watch it takes patience, you know, could fall apart at any time, and yeah, are you talking to a parent and a baby.
But it was also like talking about an egg, even though physical proximity and the way she was standing behind him and just sort of like, I don't know, there was just something. There was a whole lot of interesting Nay what I.
Noticed as a cook is that was the slowest cooking omelet. Cooking omelet takes roughly two and a half minutes, and they were there technicity. I'm like, let me show You'm like, dude, I'm pretty sure it's done. I'm pretty sure you're all.
Yeah, but no, because they had to like convey it was a poached egg omelet, very slow cooking whatever was happening.
So then we cut to the courtyard where Alison is talking to Ronda. She's saying that Billy didn't mean anything last night, and Ronda said, it's not what came out, but it's the way it came out, and she thinks that Billy's true callers came through and what Allison said she really wants to understand, and Rono tells her that everyone at Melrose's place would have probably reacted the same way Billy did, though she admits it probably wasn't intentional.
Do you remember shooting.
This at all that I felt like Allison was super defensive, like I want I was so many times, but I'd want to do over. I really want to do over on all these scenes, but one of it was they just want to go just soften like I and look, probably an accurate portrayal maybe of me at that age, age where I would have been like, how can you think.
This of me?
And I would have com meted defensive at that age, it was probably very authentic, But I think now I would have met it so much softer, like I'm authentically interested, just tell me, educate me.
Yeah. I also think it's like a it's a it's a writing like necessity, like they needed to get that conversation out from both sides that way for Ronda's character to be able to say what she needed to say, right, So it's like a writing strategy in the scene. So like, don't beat yourself up for being defensive as a character, you know what I mean, Like you had to play that scene to get to what this conversation needed to be.
But I also think, honestly, yes, and but I was so young, I don't think I had the space to go like, look, as we know it, the older we are, the less we know. Like now I would say, please tell me, I honestly don't know.
I thought I knew. I don't know. Please tell me. I don't feel like the older I get, the less I know, Oh, you mean because there's more out there.
You're just so much that you're not.
I don't know what I've learned as I've gotten older. The more definite I am, the more wrong I am. A girlfriend, and I always say, if we start with one thing, I know, we're guaranteed to be wrong.
Yeah, because the more I definitely I am, the more wrong I am.
So now I just go, I don't know, maybe because yeah, I honestly I realize how much I really don't know certainly about someone else's experience. I don't know anything about someone else's experience.
Right, Yeah, I see what you mean for sure. I think what's interesting. I like how Vanessa played it was that she didn't know. She yes, griggored something in her she doesn't have the answers, and it's easy with this kind of writing or this kind of like story to be sort of like solid in her righteousness. But she was confused. She didn't know. She just knows that, she just knows that it hurt, and it's bringing up what it's like to be, you know, black in a white
world and in a white apartment building. And so as we go on, we'll see how these things come up for her.
Yeah, I think so too. And I thought they did a great job of showing that all the people here were feeling that same confusion. And you know, right in the end of the scene that's Allison. She said, well, where do we go from here? Like what Ronda says, she doesn't know.
I wish I knew, and then she leaves.
And then we cut to D and D where Billy shows up to ask Alison if he can borrow her car. She's willing to let him, but he takes the keys out of her purse when she gets distracted on a phone call, and off he goes. So then we cut back to Jake's mom, which is who is joining Sandy at the pool side, and they're both on the pool launch chairs. At this moment. Sandy wants to know how long she'll be staying. Stella says, actually, I plan to stay in LA and then they both sort of have
a bonding conversation about both being waitresses. Me too.
That the point I'd like to make the point that they have a lot in common.
That it's no that point. I don't know if you guys caught onto that. I just want to make I represent that I don't get it. It just it just came to me. It's the craziest thing. Yeah, Oh, they would be besties. I think after the show's over, those two characters like went off to They're totally like, you know what, you're gonna be my daughter, my son. You're an easy one.
So then we cut to Jane and Michael at their parenting class, where Michael is demonstrably disinterested and he's being very rough with his doll be and he ends up breaking its arm off when he's getting the shirt on, and Jane ends up being the one who apologize to the teacher on his behalf, and Michael's just like, sorry, just a little like you know.
What I was funny about this scene is how now neither one of them had kids yet, but how good they were at that moment of the mom trying to let the dad do something but really but don't but don't but don't like it's so it's so intuitive.
