Episode
Melrose Place: The Burning Couch
Overview
Bobby is arrested for assaulting Peter, but Sydney later convinces Amanda to have the charges dropped. Peter makes a deal with Billy's client so that he can pay off Alycia and escape her influence. Alycia takes over Bobby's company. ""Betsy"" throws the couch off the deck and sets it on fire, and later tries to maim Michael. Jake is furious to learn that Jane sabotaged Richard's show. He gets drunk during a fashion convention and sleeps with a stranger. The woman is later hired as Jane's new assistant. Alan outs himself to a tabloid because he can no longer live a lie. Matt is hesitant to take him back.
Details
- Series
- Melrose Place
- Season
- Season 4
- Episode
- Episode 26
- Air date
- 1996-03-11
- Runtime
- 45 min
Episode context
The Burning Couch is Episode 26 in Season 4 of Melrose Place. It aired on 1996-03-11. The runtime is 45 min.
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Episode 25: Ruthless People
Billy continues to irritate Alison with his win-at-all-costs attitude and boorish behavior. He befriends the chauvinistic president of a vodka company, and usurps one of Amanda's accounts. Alan's parents come to town for the ""wedding,"" and are unaware that their son is gay. They reveal that they have purchased a house for Alan and Valerie. A distraught Matt gets drunk and sleeps with his friend Dave. Matt walks out during the wedding, and Alan refuses to go after him. Jo discovers that Jane is responsible for the mishap at Richard's show. She blackmails her into hiring Richard as a consultant. Kimberly develops an alternate personality--a prudish, controlling woman named Betsy Jones. Amanda rejects Bobby, and he breaks down her apartment door. Peter is later knocked unconscious following a scuffle with Bobby.
Episode 27: Triumph of the Bill
Billy uses underhanded means to steal the keynote speech at an ad convention away from Alison. He makes an emotional speech about lying, and reveals that he has sold his soul to become a star in the industry. After Billy is a hit at the convention, Amanda sleeps with him. Alison quits her job and learns that Amanda is using Billy to help her career. Kimberly develops another personality, a cool biker chick named Rita. She refuses Peter's medical advice. Sydney blackmails Alycia into rehiring Bobby, but he instead seeks honest work as a mechanic. Sydney offers to let the homeless Bobby stay at her apartment. Claire has been hired by Richard to break up Jake and Jane. She tells Jane that she is having an affair with Jake. Jane fires Claire and breaks up with Jake. Jake rejects a reconciliation attempt by Jo and crawls back to Jane.
More episodes from this season
Episode 24: Run Billy Run
Alison is put off by Billy's obnoxious behavior, and pushes him away. Amanda agrees to give Billy a raise if he can win a prestigious airline account. He sleeps with a rival executive to get her to reveal their strategy, then uses it to undermine them. Amanda turns to Peter for comfort after the bribery allegations against Bobby become public. An incensed Alycia threatens to reveal Peter's scam unless he stays away from Amanda. Jane has to cancel her fashion show because Richard has taken her designs. She sabotages Richard's show by using a tiki torch (part of the show's theme) to trigger the sprinkler system. Kimberly begins suffering migraines.
Episode 28: What Comes Up, Must Come Down
Alison takes a job as a waitress at Shooters. Amanda uses Billy's status to her advantage in her contract negotiations. Kimberly asks Peter to take Michael out of town for a few days so that she can have time to herself. Michael and Peter head to Palm Springs, where they are judges in a teen beauty pageant. Teri Carson, the pushy mother of one of the contestants, tries to convince Peter to vote for her daughter. Her daughter, Brandi, seduces Michael. She does not win the pageant. Amanda dumps Billy to go back to Peter. She rejects Peter after Teri shows up on his doorstep and says that she is suing him for sleeping with her underage daughter. Sydney tries to bond with Bobby by getting him drunk and getting tattoos together. Sydney's friend Laurie comes to town with her young son Tyler. Jo takes them in because Sydney has no room for them. While babysitting, Jo discovers bruises on the boy's back. Matt laments the fact that Alan has moved to New York.
Episode 23: Circle of Strife
Kimberly is hurt when she receives divorce papers, although they had been filed months before her reconciliation with Michael. He suggests that they have a real wedding at the beach house and renew their vows. Michael fires Sydney at Kimberly's request. Sydney sues Michael and Peter for sexual harassment, and they are forced to appoint her office manager. Peter stifles Alycia's suspicions by claiming that his father was destroyed by the Parezis. They launch a plan to ruin Bobby's image by making it appear that he is bribing a senator. Jo accidentally takes Jane's sketch pad, and the designs are included in Richard's new line. Alison is outraged when Billy embarrasses her in front of a client to set up his own pitch. They later sleep together, and Billy tries to bully Alison into moving in with him. Alan tells Matt that the show's producer has decided that he and his co-star, Valerie, should marry as a publicity stunt.
