The protagonists, left-to-right: Carrie, Linda, Julie, Sarah, Teri/Monique
A 1994 drama TV series that started as a spin-off of Melrose Place, which itself was a spin-off of Beverly Hills, 90210, which is not to be confused with its own 2000's reboot, or with Melrose Place's own 2000's reboot (welcome to the world of Aaron Spelling 's intertwining drama series).
The series follows an L.A. modelling agency, called Models, Inc., run by ruthless bussiness woman Hillary Michaels (mother to Melrose Place character Amanda, thus the connection between the two series) and her son David.
The most successful models of the agency live together in a beach house in Malibu and the series mostly follows the heavy drama that develops between them.
The series starts off with new model Sarah just having been contracted by Models Inc., and moving into the models' beach house, after moving from Iowa to L.A. to pursue a modelling career. Sweet and meek Sarah soon clashes with resident Alpha Bitch Julie, a model who's jealous of Sarah not only career-wise but also because David, Julie's ex and the vice president of the agency, starts dating Sarah.
Other models are Linda, who's in an abusive relationship and is being blackmailed with a secret from her past, and Carrie, who at 27 is getting too "old" to model, and always is in the shadow of her more successful younger sister Teri.
Teri, herself, gets murdered in the very first episode, which sets off a "whodunnit" arc (Hillary, David, her sister Carrie and her boyfriend Brian are all suspects for her murder) that lasts the first few episodes, after which the series gets less crime/mystery-oriented and more Soap Opera-like.
The series lasted only 29 episodes in one season, after which it was axed very abruptly—leaving a huge cliffhanger unresolved, though it was resolved in an alternate ending when the series was shown on E!.
This series provides examples of:
- A Father to His Men: Hillary is a female version—she will do anything to ensure the wellbeing of "her girls", as she calls her models. She seems to care much for them as persons, rather than just employees.
- When Hillary finds out Eric takes most of Linda's salary, she opens a second, secret bank account for Linda to put half of Linda's salary on, so that Linda can keep at least half of her salary for herself.
- When Linda is being blackmailed by Eric with a porn tape she once made, Hillary goes after Eric to take all copies of the tapes from him, to make sure this footage disappears forever. note
- During Carrie's Sanity Slippage, she hires a psychiatrist for Carrie.
- Betty and Veronica:
- David, in the beginning, is in a love triangle with Alpha Bitch Julie and the much sweeter, ingenue Sarah.
- Gender-flipped version with Linda when she has difficulty deciding whether she want to be with adventurous, but manipulative Eric or with stable, but slightly boring, Chris.
- Bitch in Sheep's Clothing: The psychiatrist Hillary hires to help Carrie seems a real Nice Guy. He starts an affair with Carrie (which is totally unprofessional, of course) and with Hillary, deceiving both women. Then his true colors really show when he falsely declares Carrie insane and puts her away in a mental institution. It also turns out he was sentenced for sexually abusing other patients in the past.
- Bitter Wedding Speech:
- Julie shows up just as David and Sarah are about to take their vows, to break them up by revealing David slept with her recently.
- Subverted at Monique and Adam's wedding in the last episode. Adam's ex, Greyson, shows up at the wedding very much NOT invited and NOT wanted, and it seems she is there to give a speech to prevent the wedding. But she doesn't say anything at all. Although, it turns out she has taken much more drastic measures than a speech: she hired a hit man to kill the bride...
- Card-Carrying Villain: While Julie's not a villain in the usual sense (except maybe to Sarah) but just extremely bitchy: Julie never denies that she's out to get other people, that she's manipulative and only looks out for number one, etc.; she even touts this.
- Character Development:
- Julie, who's pretty one-dimensionally portrayed as a bitch who's only nasty to other characters, gradually softens up during the series, and ends it a much nicer person.
- Eric, who physically, emotionally and financially abuses his girlfriend Linda, makes a Heel–Face Turn after she leaves him, and in his next relationships, is much more loving.
- Chuck Cunningham Syndrome: After David leaves for Europe, he's never mentioned by the characters again, as if he's never existed; extra strange since Hillary is his mother, Sarah and Julie are his ex-fiancees, and he works in the same industry as his mother.
- Convenient Miscarriage: Sarah gets pregnant, unplanned and unwanted. After much consideration, she decides to have an abortion—but is ran over by a car on her way to the abortion clinic, causing her to miscarry, so the pregnancy is ended without an abortion.
