controversial

www.thebiblog.net, controversial, july 8, 2012

melrose place explosion

dr. kimberly shaw mancini: well, that makes bomb number three. don't you love the smell of sulfur in the afternoon, sydney? 

[bound and gagged sydney only grunts and groans] 

dr. kimberly shaw mancini: what's that? no? well, I don't think hell is going to smell a whole lot better, but since that's where you're going to spend the rest of eternity, you better start getting used to it. 

in 1992, beverly hills, 90210, the prototypical teen drama documenting the hardships of america’s wealthiest teenagers, had attained the peak of its popularity, reaching an estimated 18.1 million viewers per episode. in an effort to capitalize on its immense following, its producers spun off melrose place, a 90210 for a slightly more seasoned crowd. the series, which followed the lives of 30 somethings trying to reinvent themselves in a los angeles courtyard complex, received criticism, and poor ratings, in its first season, for being too timid. to remedy these perceived failings, melrose place’s writers concocted increasingly scandalous and controversial story lines in an effort to increase viewership. love trysts, betrayals and workplace firings, which were commonplace in the first and second seasons, were replaced by catastrophe’s such as car crashes, murders and even the walking dead, in later seasons. to amplify the suffering of their fictional characters even further, the writers ultimately turned against architecture. in the first episode of season 4, in a revenge plot not so dissimilar in psychology from those carried out by al qaeda in september of 2001, kimberly shaw annihilated 4616 melrose place, along with all of its residents. at the press of a button, and with the visual muscle of a roland emmerich blockbuster, actors were launched into the air like rag dolls, while the very bounds of their fictional world came crashing down around them.