Episode 29: True Fibs
Teri threatens to expose Michael's actions to Kimberly unless he lets Peter take the fall for sleeping with Brandi. Amanda apologizes for doubting Peter. He refuses to meet Teri's settlement demands. Kimberly begs Peter for help with her illness. Before he can treat her, he is arrested for statutory rape. Amanda learns that Michael was the one who slept with Brandi. Kimberly argues with ""Betsy,"" who conks Michael on the head with a hammer. Matt asks one of his medical school professors, pediatrician Dr. Dominick O'Malley, to look at Tyler. He finds no evidence of abuse. Laurie tells Jo to mind her own business. Billy's string of success with ad campaigns comes to an end. He decides that he must put his obsession with Brooke behind him and move on. Richard rapes Jane during a business trip to New York. She pushes Jake away and doesn't tell anyone what has happened. Sydney inadvertently becomes a porno producer when she invests money with an old acquaintance of Bobby's.
Episode 22: Devil in a Wet Dress
Alison and Billy pull Brooke from the pool, but she is already dead. Billy is haunted by nightmares about Brooke. Michael goes to great lengths to convince Kimberly to move back in with him. Alycia threatens to quit when Bobby warns her to stay away from Peter. She catches Peter going through her files. Jane and Richard resort to underhanded tactics as they fight over a potential client. Matt is wary of Alan's relationship with his leading lady, until he learns she is a lesbian. She warns that the show's producer destroyed her relationship, and could do the same to Matt and Alan.
Episode 30: Melrose Unglued
Amanda persuades Teri to drop the charges against Peter by making Brandi the spokesperson for a cosmetics company. ""Betsy"" throws a knife at Michael after he reveals that he slept with Brandi. When he returns, Kimberly begs him to stay away for his own good. She turns to Peter for help, but vanishes before he can aid her. Bobby's friend Jimmy tells Sydney that Alycia and Peter conspired to take Bobby down. Syd shares this news with Bobby, who sets up a confrontation with Alycia. When he tries to attack her, she knocks him out a high-rise building to his death. As Peter is about to be questioned about Bobby's death, Alycia calls from her car and confesses. She agrees to turn herself in, but loses control of the car while picking up her phone, and has a head-on collision with a semi. Dominick gets Matt to set him up on a date with Jo. She convinces him to see Tyler again, and Laurie reveals that the boy was abused by her ex-boyfriend.
Episode 21: No Lifeguard on Duty (2)
Michael learns that Vic has been mistakenly released from prison. Vic hides in the back seat of Kimberly's car and kidnaps her at knifepoint. Michael steals a car and chases them. Kimberly's car crashes through a fence and into a semi. Michael pulls her to safety before the car explodes. Kimberly wants to just be Michael's friend, but later changes her mind during an especially friendly Scrabble game. Matt is furious when Alan conducts a TV interview in their apartment and says that they are ""roommates."" Alan apologizes and joins Matt at a dance-a-thon, but is livid when they are photographed together. Sydney warns Bobby that Peter is out to destroy his relationship with Amanda. Alison learns that Brooke is living in her car, and invites her to move in. Billy pushes her to end this arrangement. Brooke is fired for mouthing off to Amanda.
Episode 31: Peter's Excellent Adventure
Peter learns that Alycia is dead. Amanda punches him for setting up Bobby, but later forgives him. Kimberly resurfaces and agrees to serve as Peter's alibi. However, she has turned into Betsy again. She injects Peter with a paralyzing drug and has him committed to a mental hospital that she is temporarily running. Alison stops Jake from killing Richard. Jane tries to file rape charges, but learns that she has no case. Jake and Alison are stunned when Jane says that she is continuing her partnership with Richard. Jane is actually planning revenge, and begins hanging around the shooting range. Billy asks Jake to help him win back Alison. Matt is accidentally injected with tainted blood during a struggle with a street kid at the hospital.
Episode 20: No Lifeguard on Duty (1)
Amanda tells Vince that Jack was not the loving son that he remembers. Vince is outraged, but decides to let Amanda and Bobby go. He sells his shares in Bobby's cable company, leaving the business in jeopardy. Amanda agrees to help Bobby. Peter pays Syd to accompany him to a party and try to win Bobby away from Amanda. A financially strapped Brooke is thrown out of her hotel room. Alison convinces Billy not to have Amanda fire Brooke. Brooke tries to win back her ex-fiancé, but he laughs at her. Kimberly receives a call from Vic. When she visits him in prison, he vows that he will get out. Jane decides to start a business in Jake's garage. Jane's relationship with Jake is strained when she makes vicious comments to Jo. Matt accuses Alan of trying to keep their relationship under wraps.
Episode 32: Full Metal Betsy
Michael and Amanda hit the road in search of Peter and Kimberly. Peter befriends a nurse, but she turns against him when he uses her as part of a plot to escape. As Michael and Amanda try to infilitrate the mental hospital, ""Betsy"" prepares to give Peter a lobotomy. Matt develops spinal meningitis as the result of his accident with the street kid (who has died of the disease). Jo is angry when Dominick behaves insensitively toward Matt. Michael blurts out that Sydney was responsible for Jane's stroke. Jane blackmails Sydney into participating in her plot to murder Richard. Jane considers a new business proposition when a salesgirl named Samantha Reilly tells her that the store where she works is for sale. Billy and Alison have a disastrous date. Alison is furious to learn that Jake had aided Billy's pursuit of her.