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MELISSA WALKER
Played by Luanne Gordon
Melissa (Mel, to her friends) is in her mid-thirties. She's a woman who has let herself become obsessed with deadlines, responsibility, climbing the career ladder - all in the belief that this is what one does as a grown-up. When we meet her, she's working long hours as a highly competent corporate lawyer. Apart from the occasional verbal flourish for a judge, she's extinguished almost all vestiges of her former creative and fun-loving personality.
Despite this, you can't help liking Melissa straight away. Even when working like a galley slave, you respond to her spunk - she's got heaps of attitude, calls a spade a spade, gives things all she's got. She's loyal and she has good intentions - although she sometimes overdoes things and ends up with a result completely opposite to the one she had in mind. She also has a great sense of humour and part of her journey involves discovering her growing ability for accurate (usually humorous) self-analysis.
As her journey begins, we discover she's had enough of being the one who always does the "right and sensible" thing. She used to love the fact that she could surprise those around her - even surprise herself - and she sees she lost that magic ability while climbing the career ladder, but it's never too late. Buying the strip club is so empowering - it's the last thing people expect her to do.
Radical change is never easy and Mel struggles to find balance in her new life - she still wants to be a good mother to Paige, still wants a good relationship with her own mother; still wants a partner she can love and be loved by. The opening of Mel's club, founded on the notion of 'having fun', is for her a simple, positive statement in a complex, double-dealing world. Yet she comes to realise that her business is largely about wrangling people, and that is never simple. Especially when the people are Adam. Man Alive's biggest draw-card is a stunningly handsome, well educated, six-foot Samoan who has the punters fainting in the aisles night after night. After various strategies - ignoring Adam, being friends with Adam, trying Adam subsitutes - all prove ineffectual, Mel is confronted by the reality of her desire.
As Mel's journey continues she vows that she's not looking for true love or a soul mate ('Yeah right!' says Kath). As far as guys are concerned all she wants now is sex and fun - no angsting, no commitment, no shoes under the bed. Reality invariably proves more complicated than the theory, but with an amused, yet supportive Kath assuring her that no man will say no to a strings-free fuck, Mel sets out to be more sexually assertive - she's going to learn how to pounce!
Adam takes over a girlie bar across the road and while he and Melissa continue to collide, unfortunately or otherwise, Mel doesn't have too much time to analyse her romantic performances or formulate new strategies, since her life becomes extremely hectic. Not only has she become pre-occupied finding her estranged father, but there are numerous staff problems at the club, mental health issues concerning her mother Leslie, several kinds of crisis involving Paige and a major evolution in her friendship with Kathryn.
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