Katie Cassidy here plays the best of the characters on the surprisingly entertaining — soapy, slightly trashy, middlingly acted in all the right ways — new Melrose Place. No, she’s not the med student who has turned to prostitution to pay the bills (while also passing judgment on her new boyfriend for being an art thief). And she’s not the psycho. And she’s not the boring schoolteacher turnedzzzzzzzzz oh, sorry, I nodded off there. No, Katie plays a publicist with aspirations of becoming Amanda Woodward, and as such, she gets the most entertaining wardrobe. Some of it is crazy, some of it is gorgeous, some of it is gorgeously crazy, and then some of it… is this:
Poor Katie here seems to be suffering from Blake Lively Syndrome, a.k.a., Somebody On Staff Hates Me Today And May Also Have Spit In My Latte. Did Special Guest Star Amanda Woodward spike the wardrobe lady’s coffee with absinthe? How else to explain why Amanda herself got a really hot blue dress for this scene (which I neglected to photograph, because I am a jerk) and Katie — aka Amanda Jr. — got stuck in a top that needs to be at LEAST one size bigger and makes her boobs look dysfunctional? This woman is your sexpot, Melrose. She is saucy, she’s occasionally mean, she’s hungry for man OR woman meat, and she will cut a bitch. That’s a lot to have on one’s plate. She should NOT have to be all those things in a shirt this ugly, tucked into a skirt (or pants, or whatever it was) like she’s trapped in the 90s, whining impotently about her life while trying to figure out how long it will take her to negotiate her snap-crotch bodysuit when she has to go to the bathroom. That’s SUCH an Allison Parker thing to do, and Ella Simms is no Allison Parker. FIX IT.