Rights, So he rips the baby's arm right off, which is what we're all secretly afraid they're.
Going to do.
For the first time, and he just sort of like, I thought that was a very Michael like. It's a foreshadowing version of Michael where he's like, you know, like the level.
Yeah, but then the teacher.
Said, I mean, if you've been to parenting groups, what the teachers always say is they're tougher than you think. The babies are tougher. They never say it's a delicate flower. Like they don't tell the man don't touch it, you'll break it. They really want the husbands to be involved. And the dad's like, it's okay, like the babies are resilient. But the other way, they're not resilient. Information you can rip their arm off putting on their T shirt.
You really can't.
But I just to be clear, you can't.
He was sort of like waving it around, like, oh, I sorry.
I remember the first time.
I remember the first time my son's dad put him down to sleep and I came home and I was looking at the monitor and I was like, what is that? And he goes and and my son was lying on his stomach and he goes, that's the buttons and I was like, the buttons that go in front. He's like, look, I got it on him. I was like, okay, Like it was backwards inside, No big deal, it's back Like right, I got to have dinner with my girlfriend's never mind, zip it, it was sleep.
We're all good. Oh my god, that's so funny, so cute.
So then heading to Billy, he's in Allison's car. He's brought Jake along. He's staking out the scene crime and Billy tells Jake that he thinks Ronda was out a line that it's not about black or white, but about right or wrong. That someone shouldn't rip you off or get in your face make you feel like a worthless piece of crap, he says, And Jake points out that there's probably a lot of people in this neighborhood who
feel like that all the time. And then Jake says, Billy, I don't think you're ever going to find the guys who did it, And Billy says, you wait. If we wait long enough, the guys will be here. This is where they hang out. So they continue their stakeout.
Yeah, and shooters.
Thinking first of all, weren't you a little afraid that they were going to confront the guys.
Well, we didn't know what they were going to do, yea right, I mean Billy had an idea plan. Yeah, Billy didn't tell the audience what his idea was. He was just there. You know, I brought Jake along for the ride, and Jake's also says, I think you're crazy, but you know, I'll.
Go with you to sit in this neighborhood where you were robbed last night.
Yeah, two nights again.
This seems great.
Let's say it's not a great plan.
Not a great plan, so shooters. Matt sits down with Ronda at the bar, wearing her drink, noting that she's still upset, and Ronda tells Matut that the sitch suation with Billy is confusing. She says she tries to live her life colorblind, that everyone is a person first, and
hoped everyone did the same thing. She admits to snapping a little when Billy went off, but she said it was a culmination of years of veiled remarks and little slips, and Matt says he can relate, ignoring years of stupid remarks about gays and that Ronda has a right to be upset. Ronda goes on to talk about the Rodney
King verdict. She said she was outraged by the verdict and upset by the riots, but realizes now that she herself didn't do anything and that she feels like she's become blind to the problems of people her own color and Matt.
And that's what I was talking about, like, there's there was real level to this, you know levels, and you know, feelings like this and with issues like this are complex for everybody. You know, how he got to see into Ronda with what it was like to be her with these friends and with this situation. It was a big deal in La for a while. The riots. I was just going to say that the you know, at the end of the day, the riots burned down, did burn
down their own neighborhoods down in South Central mostly. You know, me as a white person who didn't live there, kind of was the same thing, Like, oh my god. But what Ronda says, they got her attention, They got everyone's attention. It got everyone's attention, and we hadn't been seeing this for so long and weren't interested in what it's like to be not white in this society. So they did get people's attention. And here we are thirty years later
and things are different. I mean, obviously, but I just liked how. I don't know if this is where Ronda says, you know, she grew up in the suburbs, right, and so down there.
This is just where she's starting to really, like you said, like she's not just coming with all the answers. She's saying she's got questions too. She's really like open to learning and having questions of her own. So everyone in this episode is sort of not how all the answers, saying, Yeah, this is confusing, there's a lot here, and I don't have all the answers, and I have questions too, And so she says to Matt, you know, and he's and
he he agrees with her. It's hard, he says, it's hard to know what to do in a world of prejudice. It's hard to know what to do. That he's you know, he's ignored things you know to on it too, and that it's hard to know what to do. But Broanda has kind of the conclusion that they're that they're both responsible, she says, to help change things, saying if they're not part of the solution, then they're part.
