I had been using kdenlive 0.9.2 for a while without issue. I updated to kdenlive 0.9.6 via the instructions on using Sunab's repository. I have Ubuntu 12.10.

When I started kdenlive, it asks me to go through the first-run wizard thing, and it claims that I have MLT 0.8.0, please upgrade to 0.8.8. And I can click through that first-run wizard, but once I click finish, that box goes away and the NLE doesn't open. Nothing happens. So i updated melt via sudo apt-get install melt, where it went through and upgraded melt to 0.8.8. Now it says that melt is already the newest version.

So when I started kdenlive again, it still says that I have melt 0.8.0. And kdenlive's NLE still won't start after clicking finish on the first-run wizard.

So i did sudo apt-get autoremove kdenlive to uninstall, then sudo apt-get install kdenlive to reinstall. Still the same thing. It comes up as me having MLT 0.8.0, even though I updated it. Wondering what's going on...

Check if you don't have an older version of MLT installed:

sudo dpkg -l | grep mlt

Will should list all MLT packages installed.
You can also check using this commands:
ls -la /usr/local/lib/libmlt*
ls -la /usr/lib/libmlt*

Next, you can try from a terminal to make sure which MLT is here:

melt -version

Sweet!
After running the commands you showed me,
I ran sudo apt-get install and updated these packages
libmlt++3
libmlt-data
libmlt-5
python-mlt5
libmlt++

Now I'm back in business. thanks for you help.