- Country Mouse: At the beginning of the series, Sarah, who's originally from rural Iowa, has just moved to L.A. The first few episodes she keeps remarking how different living in a big city is compared to where she used to live. Later it becomes clear that living in a big city is not so good for her — she becomes addicted to alcohol and drugs, arrested for drunk driving, the victim of a car-jacking, and unable to keep her modelling job—or her virginity despite at the beginning swearing she intended to keep it until marriage. In the last episode she realizes she's much happier in rural Iowa than in L.A. and goes back home with her dad.
- Descent into Addiction: Sarah gets addicted to alcohol, and later also to cocaine and other drugs.
- Doppelgänger: After Teri dies, an exact lookalike of her shows up and is hired by Models Inc.note
- Drowning My Sorrows:
- Sarah starts to drink because she feels sad about her ended relationship with David and alcohol makes her forget that. She drinks more and more until she fully develops into an alcoholic.
- When David feels bad after his break-up with Sarah, he "deals" with it by going out and drinking—until the next morning.
Hillary: David, it's 10:30 in the morning, and you're drinking whisky? - Drunk Driver: During her alcoholic phase, Sarah gets behind the wheel after drinking too much, and is promptly arrested for it.
- Exactly What It Says on the Tin: The titular modeling agency is called, very plain and unimaginatively, Models Inc. Also out of universe, as the series itself is named after the agency, and is about, well, models.
- Fourth-Date Marriage: David and Sarah want to get married after knowing each other only a few weeks. Invoked because Hillary is forbidding their relationship and David thinks them marrying might make Hillary accept it.
- Gaslighting: Eric emotionally abuses Linda, and does this so manipulatively that she thinks she caused and deserved it. Most clearly when he casually offers her to an acquaintance of his for sex, without her consent or even knowledge, and when she confronts Eric about the guy trying to sleep with her, Eric twists it such that she thinks she caused it and ends up apologizing to Eric instead of the other way around.
- Girly Girl with a Tomboy Streak: Sarah comes across as very girly. When she tells that when she was a child she always hung out and played with the boys, and did things like climb in trees, Brian is surprised that she also was a bit of a tomboy as a child.
- Gold Digger: Julie only wants lovers who are rich, as she herself even outright says. Subverted when she finds out her new love interest Craig is not rich, and not even interested in becoming so, and she first dumps him because of this but ultimately gets back with him despite this note
- Good Girls Avoid Abortion: When Sarah accidentally gets pregnant, she thinks about getting an abortion. After much internal and external debate (also with pro-choice Linda and pro-life Carrie arguing opposite sites), she decides to go through with the abortion, so ultimately subverted. Then discussed In Universe when the (would-have-been) father finds out and finds it terrible that she considered an abortion (he's a priest...)
- Green-Eyed Monster: Julie is very jealous of Sarah from the moment she meets her, first because Sarah is a successful new model, then also because Julie's ex David starts to fall for Sarah.
- Heel–Face Turn: In the first half of the episodes, Eric is a narcissistic asshole who physically, verbally and financially abuses Linda. After she leaves him, he gets much more gentle. He doesn't just stop abusing her, but even genuinely wants to become friends with her, and he becomes much nicer to people in general.
- High-School Sweethearts: Sarah during her high school years was together with her then-boyfriend Hank, whom she even litterally refers to as her High School sweetheart. Subverted when she left Iowa after graduation to move to LA, he got abusive, and they broke up.
- Informed Ability: David is often said, by other characters, to be quite The Casanova, to the point that it seems he slept with half the female population of L.A., but we never see anything of this, and the first thing we see from him is him falling truly in love with Sarah and wanting a monogamous realationship with her.
- The Ingenue: Sarah is sweet-natured and naive (at the beginning of the series, at least), and a virgin. The other characters even sometimes refer to her as "sweet little Sarah".
- Ladykiller in Love: David apparently was quite the Casanova, sleeping with lots of women, before meeting Sarah. He falls deeply in love with her, and mentions that that is a first for him; he even wants to marry her.
- Last Disrespects: At Teri's funeral after she's murdered, the other models speak disrespectfully about her.
- Law of Inverse Fertility: Getting pregnant in this universe seems to be inversely proportional to how much it's planned/wanted, with almost half of the characters getting pregnant accidentally...