Of the problem problem. She's quoting that from what she's heard. Yeah, so she's going to her best friend. I think I would say that he's probably your best friend, closest friend to share that vulnerability and like, I don't know what to do, and I didn't know what to do.
Yeah, but she's she's interested in finding a way to do. She's like part of the solution too. She's not just you know, thinking, she already has all the answers. And so back with the guys on the stakeout, Jake and Billy are about to give up and go home. Billy then spots the car that followed him last night, so he takes down the license plate. Thank god, that's all he was doing. He took down the license plate and says,
we got him. So back at the apartment with Alison next morning, he's invested in a lock box for his cash in the cab, and he's happy that he got that. He gave the police the license number. Alison's not as enthusiastic as he is about that, and she's pretty pissed that Billy sort of conned her with his reasons about borrowing the car in the first place. And she said, you could have gotten hurt and.
He could have gotten in my car.
Yeah, And Billy defends himself saying, well, I was just doing what the police couldn't or wouldn't do, and then Alison tells Billy that he's forgetting that he said that this situation had opened the side of himself he wasn't comfortable looking at. So although she understands his desire for justice, he shouldn't just lock his feelings about everything in a box or assume that the situation is over just because and that he hasn't really solved anything, which makes him think.
Yeah, I'm generally cranky in this episode.
I'm mad. I thought you were just reminding and like, wait, you know, there's a lot more layers to this than just a license plate number.
I didn't see that as I didn't see that at all, court I saw Alison as, Yeah, I saw her sort of as a peacemaker or as someone who wants to have us kind of bringing two sides to have some understanding of each side. That's what I meant to say.
That's what I meant to I.
Think that's how I saw your scene the same episode where just.
Very self critical Courtney and and we just need to remind you.
I just think that, yeah, maybe you're seeing it through self critical. You know, you're talking to Ronda and saying, imagine being Billy and you're talking to Billy and saying, you know, she's so I liked that, but you had an edge to it. I'm just kidding. Striped shirt.
I didn't like my stripe, big horizontal, weird striped shirt that I worked on the episode.
So that's really the crowded. I think that clouded my vision.
That must be what I mean.
We're not even talking about the clothes or the hairstyles. That Matt's hair style and Shooters was a nightmare. Oh my god, so skillfully went and then he fixed it, thank god, because they're talking about big problems and uh, you know Anita's you know, Jake's mom's gorgeous rhinestones and a different jacket every scene. Denim on denim. Love the denim on denim. Yeah.
I did notice Vanessa Ronda had they brought her a like a strawberry dakery or something. I'm like, you know, likeme for that on set where they're like, what do you want to be drinking in this scene? Oh, bring me something really sugary and fruity and just going to make.
Me like that's just TV drinks. In the eighties and nineties, they.
Three colorful, very Yeah, she was friendly, never a greyhound.
You know, boring little it's always.
Like sparkling water whatever. Nope, it's gotta be colorful. And yeah, there was no umbrella in it, though it wasn't that bad.
So you're at a pool that you were at a pool or the beach if you've got an umbrella anyway.
Okay, So then back in the baby class, Jane and Michael are discussing uh no, back at home, Jane and Michael are discussing Michael's bad behavior in the baby class, and Jane says that Michael needs to learn to be more patient. She's worried about what he will do with the real baby, and Michael says, Okay, I'm not perfect, but you, Jane, you need to be less overbearingly protective. So they're sort of accusing each other of being too.
Much of and he said sorry, but she said no parents are perfect.
Yep.
In the same episode that we're seeing Jake deal with his imperfect mother. I thought that, oh good. Yeah, you know, because also Court, you know, not my memories or my observation, not my memories, but my observation of these scripts are not clouded by memories of being in it, Like yeah, striped shirt by my strung.
There's so much better, and we're just like viewers, going, that's coming, it's fine.
But right now, Laura and I get to just see it as you know, like as total audience members. So I just saw that. I just know they're all these parallels, these little uh not Easter eggs, but just these little treats all throughout it.
Yeah.
