'Melrose' fans must find a new place to dwell on

It's cold-turkey trash time. No more Melrose Monday viewing parties. No more playing the Melrose Place Drinking Game while ridiculing the scheming self-absorbed residents of America's most famous apartment complex. No more debating with fellow "Melrosians" around the globe why Amanda wed the doc who tried to kill her on the operating table.
     After seven seasons, "Melrose Place" airs its final episode Monday, leaving a legacy of more than dingy bed-hopping plots and ruthless, surgically enhanced, size 2 babes. "MP" was everything from a trendsetter ("the Amanda suit," which was jargon for the micro-mini power outfits worn by Heather Locklear's bitchy character, became a fashion fad) to the reason for going to work Tuesday morning (to discuss the previous night's wacko plot).
     "It's a perfect escapism," says actor Thomas Calabro, who plays Dr. Michael Mancini, a philandering, conniving snake.
     To mark its historic eviction, pieces of the Place are being offered to its diehard devotees - the apartment sign is being raffled off, authentic Melrose pool water and courtyard tiles can be won in contests, props such as Dr. Peter Burns' stethoscope are on the auction block, and clothes, including Jane's wedding dress, are being sold to the public by a retail store.
     Worlds, after all, do collide in the land of plastic people. As thousands of addicted viewers mourn "MP's" passing, a real-life court sequel promises a nasty battle befitting the sudser's story lines. A fired "Melrose" producer is claiming he was wrongly accused of sexual harassment amid allegations that an underling brought porn onto the set.
     Stay tuned for that installment. Deirdre Reinert will. She's a 31-year-old bookstore employee from Seattle who knows about the "Melrose" phenomenon firsthand. Life changed years ago when she started watching the soap created by the king of the sexcapades, Aaron Spelling.
     Reinert used to order generic white wine. "But after I saw Kimberly order a Chardonnay, I drink Chardonnay," she says, referring to the fictional schizo doctor who blew up the Melrose apartment building one season. She got the same kind of cell phone used by Amanda and Courtney Thorne-Smith's Alison, because she liked how they coolly snapped it open and shut.
     Now that Fox TV pulled the plug because of ratings, there's a huge void. Besides watching the back-stabbing fun with her husband and friends, Reinert spent hours each week writing sarcastic columns for a Web page called Melrose Space. "It's going to be really depressing," she says.
     The soon-to-be unemployed Calabro, who says his only work will be his golf handicap, understands the campy draw. "You knew you couldn't take it seriously when everyone in the neighborhood is beautiful, recovers from fatal car crashes within weeks, and wakes up every morning in full makeup."
     "Melrose," of course, had more than dysfunction. It had style.
     "Every Tuesday morning my phone rings," says a Fox spokeswoman. "People want to know 'What was Heather wearing? Where do I get it? Who made it?' Someone called and asked, 'What was the song played at Amanda's wedding?' because they want to play it at their wedding. They want to know who does people's hair. They get ideas how to decorate their home."
     Once it's over, Melrose Space and a host of Internet sites, some based as far away as Norway, will suddenly have no new sleaze to report. There will be no biting dialogue to mock (Jo when Queen of Mean Amanda is drunk: "Why doesn't Amanda drive herself home? Right into a tree would be nice."), no one like Reinert pointing out that although Kyle buttoned up his pants in a scene, a zip sound was dubbed in. The "Melrose Place" Drinking Game, detailed in complex 19-page instructions on one Web page, (a player takes one gulp, for example, every time the dense Ryan says "Uhh..."), will have to be saved for syndication reruns.
     "I got hooked because it's such an awful show," says Stan Young, a struggling actor who works in a gift shop in L.A.'s Chinatown. Young was an extra in one "MP," sitting at a bar near Alison in what was Chinatown, but supposed to be Hong Kong. The scene was cut.
     Craig Erwich, vice president of current drama programming for Fox TV, says he's gotten "tons of letters from people who made 8 o'clock on Monday night a ritual."
     "I feel bad," says Erwich. The steamy soap's wrap-up, he promises, will be so satisfying, "hopefully it will help (the fans) get over the grieving process."
     Fox and Spelling threw Fort Knox security around scripts of the last episode, titled "Asses to Ashes" and involving a funeral. Multiple endings were shot to stem leaks, which didn't stop Melrosians from finding out about the capper.
     Plans to watch that crisis-racked hurrah - either with a small group of friends or at restaurants - are being finalized around the world. Fans who win tickets through radio shows or Fox will attend Planet Hollywood's "largest 'Melrose Place' party of the century," being held simultaneously at the chain's U.S. locations.
     At the height of the Melrose frenzy, bars throughout the country hosted "MP" nights. For a couple of years, Baja Sharkeez, a pub in Manhattan Beach, held trivia contests and offered drink specials while the show's shenanigans played out on big screen TVs.
     "We do Ally now," says bartender Marty Rolfe, referring to McBeal, the new neurotic girl on the block.
     The juiciest postscript to "Melrose Place" is the recent multimillion-dollar lawsuit filed by Chip Hayes, a former "MP" producer. Hayes claims he was wrongly fired last year after a female assistant director complained of a "hostile work environment" due to "ongoing sexually oriented activity that was well known to Spelling." The female director said Hayes' production manager brought Internet porn on the set, according to the lawsuit. Hayes, according to Spelling spokeswoman Nancy Bushkin, was terminated for failing to properly enforce the company's sexual harassment policy and "for allowing and participating in wrongful behavior."
     Like all good Melrose plots, this one thickens. Hayes' lawsuit also alleges invasion of privacy, claiming Spelling's agents unlocked his personal office, rummaged through his belongings and tried to access his personal computer.
     It's not the only time Melrose's dirty laundry aired in L.A.'s courts. In 1997, actress Hunter Tylo won a nearly $5 million jury verdict against Spelling's company after contending she was fired from the role of Taylor McBride before even starting because she was pregnant.
     Until the latest court case offers "Melrose" junkies a fix, they'll have to fill the emptiness.
     The first time Anthony "The Vent Man" Ventarola watched the show with his parents, he was hooked on "the lack of character development." Ventarola, a 29-year-old transportation project engineer who lives in the Bronx, plays racquetball, club-hops and writes "MP" synopses on the Web.
     "I may have to go do something purposeful - like go to the gym on Monday night," he says.