Melrose Place - Season 3, Episode 2

"Who among us hasn't wanted to prey upon our own children in the ickiest way imaginable?"

"It's a Bad World After All"
Original airdate: 9/19/1994

Episode summary: Alison broadcasts to a group of barbecue partygoers that her father is an abusive creep. Jake gives in to lust and beds Kathy Ireland. Michael returns to the beach house to continue his recovery from the hit and run.

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Recap: Inside the county jail, Sydney admits to Assistant D.A. Roger Chambers that, sure, she used to think seriously about killing Michael - but that was only after Kimberly convinced her it was a good idea. She then insists that Kimberly was the one who planned the hit and run that injured Michael, and later planted the blonde wig in her apartment. She calls herself a victim and rails about how Kimberly is the crazy one who hates everybody. Roger doesn't look entirely convinced, but he jots down her allegations and half-heartedly promises to look into the matter.

Over at D&D, Bruce Teller drops by Amanda's office to tell her that word on the street is that Escapade Magazine is shopping around for a new ad agency. Amanda looks intrigued and says it'd definitely be a plum account, then mentions that Alison's new husband works at the magazine. She further explains that since the wedding was called off at the last second and Alison is currently unavailable while she deals with a blechy family issue, she'd be more than happy to reach out to Billy and see if she can get some inside intel on the magazine. Bruce says he likes the sound of that idea, particularly if she's able suss out their financial situation, then exits the office - just as Alison phones from the airport in Wisconsin. She tells Amanda that she's available by phone or fax anytime [which seems kinda challenging in the pre-smart phone era], but Amanda fibs and assures her that absolutely nothing of interest is happening at D&D, and that she should focus solely on publicly outing her pedo dad.

Kimberly brings Michael home to the beach house, and he glances around and tells her he has absolutely no memory of the place. As she helps him into bed, he gushes about how grateful he is to her for taking such great care of him, and she sweetly coos about how much she loves him and assures him that eventually his memory will return. A few seconds later, Assistant D.A. Roger Chambers drops by to question Kimberly about Sydney's accusations that she (she meaning Kimberly) was the driver of the hit and run that nearly killed Michael...and that she also tried to carbon monoxide him to death inside his garage. Kimberly denies both murder attempts, tells him that Sydney is unstable, and that she had approached her to ask about establishing an alibi during the time Michael was run over. She tells Roger she flatly refused, then flashes her engagement ring at him and points to it as proof that she would never do anything to harm her beloved.

"Did you ever try to kill Michael?"

"Define try."

Aboard the Pretty Lady (aka Jake's boat), Kathy Ireland gushes to Jake about how super awesome it was to sleep aboard his boat last night, but then laments how lonely it was for her to sleep alone. Jake's like, "Yeah whatevs" and tells her it's long past time she packed up her shit and found somewhere else to squat, and she responds by smoochingly rubbing herself up against him and purring about how grateful she is for his kindness...and that she'd be more than willing to express her gratitude with an orgasmic roll in the hay. Jake once again makes it clear that he has zero interest in hooking up with her, firmly tells her she needs to move on - but she just natters about how loooooong it's been since someone was kind to her, then offers to scamper off to the nearest eatery and pick up some lunch.

In Wisconsin, Alison and Meredith meet with their old family friend and small town lawyer Harry Allen to get the ball rolling with outing their father for sexually abusing them. Harry tells them that the town's residents are going to find it very hard to wrap their brains around an upstanding citizen like Papa Parker being a creepy pedo, then asks if they're both absolutely, 100% certain that the abuse took place. Meredith mutters about irritating it is to her is that he's asking them that, while Alison assures Harry that the abuse did indeed happen, and that their father really really needs to face up to what he's done so that they - his victims - can finally get a decent night's sleep without suffering nightmares. Harry mulls that over, agrees to help them, and says they have a meeting with Judge Thomas tomorrow. He warns that this process won't be easy - but Alison just kind of shrugs and says they've been waiting a very long time to get justice. 

Billy meets up with Amanda at Shooters, where she fills him in on D&D's quest to add Escapade Magazine to their client list. She lays it on thick about how great it'd be for Alison, who would likely handle the account...and when Billy grumblingly points out that Nancy is a tough editor and wouldn't be easily persuaded by him to hire D&D, Amanda says she has a plan and hopes that he's open to doing exactly what she tells him to.