Well, also in that scene with Michael and Jane, I was thinking one of the writers has a little kid, because that was such a parent new parent argument. You're too overprotective, you're not patient enough, you know, take these things because the energies are so different, you know, the new mom energy and the new data energy, and it feels like they're so rough, and we want to protect our little babies and they don't want them to be coddled.
But all we want to do is be in a.
Room holding them, protecting them from the big bad world.
And these two aren't even parents yet, they're just preparing to be parents, just imagining they're going to be, like, yeah, exactly, that's think.
One of the writers is writing from a fight yad with his wife that morning, that's thinking.
I mean a lot of that goes on right as with the directors, as you pointed out earlier.
Yeah, So the back of Shooters, Sandy is discussing Jake's mom with sort of a bummed out Jake and he wants her to be gone, and then he realizes, oh, look, my mother is here at Shooters shooting pool with a guy and she he realizes that Sandy has brought her to the bar, so he's pissed. Sandy says, hey, I felt sorry for you know. She really wants a second chance, and Jake says, no, Sandy, my mom's drunk. She doesn't
deserve a second chance. So this is kind of his theme throughout, is like she hasn't changed, she doesn't deserve a second chance, you know. And he says it in the top scene and he'll say it again. She hasn't changed, she hasn't changed. And we'll see down the line he's going to repeat that again.
Well, we see in the scene when you when the camera shoots her and she's like and she's flirt. There's a guy behind her teaching her how to like do the pool thing, and he's like, I rest my case and he's completely annoyed hitting on my neighbors.
The second chance.
Yeah, yeah, she's kind of like, uh, she's kind of blind to that part of his mom because she's hurt. She sees it as normal. What because she's a yeah, what, she's great.
Ill let him back to Billy. Back to Billy who's driving his cab, and then he stops to pick up Ronda, who is holding a bag of groceries. She gets in his car and she tells him she wants him to take her to Florence and Normandy, which is the intersection that really represents the heart of south central LA and that's the sight of the beginning of the riots and
really heightened racial tensions at that time. And she says, take me to Florence and Normandy, and Billy says, I don't need my consciousness raised, but Ronda says.
I do.
I do.
Yeah, she probably meant both. I didn't know if she meant I need your consciousness to be raised. I think that's meant I need my consciousness to be raised, because she had just had that scene with Matt like I want to like, you know, I want to step up here.
I think that was a great line because of that, because you get to interpret it that it was both. Yeah, it was like in a literal sense. She's saying, I do like her own, but it really is. I could hear it in the way it was delivered. I love that it was.
And then the greatest inside messaging here was when they pulled away and the bumper sticker.
Did you know the art department, Courtney, Let's ask Courtney, did you notice the bumper sticker on the back of the cab As they drove away, I was still thinking about my stripe shir okay, great, all right, said love your Mother all on the back of Billie's cab. So again our prop and art department having sort of like.
Gorilla marketing, which was obviously about are themes in the show, but also it has a globe of planet on there, and it means love your mother, Earth, Earth, of your mother.
And that was a new bumper sticker. We've seen the back of Billy's cab before, but this is the first episode and a very important EIO.
They were on at the art department. Man, they were really were now that I've heard about that, all the things like this that they would put in, it's because that bumper sticker really was about love Mother Earth, Protect Mother Earth, protect the planet that's given you everything that you have and that you are, uh and there that was real sort of environmental movement back then. So but they also put it in because of the storyline, which is great. But yeah, global, that's great.
In this episode. And I I'd like to know if we can get a love your Mother bumper sticker. Now that's a piece of you know, Melrose paraphernalia. I would like to consider it still. Maybe put it on the back of my kid's card. Love your Mother.
Yeah, you're like, you'll put a picture of you, not take out the planet Earth, all of it.
Love your Mother.
And I bought a mug one time.
I was out of town and I've forgotten, like a big mug and I'd forgotten my big mug, and so I bought one. And the one the biggest mug they had it said World's Best Mother.
So I bought it.
And it was not for my son. So I'm constantly trying to get my son to hold it. So then he gives it to me, and he's too smart, like he dodges it. But I've dragged to make it give it to me. But no, I bought my own world. You had to buy it for yourself. I buy it for myself and he will like, honeywey you hold this.
He won't do it. He's too smart for me, damn it. So giving you something like that for Mother's Day or your birthday. Oh, he's a total sweetheart.
But he's onto me with the mug, not the mug.
