• Melrose Place,

9-10 p.m. Tuesday,

WSFL-CW 39

Old soap opera bitches never die, they just . . . well, whatever they do, they don't die. As Exhibit A, I offer you Sydney Andrews, Melrose Place's resident waitress-hooker-secretary-boutique owner-murderess, last seen getting run over on her wedding day in 1997. And yet here she is again, having not just clawed her way out of the grave but sniffed out the trail of the Melrose Place remake clear over at another network -- only to get murdered again in the first five minutes. Ordinarily I would have preceded that with a SPOILER ALERT warning, but hell, you know she'll be back by episode five or so, explaining that those 35 bloody stab wounds were really just the result of the drive-through plastic surgery window at Wal-Mart and she's just fine, thank you, anybody wanna embezzle some money or have an affair with their sister's husband?

Now, where was I? Oh, yeah. Melrose Place is back. The CW, having exhausted every bit of its creative energy on The Pussycat Dolls Present: The Search for the Next Doll, is now simply remaking Fox's old prime-time soap lineup one by one. (If we don't have Miley Cyrus and the talking dogs from Up starring in Party of Five Jr. this time next fall, I'll eat Bart Simpson's shorts.)

And the garden apartment complex at No. 4616, though filled with a new collection of 20-something drama queens, is the same vortex of hyperkinetic hormones, ambition and criminality that it always was. I counted half a dozen instances of murder, extortion, perjury, adultery, prostitution, statutory rape and proxy incest in the first half hour -- and that's not even including Sydney's miraculous recovery from being squashed flatter than a pancake 12 years ago (via the old ``she faked it'' ruse), which surely qualifies as felonious screenwriting.

The action is nominally triggered by Sydney's murder, which makes everybody in the building, if not the greater Los Angeles area, an instant suspect. ``Stab enough people in the back and eventually you get a knife of your own,'' as one victim of her drive-by bitchery observes with satisfaction.

But you can't blame poor old Sydney (played, however briefly, by Laura Leighton of the original Melrose Place cast) for everything. Handsome but shiftless David (Shaun Sipos, Shark) is rebelling against his rich dad. Handsome but alcoholic Auggie (Colin Egglesfield, All My Children) is drinking again. Handsome but childish Jonah (Michael Rady, Swingtown) can't commit to his beautiful but impatient girlfriend Riley (Jessica Lucas, Cloverfield). Oh, wait -- he just proposed! That handsome but pushy bastard!

Then there's beautiful but controlling Ella (Katie Cassidy, Supernatural), who has slept with every man in L.A. and now has to start on the women. Not to mention beautiful but broke Lauren (Stephanie Jacobsen, Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles), who's thinking of paying her med-school tuition by hooking. Jeez, is that in the healthcare reform bill, too?