Over at the beach house, Michael thanks Kimberly for making him such a scrumptious dinner. She calls it a labor of love and leans in for a kiss - but he gently pushes her away and complains, "I feel like such an invalid...I don't know how you could be attracted to me." Kimberly solemnly retorts that she knows first-hand what it's like to be horribly injured, then describes the fateful night that she was in the passenger seat of a car being driven by a drunken idiot, and that they got into a terrible accident that left her disfigured. Michael scrunches his face confusedly and says it doesn't look as though there's anything visibly wrong with any part of her, so she pulls off her wig and shows him her sparse head of hair [which I guess is due to her hair follicles stubbornly refusing to regenerate themselves enough to grow out a normal looking head of hair], along with the nasty scar over her right ear. As Michael stares at her hair wisps and scar with a stunned expression, she calls her appearance horrible and starts sobbing - but Michael argues that she's beautiful, gently kisses her scar, and starts amorously smooching her.  

"The car accident left me with a headful of damaged follicles."

"Yikes. They really don't seem to want to regenerate themselves, do they?"

Amanda drops by Jake's boat clutching a picnic basket - but is visibly put off when she encounters Kathy Ireland, who makes it a point to cinch her t-shirt just beneath her ample bosom. She bats her doe eyes at Amanda and tells her that Jake will be back soon - but Amanda snarkishly says she's outa here and tells Kathy Ireland to pass along the message to Jake that he's a lying pig. 

Matt drops by the clink to visit Sydney, who begs him to believe that she's being framed by the very twisted Kimberly (and possibly semi-twisted Michael). Matt says he finds it hard to believe that she had nothing at all to do with the hit and run - but she insists that she did not, begs him to help her, and says she'd prefer to not rot in prison for the rest of her life for a crime she didn't commit.

Over at Jane Mancini Designs, Jane is canoodling with Chris when her father drops by unexpectedly. Papa Andrews explains that he came to L.A. to do whatever he can to help Sydney, specifically hire a lawyer to represent her in court. He asks Jane if she'd like to come with him to the county jail, and she chirps, "Of course!"

Matt drops by the beach house, lets himself inside, and finds Michael in bed...and when Michael stares at him in puzzlement, Matt fills in the blanks about how the two of them know each other: they used to be fellow residents at Melrose Place, then worked together at the hospital. Michael says he doesn't remember much, but gushes about what an angel Kimberly has been, and can only assume they were a great couple. He invokes the car accident that left her disfigured...and Matt is about to tell him the truth about that whole thing when Kimberly suddenly bursts into the room, forcibly escorts Matt to the door and warns that revealing too much information to Michael can unnecessarily confuse him. She orders him to give Michael his space, and makes it clear that he's not welcome at the beach house unless he gets her permission ahead of time.

Sydney skips into the county jail's interrogation room, where her father and Jane are seated, and natters joyously to her father about how grateful she is to him for posting her bail. Papa Andrews tells her he got her a lawyer - and motions to Aaron Baker, who's sitting next to him - then breaks the news that she's being denied bail 'cause she's deemed too much of a flight risk. He adds that the case against her is strong - despite it not being a strong case, since it mostly consists of some pretty flimsy circumstantial evidence. When Sydney insists that she's innocent of trying to murder Michael, her dad scrunches his face into a skeptical looking expression. Sydney then starts railing about how he doesn't love her, eggs him on to outright call her a killer, and angrily says that maybe she should have tried to run Michael over. She gets up and heads over to the door, then turns and wails about how everyone she's ever cared about has thrown her away. She glares at her father and coldly growls, "Maybe someday I'll blow your damn head off." (!)

"I'm not convinced you aren't a cold-blooded attempted murderer."

"You just moved to the top of my hit list."

Mama Parker drops by the Wisconsin hotel where Alison and Meredith are staying and begs them to stay quiet about their molestation claims. Meredith quietly says that she has no desire to hurt anyone, while Alison points out to her mom that their only intention is to bring attention to the truth. Mama Parker snappishly accuses them of putting a knife in her back, wildly pronounces that everyone lies and lives with pain, and mocks her daughters for "wanting to cover your parents with filth". She then shoots them both the stink-eye, says she wishes they'd never been born, and stalks out of the room.

Amanda calls Billy at work to tell him she has a few edits she'd like to make to the detailed report/financial statements he unwisely put together for her about Escapade Magazine. Billy mumbles that he's officially washing his hands of it, says she should feel free to make the changes herself, and hastily hangs up.  

Over at Jane Mancini Designs, Papa Andrews tells Jane he spoke to Aaron Baker and the people who run a local sanitarium to see about Sydney getting forcibly committed so that she can undergo a psychiatric evaluation. Jane says that while she's minimally troubled about forcing her sister into psychiatric care, she reckons it's probably better than letting her continue to languish in a jail cell. She agrees to sign the papers, then takes a moment to sentimentally recall the close relationship she and Sydney had during their younger years. Papa Andrews sadly concurs - but points out that Sydney is not well and is in serious need of some mental health treatment.