Yeah, So building a round to drive, They're looking at the burned out neighborhood, and this is where Rhonda admits that she grew she herself gripped in the middle class suburb and she can't really relate because this.
They agree. It just looks like a war zone, they say, and the neighborhood is burned everywhere. And then RNDA notes that they reported last night that only three people were killed in shootings last night, and just the operative word being only three people. Yeah, and Billy says he can. You know, they're both just sort of commiserating on like this is it's hard to grasp, it's hard to understand.
And Billy says, you know, I can actually understand someone who's looting and stealing TV or a stereo, who you know that they might not otherwise be able to afford it, But I don't understand burning down one's own neighborhood.
And that's what she said.
But it got there when Ronda said, yeah, but it got their attention, didn't.
It got everyone's attention exactly. But that line stuck out to me when she said only three people that the news, right, the white produced news out to the world, Well, only three people died last night. Well who are those three people? And it's not only whose kids?
Right?
As if that's a good statistic, right.
Yeah, what about zero people? Let's go for that. Yeah.
So then they arrived at a church. Ronda says that Rebuild La an organization is gathering donations to help residents in the neighborhood, and so it's clear that now that's what the bag of groceries that she's brought, she's bringing them for donations. And Ronda admits to Billy that she feels like she's always been too busy or maybe too scared to come down there to these neighborhoods to see
how bad things really were. So she adds her donations to the pile, and then she joins Billy, who's listening to an inspirational pastor speaking about working together, all people working together to help, to vote and to build and not to be part of the distruction, be a part of love, not hatred, be a part of hope and the possibility of tomorrow. And so they both stand here listening to this message and you just really see that it's meaningful for both of them.
This actor, Ron Canada, who played the minister, has been in everything, The Shield, West Wing, Ugly Betty. But like he's one of those actors, those character actors who you go, I know him, what's he been in?
The answer is everything.
So another example of the great guest stars we got to meet on our.
Show, So many great guest stars. So back home, Billy is telling Allison that he was always taught to respect others and he thought he was doing that, but he, you know, doesn't seem so sure about anything anymore. And he also notes that he feels guilty a little bit now about everything, even though he was a victim. He says he feels guilty, and Allison tells him, Oh, while the police called and they have now positively id the guy who beat up your car based on the license plates.
So you just need to go down to the jail to put the guy in jail. You just need to go give a positive idea and verify that they have the guy, and then we see that Billy is really conflicted about what to do. We cut to Jake's mom returning home after her night at Shooters. She stumbles into the apartment, clearly very drunk after her night out, and she apologizes to Jake when she sees that he was
waiting up for her, and he is pissed. She passes out on the couch and Jake tucks her in and sort of says to himself, yeah, mom, you've really changed.
Oh that was hard.
Sarcastic, yep. So he just, you know, she just proved everything that he was afraid of.
And yet there's that tender moment when he puts he puts a blanket over her and pucks her in, and it's very he loves her. He loves her, and she's fragile even though she's older. It's kind of switched, you know.
Yeah, that was a lot like to you know, somebody that just really disappoints you. But it's it's your mother, you know, and you want it to be different. And I just thought Grant did such a great job playing all those colors.
Yeah, it's so much easier to feel for someone when they're well vulnerable but also sleeping. You know, like it just looked like this vulnerable, fragile little thing and you know, they're not like in your face or anything.
Maybe that was the problem with Jane and Michael's baby doll. Maybe they just needed the baby to be sleeping for Michael to be more tender. Yeah, baby doll. So then speaking of Jane and Michael, we cut to them waking up in the morning and Jane turned to Michael and she apologizes and saying, you know, I overreacted, and Michael says, no, honey, you were right. Kids are fragile and little things that we do can affect a child for their whole lives.
And I'm going to learn to be patient, and Jane says, well, you know, I can learn to let go a little bit too. So they both give what they needed to give and say that they learned what they needed to learn, and all things seem to be right in the man Seni household, amazing, amazing. So then over breakfast, Stella again in the morning, apologizes to Jake once more. Jake's as a joke, Yeah, it's okay, you know, seeing you drunk sort of gave me a chance to relive some childhood memories. Ouch.
And then he big ouch. She's popping a couple asprin in an old fashioned ashburn jar, like nobody has these clear jars that the prop department gives. Says, here's the ass friend, what is this from the thirties? Cap on that and drinking her juice and he's like, hey, mom, yeah, and then he has to say something very hard to her.
