Thursday, May 3, 2007

Everwood - Grown up and living in LA

I whined and whined when Everwood was cancelled last spring in order to run the 13th season of 7th Heaven. However, the creator of Everwood, Greg Berlanti, is part of the production company that created Brother & Sisters, the new show with Sally Field and Calista Flockhart that follows Desperate Housewives. It started out a fairly cliched show, a large family that fit all the statistics - 1 gay son, 1 drug-addict, 1 Republican - that engendered lots of infighting about politics and acceptance. If it had stayed that way, it would have been cancelled quickly. However, the strength that Everwood displayed in its complex characters, unique story lines, and heartfelt dialogue, has finally broken through on Brothers & Sisters. There are several storylines going on at once, but with many overlaps as it's a close family that has trouble keeping secrets, especially from each other. However, the stories aren't difficult to follow, unlike Heroes right now. The family is more than a little quirky at times, but who isn't, and the level of acceptance and forgiveness they're able to exhibit is worth watching. B & S also shows some of that spastic humor Desperate Housewives was able to put together at the beginning, before the mystery took over everything. It's only just finishing it's first season, but here's hoping it gets a few more...and is never cancelled for 7th Heaven.

2 comments:

Cat said...

I'm glad to hear it's proven itself! I watched the pilot and felt (as you did) that the characters were very generic. I'm glad it's grown in complexity. I love Rachel Griffiths (oh, the Six Feet Under love); is she good on the show?

Jess said...

She is terrific! She seems like a bad-ass at work trying to keep change from taking them down, but she's just trying to fit into the family, rather than be the big sister. Her husband is on his second marriage (with her) and is just about ready to make it implode. She's got great emotional scenes that make you wonder what it would take to end a marriage, particularly if you'd been emotionally unfaithful yourself. She's really terrific.