The New 'Melrose Place's' Familiar Faces

Sept. 8, 2009 — -- This fall, everything old is new again. Flannel shirts are cool and "Melrose Place" is back on TV.

One year after reviving "90210," the CW brings "Melrose Place" back from the dead/the nineties Tuesday night. Fans of the original scandal-fest will find the Spanish-style apartment building looking pretty much the same – right down to the central swimming pool where catfights, hookups and occasionally, actual swimming, went down.

"Melrose 2.0" is hoping to make a splash with a group of mostly new tenants – but some of these friends and enemies may remind you of characters you once loved to hate.

Until Heather Locklear herself deigns to make a guest appearance, the title of "Melrose" minx goes to her young lookalike, Katie Cassidy, (daughter of former teen heartthrob David Cassidy.) Like Locklear's Amanda Woodward, Cassidy's Ella Simms is blonde, beautiful and bitchy. When a dead body is found floating in the "Melrose" pool, Ella simply says: "Stab enough people in the back and you get a knife in your own." Though she eschews Amanda's power miniskirts, Ella, a status-hungry publicist, knows how to play the game in Perez Hilton's Hollywood. Is she gutsy enough to fake her own death and flee to a desert island, like Amanda did in the series finale? Don't put it past her.

Sweet, sensitive, struggling filmmaker Jonah Miller (Michael Rady) will remind fans of sweet, sensitive struggling writer Billy Campbell, the all-around good guy played by Andrew Shue on the old "Melrose." With teacher-girlfriend Riley, fedora-wearing hipster Jonah is one-half of the new "Melrose" golden couple. Like Billy before him, Jonah will try to be "friends" with the hot blonde neighbor who has a crush on him (in this case, Ella) but unfortunately for poor Jonah, Riley seems about as sure about him as Billy's longtime love, Allison, who memorably left him at the altar in season two.