Yeah, and he says, very gently but firmly, you know you can't stay here anymore. You need to go, and I want you.
To be gone when I get back. I mean yeah.
And this is where she also says you know, because he says, you know you gave up on me, and she defends herself. She says, but I was nineteen, I couldn't handle the motherhood at the time, and give me another chance. And Jake tells her, no, this is it's twenty years too late. And you know when I was in trouble, you were never there to bail me out. And I want you gone before I get back. So he's firm. He's like, I don't believe that you've changed.
And yes, all those things are true. Yes you were young and too young to handle motherhood, but also, you haven't changed. Both are true, Yeah.
She's he's right, she hasn't changed at all, yep.
And so he's firm and you can see it's painful, but he's clear. So then Ronda comes over to Billy's apartment and she's saying, I heard they found the guy, and Billy says, yeah, I don't think I'm going to go down and identify him. But Ronda says, you know, ignoring the law isn't quite the right thing to do either, and I don't think that'll make either of us happy. So she ends up driving Billy to the police station, where Billy ends up positively iding the guy. He's sure
who it is. And then as they put the guy in handcuffs and they're in the front of the station, Billy is sort of like stopped in his tracks because a handcuffed guy says that line that he had said on the night, which is a light It sort of gives Billy those chills of hearing that same thing again. And then Ronda and Billy watch while the guy's mom suddenly appears. She yanks the cigarette out of the guy's mouth,
she slaps him, saying what did you do? Now get dracked together, and she's mothering this guy who's you know, messed up, and so again the mother theme coming back into the storyline. Then a shooter. Sandy's telling Jake, your mom is gone. You can return to your own apartment, but you know, she's still at the bus stationed for another twenty minutes. Maybe she'd go and tell her goodbye. So Jake goes to the bus station, helps his mom with her bags, and says, I'm not here to ask
you to stay. I'm just here to say goodbye, and Stella thanks him. She apologizes again and says I love you, and instead of saying I love you back, Jake tells her.
Take care of yourself. I love that. Yeah, that was like a movie that saying, isn't it like just to see the bus behind her and she's getting on the bus. Yeah, and you know whereas much as like just a few minutes before, he says, I want you gone when I come home, and you're just going. I was just saying, like, oh my god, no, you know, like she's vulnerable, just take care of her. I pardon me, just wanted him to just take care of her. And yet this scene made it okay for me, made me go okay, I
get it. She's you know, she's okay with it. She finally starting to wake up, and she has to learn to take care of herself because in the end, she was just going to her son like she was going to every other man to be taken care of, and he wasn't having it.
And you can just see his struggle that when she says I love you, that he would like to be able to say that, and it's just not what he's able to have come out of his mouth right then. But he does wish her well and says take care of herself, you know. So you can just really see the struggle there for sure, and they say goobye.
So then we cut to the courtin like that, someone like that who's needy in the way she is, it's scary to say I love you, well, if you love me, then I can stay there and we can, you know, he has to have some distance because she's just she's not she doesn't feel safe because she's really not safe for him.
Yeah, and he he knows he needs to put his boundaries, you know, strong clearly in place with her, and that was one of them. So we cut to the final scene where Ronda and Billy are soaking their feet, sitting side by side. They're soaking their feet in the pool, and Alison walks by, saying, well, I'm happy to haven't killed each other, and Ronda and Billy both say that, you know, they just need to keep talking and they really need to keep listening, and Ronda says, we can
change the world one person at a time. Billy thanks, Ronda says, I owe you one, and she says it was a lesson for me too, and then she gets up and she goes inside to get ready for her early days tomorrow, and Billy says good night to her, and he ends the episode sitting alone with his feet.
That's it. That was a very intense and deep and cool episode for Meloe's Place. And I was taken as I was watching this, you guys, Melro's Obviously the show turns, we get it, I know that very shortly in a few episodes, and it becomes what it became and what
it became famous for. But before that happens, I mean, this is really I thought thoughtful and like we kept saying before, you know, Courtney would say, it's young kids trying to make young adults trying to make a go at it, you know, and I think some of it that I think this is right in between. I don't know. It was like it wasn't just you know, me trying to find a job or somebody else doing something kind of general life stuff. It was issues.