- With Carrie, it's her backstory that happened during her teens and ended in giving the baby up for adoption.
- For Linda, it's only mentioned in passing that she also got pregnant at 17 (in her case ending in an abortion).
- For Sarah, an unplanned pregnancy becomes a major plot point later in the series, ending in a Convenient Miscarriage.
- The reverse, not being able to conceive, seems to be true for Kyle and his wife (the adopive parents of Carrie's biological son). Only implied, since it isn't stated they tried and failed to conceive before choosing to adopt.
- Little Black Dress: The models are frequently shown to be wearing little black dresses, especially when they're at parties. Also evident on the current page image, the series poster.
- Make It Look Like an Accident: Teri falls to her death from a high-rise building, which initially is thought to be an accident because she is drunk. Soon after it becomes clear she was pushed to her death by someone.
- Missing Mom:
- Hillary abandoned her daughter Amanda when she divorced, which is why Amanda hasn't seen her mom in decades.
- Carrie & Teri's mother abandoned them when they were teenagers, leaving it to Carrie, as the older sister, to take care of Teri.
- Monochrome Casting: All characters, including minor ones, are white/Caucasian. There's one Token Minority character in African-American Cynthia (who doesn't appear until episode 5 and initially isn't even billed during the opening credits but as "guest star" even though she's part of the main characters and was much longer on the show than character David, who did get billed)—but no Asians and, especially remarkably since it takes place in L.A., no Hispanics.
- My Beloved Smother: Hillary is pretty possessive of her son David, always telling him what to do, and forbidding his relationships first with Sarah and then with Julie.
- My Hair Came Out Green: When Sarah becomes too arrogant about her latest contract, with a shampoo company, Julie puts green dye in Sarah's shampoo bottle. Sarah washes her hair with the shampoo, and so unwittingly dyes her hair green.
- Nice Job Breaking It, Hero: When Carrie becomes mentally unstable, Hillary, with the best of intentions, hires a psychiatrist to help her. Little does Hillary know that the man first starts to take sexual advantage of Carrie, and then falsely declares Carrie insane so he can lock her away in a mental hospital... Hillary wanted to help Carrie, but Carrie is way worse off after.
- One of the Boys: Sarah tells she mostly hung out with boys when she grew up, because she had 2 brothers.
- Put on a Bus: David plays a fairly big role in the first third of the season, but he abruptly leaves for Europe when he decides to leave Models Inc. and start his own agency, because his mother will sabotage all his efforts to do so in the U.S. Afterwards, he is never spoken of again.
- Rape as Drama:
- Sarah was nearly raped by her ex-boyfriend Hank, and this left some psychological scars on her which resurface when she gets together with David.
- Cynthia gets raped by Frank, and is traumatized after that. She joins a self-help group to deal with it, to no avail, as she develops an eating disorder because she can't deal with the trauma.
- Red Herring: Various characters are suspects for Teri's murder, until the real killer is found.
- Hillary is a suspect from the beginning on, since Teri was about to break her contract with Hillary to leave Models Inc., and Teri was Hillary's most profitable model. Then Hillary's clothes' fibers are found under Teri's nails, so she's arrested for it. Turns out she fought with Teri but didn't kill her.
- David is revealed to have had a fight with Teri on the night of her murder, and so also becomes a suspect.
- Teri also had a fight with her boyfriend Brian, about whether or not he also would leave Models Inc.
- Last but not least, Teri also fought with Carrie, and when Carrie is found out to have tampered with police evidence, Carrie's also arrested,
- Pen Name: Craig turns out to be a famous writer; he could hide this because he writes under a made-up name he took on when he started publishing. The fact that it's a female name, and the writer is believed to be a woman, makes it even less obvious.
- Posthumous Character: Teri gets murdered in the first episode and we barely see something of her before she dies. She heavily features in flashbacks in later episodes though, and that is how we get to know more of her.
- Psycho Psychologist: The psychiatrist Hillary gets to help Carrie first seems professional and a nice guy, but he turns out to be a disgrace to his profession by sleeping with Carrie, who's his patient, and then using his influence to lock her away in a mental institution. And he also had sexually abused other patients in the past—Hillary finds out he actually moved from New York to L.A. because his medical licence was revoked in New York because of his misconduct.
- Put on a Bus: Or rather, a plane, as David very abruptly leaves to Europe halfway the series.