Alison, Meredith, and Harry Allen are at the court house, waiting to see Judge Thomas...and the three are startled when the judge's office door opens and Mama and Papa Parker exit the room after what looks like a sympathetically wankish meeting. Mama and Papa Parker saunter past their daughters without saying a word, and when Judge Thomas stares condescendingly at Meredith and Alison and asks, "You girls ready to talk to me?", Meredith suddenly gets frazzled, calls the small town "a joke", and tells Alison she can't do this. Alison argues that the truth is on their side - but Meredith calls their scheduled meeting with the judge "a set-up", rails about how "the whole world is lies", and races off down the hall...leaving Alison staring after her in dismayed bewilderment.

Later at a local diner, Alison tells Harry Allen she figured that Meredith would buckle under the stress, and now regrets pushing her so hard. She says she still feels the need to confront her father in order to get her soul back, and Harry tells her he believes her version of events, and that he's sorry their attempt to bring her shitty father to justice failed so badly. He wryly points out that everyone in town loooooves Papa Parker [despite his general weirdness], and urges Alison to go home and try to forget that any of the abuse ever happened...and Alison weakly agrees that that's all there's left to do.

Over at Escapade Magazine, Nancy Donner informs Billy that she's decided to hire D&D to be the company's new ad agency...and that she met with Amanda Woodward, who had an impressive amount of inside intel on the magazine. She irritably adds that Amanda made no secret of the fact that he (Billy) was the source of all that sensitive information, then angrily calls him out for going behind her back solely for the purpose of benefitting D&D. She snarls, "You're fired!" and orders him to clean out his desk pronto. 

"You're fired, traitor."

"Who knew that revealing inside information about a company could get a person terminated?"

Kathy Ireland is searching Jake's boat, not sure for what. When she hears him returning, she grabs a book and pretends that she's been just sitting there in his absence, innocently reading. Jake scowls at her and again tells her to pack up her shit and leave his orbit - and she responds by canoodling him and remarking that he's clearly been hooking up with the wrong type of woman. As Jake struggles to keep his penile desires from overpowering his resistance to throwing all good sense to the wind, his penis wins out and he starts smooching her back, strips off his shirt before unbuttoning hers, and then the two go at it amorously.

Billy storms over to D&D, bursts into Amanda's office, and snarls at her for spilling the beans to Nancy about his involvement in writing up the report, which - no surprise - resulted in him getting fired. Bruce Teller, who's in Amanda's office at the time, extends his thanks to Billy for going out on a limb to help them lock down Escapade Magazine as a client, then offers him a job at D&D as a senior copywriter. Billy stares back at him in stunned bewilderment as Amanda grins at him knowingly...and the camera pans away.

Alison is on her way to the airport before deciding she's going to stop in at her parents' house and open a giant can of whoopass.

In the back yard of Casa Parker, Papa Parker is wearing a Kiss the Cook apron, and yukking it up with a group of barbecue party guests as he grills steaks. Alison strides over and calls him out for using all the connections he has in this town to avoid facing justice. She loudly says, "We all carry around this dirty little secret that everybody in this town should know", then broadcasts that when she was a little girl, her gross father used to lure her into the basement and do the unspeakable. As the barbecue party guests stare at Papa Parker in stunned revulsion, he yells at Alison to shut up, and explains that all he did was love his daughters. He then turns his ire towards his idiot wife and tells her it's all her fault, chiding, "You were cold, so cold. You hated my touch." He creepily adds that he just wanted a little warmth and understanding, so he figured 'why not use my young daughters to satisfy my carnal needs?' He then acts even more bizarrely when he starts railing at Alison about how women dress so skimpily, but never let men touch them - and she glares at him in disgust and reminds him that she was an eight year old child when he started molesting her. She firmly declares that it was definitely his fault, then triumphantly stomps off...leaving him staring despondently into space while Mama Parker stares at him looking even more despondent.

That evening, Kathy Ireland has a secret meet-up with a man who's smoking a cigar by the side of the road...and when he turns around we see that it's none other than Palmer Woodward (!). She reports that she was finally successful in getting Jake to go to bed with her, and he creepishly coos that that's very goooooood, and declares that he's going to make Jake sorry he ever messed with him and/or Amanda.

As Sydney is escorted out of the county jail, she happily assumes it's 'cause someone posted her bail - but her gaiety abruptly ends when she enters the hallway and sees her father and Jane standing by while men holding a straitjacket advance towards her. She struggles with them as they forcibly put her into the straitjacket...and as they drag her off, she begs her father to believe that she's really really not crazy. 

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