Yeah, well there's still like they were latly wrapped up, Like all these stories did come to a sort of happy feeling and a happy end, you know, which isn't the dynamic that we know we're going to for the Melrose, but like that's the one we've been talking about for all our recaps. It's like, Okay, we wrap up these stories and there's kind of a little lesson in there.
But the lesson and the stories for this particular episode, they were big topics that were you know, big big conversations and big issues, and I thought, like you said, there's three going on.
Yeah, I wonder too if that's why it worked when it started to get crazy, Because after when when we were hit, so many shows tried to copy Morrows and didn't work. But this time, where it was kind of slow, people got attached to the characters so that when it started to go crazy, they had. They were like people
they knew and loved. If you start crazy, you don't know who to attach to, right, right, So maybe this is actually this part we're sort of setting the groundwork because you had to start some were grounded because then once it went off the rails, you had to be attached to these characters.
You had to care what happened to them in that crazy world.
Now that's a really good point.
We do have a few fan questions, all right, So there's one in season one, I know, is that a lot of hints about Allison's family being not so good? Did the writers already know they were going to portray her father as a sexual abuser or did that come closer to when it was revealed at the end of season two?
You know, Thank you listener. I had the same thought they do. They put little breadcrumbs right that it wasn't so good, but they didn't tell me in advance, so I didn't know until right before that that really difficult scene at the family barbecue, that was that was hard to do.
So I don't know.
I think it was just I think they were this is where they were. They really were smart, Like Allison's so controlled and defensive and you're kind of, oh, this is why they had an idea. I don't know if they had the idea though. Yeah, I doubt we asked the writers we have darn.
Yeah, we'll have some writers on. We'll have Darren and maybe Chuck will come on, like we said, and I'll bet you Chip Hays will know. I mean, he will have to ask them all come on.
We want to have them all on, which means we're just going to have to Yeah, we will, Well you're going to until they get on.
Absolutely, this is a fun question. I read this question as far as wardrobe goes. I feel like every time a woman is about to do something bad, she is wearing red. That's that coincidence.
I didn't know the question.
I think it's a great observation, a great observation.
I just start looking. I haven't let's clock that, and I don't.
I don't doubt that could be a very conscious choice.
That seems just knowing, knowing our crew, that's like putting all this subversive stuff in. Maybe. Yeah, so this wardrobe person is before Denise Wingate got on, Yes, who came on when I came on? I think that's fifteen So I don't know who this person was or what they were like, or maybe it.
Was So do you think they lost their job because of the striped shirt?
I don't think so, Coy, I think was it the power of stricket?
Was it the carn this couple episodes.
Which was a million episodes ago?
Or was it Dove's hair this episode and night I wake up?
Ago?
Stripes? Stripes? I just I'm gonna start noticing more.
I think Leopard has a little bit of sass attached to it too.
Like, but you know what, women didn't start doing bad stuff until it turned So I'm wondering if this fan has, you know, seen the whole show, and I might have to remind us we might.
Let's pay attention though, because I think that's really interesting.
It's fun to have something to look for now. So thank you for that question, and keep your questions coming.
Fun, so much fun.
Yeah, we love your observations and your questions, and so DM is still the place Instagram. You know, we're only on episode ten. We're moving as fast as we can through these recaps. But we've been having really great guests.
We've had a lot of friends come out, which is so sweet. Yeah, but our friends and castmates want to come out and play with us as much as we want to play with them.
And we've gotten them all to promise to come back, which is really fick, which is really exciting, as.
We keep pointing out thirty episodes a year.
Yeah yeah, but we still have to get through our recap. So like every every recap, we're in one episode closer to Daphne. We're getting there. We can count how many remain on one hand now before we get to Daphne.
Listen to the whole podcast and follow and download, leave reviews if you can to, that would be awesome.
Keep listening, keep telling your friends, all those friends that you watched Melroe's Place with back in the day.
And watch with us.
It is super fun to reason watching the episodes, really, and then you.
Can see how full of it we are or for the money, really, don't you want to see that striped shirt?
You're welcome to correct us in the DMS to like, you know, what you said, an entirely wrong thing that was exactly total. We're happy to hear that too.
Then we know you're join the conversation. I do love what they have to say, all right, you gay guys we'll see you next week. Bye.