- Sanity Slippage:
- Brian starts to see and hear Teri after her death; this is not treated as her being a real ghost, but as Brian being mentally unstable.
- Carrie develops weird behaviours after her sister's death, amongst others impersonating Hillary. She is admitted to a mental hospital by a psychiatrist for it.
- Screw This, I'm Out of Here!: When David realizes that his mother Hillary will sabotage any modeling agency he might try to start in the U.S., and that his fiancee Julie also is more loyal to Hillary than to himself, he abruptly leaves for Europe. He thinks he can start a modeling agency over there, away from Hillary, and that with Julie out of the picture there's nothing keeping him in the U.S. anymore.
- Sexy Priest: Sarah falls in love with a handsome man, Mark, and starts a romantic relationship with him, until he reveals to her that he's about to take his vows to become a priest—which includes celibacy, so they break things off.
- Stalker with a Crush:
- Cynthia is stalked by former childhood friend Frank. He even follows her to another state, and keeps harrassing her and sending death threats. She manages to get a restraining order against him, but to no avail, as he kidnaps and rapes her.
- Stephanie is in love with Brian—who doesn't have a clue about this— and goes to extremes to "win him over", even murdering Teri and sending Sarah death threats.
- Teen Pregnancy:
- When Carrie was 17, she got pregnant. Because her own mother had abandoned her and she also had to take care of her sister Teri, she had to put the baby up for adoption.
- Linda reveals she got pregnant at 17 and had an abortion.
- Downplayed with Sarah, as she's not in high school or living with her parents anymore, but at 19 she technically still is a teenager, and she herself says that she's way too young and that she can't possibly take care of a baby when she even can't take care of herself.
- Title Drop: Happens in every episode, as the name of the agency all characters work for also is the name of the series.
- Token Minority: Cynthia, as an African-American girl, is the only non-white character appearing.
- Trauma Conga Line: Poor Carrie goes through an extreme amount of misery and trauma.
- Her mother abandoned her in her teens, so she had to take care of her younger sister Teri, working jobs and providing an income for both of them—none of which Teri was ever grateful for. In fact, Teri was always openly hateful and hostile towards her; not to mention that Teri's modeling career always went better than Carrie's and Carrie always was compared unfavourably to Teri. Then Teri is murdered—after a big fight with Carrie, so they never reconciled. To add insult to injury, Carrie is a suspect for Teri's murder and arrested for it, though she can prove her innocence.
- She had to put up for adoption a baby she had as result of a teen pregnancy, only to hear shortly afterwards that the baby had died. But 10 years later she finds out the baby hadn't died after all. She goes to find her now-10-year-old son, only to fall in love with, and start an affair with, the child's adoptive father, who's married. When the man finds out she's the child's biological mother, he never wants to see Carrie again—and forbids any contact between the child and Carrie, which is heart-breaking for her.
- She sees a psychiatrist to deal with the loss of her sister and her son, but the man falsely declares her insane and locks her away in a mental institution, sexually abusing her. Luckily, she manages to get out, but then everything is taken up to eleven when...
- ...she is drugged and shipped off to an unnamed South American country to be used as a sex slave... And this horrible fate is the last thing we see of her.
- Truth in Television:
- When her father confesses to her that he used to be an active alcoholic before she was born, Sarah suddenly realises her alcohol (ab)use has gotten out of control, and asks her father "Daddy, am I an alcoholic?", to which her father answers "Only you can know if you are". This is according to real-life Alcoholics Anonymous (and her father is later shown to attend their meetings)guidelines : only a person themselves can "diagnose" or call themselves an alcoholic.
- Also, children of alcoholics are likelier to become alcoholics themselves. That's parly "nurture" and partly "nature"; the latter certainly seems to be the case for Sarah, as he had never told her he had been an alcoholic before she was born so she didn't even know.
- Weight Woe: The models frequently mention that they have to be thin for their jobs, and that they are on diets. Most of it is within healthy limits, except for Cynthia. She thinks she's "fat" and starts dieting, after a remark someone makes about her weight during a photo shoot (which she might even have misinterpreted). In reality, she's absolutely not overweight; she has bulimia, and the dieting soon develops in bingeing and purging.
- Why Did You Make Me Hit You?: Whenever Eric physically abuses Linda he gaslights her into thinking she deserved it and "made him do it".
