Daphne Zuniga has become the fourth member of the original cast of “Melrose Place” to agree to appear on the new version of the show, slated to debut on the CW this fall.  The others: Josie Bisette as Jane, Laura Leighton as Sydney, and Thomas Calabro as Dr. Michael Mancini.  I guess Andrew Shue was too busy.  Too busy shaking down teenage prostitutes in Hong Kong.

Zuniga — last seen on One Tree Hill — will reprise her role as photographer Jo Reynolds in The CW’s reboot of Melrose Place this fall. She’ll guest star in at least two episodes; her character returns to town after enjoying success in her career as a professional photographer. [EW]

Why does every character on every TV show that gets rebooted/updated become successful?  Remember how Tori Spelling’s Donna Martin went on to become a great fashion designer?  That’s someone who barely graduated high school.  I’m not wishing ill upon Daphne Zuniga’s character, but c’mon, Hollywood: most people who get older just become pregnant or alcoholic or fat or bald.  Sometimes all of those things.

Here’s the extended preview for next fall’s reanimated corpse of “Melrose Place” on the CW.  Won’t you join me as I make fart noises with my mouth and armpit at the same time?

It’s not merely that it’s a remake, or that Ashlee Simpson is in the cast, or that the characters’ names are stupid, or that actors from the original are shoehorned into the cast.  It’s that it doesn’t even succeed at being provocatively trashy.  I watched this and was bored out of my mind.  Everyone is blandly attractive, and no one is interesting.  Just like the real L.A.  And just to make it clear that that’s a bad thing, here are some other things that represent the real L.A.: “The Hills,” “Entourage,” and sitting in traffic.

I’m sorry, but Ashlee Simpson NAILED her role as a big-time heroin dealer on an upcoming episode of “CSI:NY” (clip via Videogum).  Just check her and Pete Wentz out, rolling around with a brick of uncut, able to glance at a bag of cash and determine that it’s not $80,000 — this is a first-class thespian who deserves to be on-screen more.

Oh hey, good news: Ashlee Simpson’s gonna be on the new Melrose Place:

Multiple sources confirm that singer-songwriter-sometime actress Ashlee Simpson has become the latest tenant of The CW’s refurbished Melrose Place.  The onetime 7th Heaven star will play small-town girl Violet, a character whose disarming naiveté masks the calculating, shrewd sex kitten within.

Good for her.  She’s worked so hard to get everything she has in life.  The rest of us skate our way through college and various graduate schools trying to find traction in a crappy economy, while poor Ashley has had nothing to rely on except her older sister’s fame, excellent plastic surgery, and a tabloid relationship to get where she is.  Bravo, Ashlee.  You deserve it.

Pretty much no one watches the CW’s remake of “90210,” so the CW sensibly greenlit a remake of “Melrose Place.”  Later that day, a CW executive stared at an unflushed toilet, where he admired his work and reminisced about last night’s burrito.

The CW’s update of “Melrose Place” has received an official pilot order, and Oscar winner [for An Inconvenient Truth - Ed.] Davis Guggenheim will direct it.

A remake of the ’90s series about a group of twentysomethings living in the trendy Melrose neighborhood of Los Angeles, the pilot was written by Darren Swimmer and Todd Slavkin (“Smallville”).

You know, it’s easy to trash the staid notion of remaking something as soon as there’s a new generation to feed it to.  I really should despise it.  And yet… there’s something to be said about a primetime soap that’s unapologetically over-the-top and sexy.  I’d be down for young people double-crossing each other and having sex and removing their wigs to reveal OH MY GOD WHAT A GNARLY SCAR!!!

(Yes, those people were sexy in the ’90s.  Yeah, I don’t know how it happened, either.  You kinda had to be there.)