Reviewing Movies

At long last the studio has released Season Two of Everwood on DVD, it has been a six year wait. Although I still find John Beasley's background narration somewhat saccharine and unnecessary, especially coming from a minor character in the storyline; overall, the wait has been worth it. Everwood is one of those small towns where keeping secrets is an exercise in self-delusion. Dr. Andrew Brown's secretary is the mother of his chief rival whose practise is across the street. They sit side-by-side at the counter in the diner run by Andy's neighbour. His rival, Dr Abbott has a wife who is town mayor. Their daughter is Andy's son Ephram's on and off girlfriend. Her hulking jock brother is incongruously named Bright. Also typical of small towns is the fact that people here take care of one another whether or not they like one another.

In keeping with the caring community theme what made this series unique is the fact that great care is taken with the writing of every cast member; there are no hollow cut-out one-dimensional supporting players thrown in to move the plot along. Andy treats real people the arc of whose lives play out over successive episodes. Each assumes his place in the greater community their lives interacting with each other. However it is the father-son duo at the heart of this series who provide the driving force throughout. Andy lost his life's partner and is attempting to muddle through despite his repressed grief; throwing away his career as pre-eminent surgeon for a small-town general practise and getting a crash course in parenting as a single father. The son Ephram, lost a mother who anchored his existence and acted as his life's catalyst and suddenly must discover a father who until this point was absent from his life and has now dragged him half way across the country from the stimulus of urban NYC to a small culturally-deprived mountain town. As the sixteen-year-old son with an "old soul" Ephram is coping with the loss of his Mother and his resentment toward a father who to this point has missed all the rites of passage in his life. Neither knows how to cope with his younger sister Delia.

Everwood has always had great writers and its creator, Greg Berlanti, has imbued its young actors with the same wise beyond their years intelligence and self-awareness we came to expect in Dawson's Creek. The children here raise their parents. To Andy performing 6-hour neurosurgery is easy compared to a sex-ed talk in front of a class of hormonal teens. Nor is the series shy about confronting contentious issues including teenage depression, sex, drugs, homosexuality, and HIV. After The Waltons, Everwood was among the most wholesome programming to come to television. To an even greater degree these families strive to be better despite their imperfections.