Everwood: The Best Show You're Probably Not Watching

I don't watch a great deal of television. I consciously avoid "reality TV" -- have never seen even a part of an episode of Survivor or The Apprentice or any of that nonsense. So I guess I tend to be a little picky about what I watch. There are a number of shows that I will watch if I happen to be at home when they're on and nothing else is really demanding my attention. I have two shows, however, that for me, are appointment TV. One is Fox's brilliantly written and acted series, House, M.D. Definitely a show to see.

However, the unquestionable #1 series on TV right now, at least in my opinion, is the WB's drama Everwood. It's critically acclaimed, and does alright in the ratings, but doesn't get nearly the attention it so richly deserves. Its underdog status might also contribute to its appeal, but far beyond that, it's just so incredibly well-written. The ensemble cast of actors at the core of the show could scarcely be any better (more on some of those cast members later).

At the heart of the series is the tumultuous relationship between a father and his teenage son. As the series opens, Dr. Andrew Brown (Treat Williams) is a world-famous neurosurgeon, gifted beyond compare. He, his wife, and two kids live in Manhattan, and to call Andy an absent father would be an understatement. He always works, puts every patient ahead of his family, and misses nearly every important event in his household. His 15-year-old son, Ephram (Gregory Smith), is a piano virtuoso, but mostly just sulks and hates his dad. Julia (Brenda Strong) is Andy's long-suffering wife who constantly makes excuses for her husband and tries to mend the growing rift between her son and his father. Rounding out the family is 9-year-old Delia (Vivien Cardone), a bit of a tomboy, and still very much of the mind that her father is the greatest man alive.

On a rainy New York night, Andy stays very late at work once again, missing Ephram's piano recital that he promised he'd attend. Julia goes alone, and is involved in a car wreck en route which claims her life. This opens the story.

Reeling with pain, grief, and guilt, Andy recalls a promise Julia had him make years ago, that, if anything were to ever happen to her, that he would take the kids and move to this little town in Colorado called Everwood. She passed through there once as a girl, she told Andy in a flashback, and thought it the most beautiful, magical place she had ever seen. If she died, she said, Everwood is where Andy could go to find her again. And so it was.

Predictable, but very well-written and acted, shouting matches ensue between Andy and Ephram upon this abrupt move to a small Colorado town. Andy didn't tell Ephram and Delia that it was their late mother's wish that they move there; he just uprooted them and off they went. The growth and change in the relationship between father and son forms the heart of the series, but it's far from the only engaging part of it.

Meet the Abbotts. For many viewers of Everwood, this family is the real reason to watch, and is truly one of the most realistically portrayed families on television. Harold Abbott (Tom Amandes) is the only doctor in town until Andy arrives and sets up shop as a general practitioner who gives his services away for no charge. As you can imagine, these two do not get off on the right foot at all, and watching them grow from near-enemies to the closest of friends over the last 3+ years has just been wonderful. Harold's wife, Rose (Merrilyn Gann), is the mayor of Everwood and is featured only in guest appearances during the first season. She has since become a mainstay of the primary cast and adds so much to the show. The two kids, Amy (Emily VanCamp) and Bright (Chris Pratt), are teenagers. Ephram immediately falls for Amy, and Bright, who starts out as a bullying jerk, evolves over a couple of seasons into a wonderful character and a real favorite of the viewers. There are other cast members as well, and their personalities and storylines are woven so beautifully into the story, it's truly a joy to watch any primary cast member this show throws up on the screen at any time. They're all that good.

The two biggest standouts on this show, however, have consistently been Emily VanCamp and her TV dad, Tom Amandes. They are absolutely gifted actors, and convey so much through facial expressions, voice inflections, body language. Shades of subtlety and richly layered nuances of their characters just shine through every time they're onscreen. Emily is just radiant, and honestly one of the best young actresses I've seen. She is completely deserving of an Emmy for her work on this show, but will likely never get one because it's on the WB. Similarly, Tom Amandes brings so many layers of complexity and depth to his character. He's another Emmy contender who will probably not be rewarded for his amazing work.

Critics all over the country have heaped praise on Everwood, calling it the best show on TV, etc. Only the Season 1 DVDs are available at this time, but as the series had an absolutely brilliant inaugural season, it's a great opportunity for people unfamiliar with the show to get involved. Everwood recently began its fourth season and moved from Mondays to Thursdays.

Do yourself a favor and watch. It really is the cream of the television crop.

Of Turkeys, Turkey Basters, and Turkey Flu

Let's talk turkey...

Although my last entry was somewhat different and introspective, let us return to my favorite sport that doesn't involve a pigskin and pair of goalposts: Bush-bashing.

In yet another stunning confirmation of the notion that he just doesn't get it, Bush is holding a big, fat press conference tonight to once again try to convince everyone that Iraq and terrorism are joined at the hip. Well, they certainly are now! Since his little war toppled that country's quasi-government, Iraq has become a fertile breeding ground for upstart terrorists. If fledgling terrorists are a new strain of bacteria, Iraq is now an enormous Petri dish. Bush has genuinely led us into another Vietnam-esque conflict. We shouldn't be there, should never have gone, but we certainly can't leave now, and we can't undo the damage we've done. And there's honestly no end in sight.

Clearly, Bush hasn't learned a damn thing from the lessons of Katrina. His loathsome practice of putting completely unqualified friends and benefactors into lofty positions of serious importance came back to bite him on the ass when his clueless buddy, "Brownie," resigned in disgrace as the director of FEMA. You'd think Bush would have learned. It was bad enough that he promoted Condoleeza Rice to Secretary of State after she fumbled every single opportunity to excel as National Security Adviser, failing to drive any sense of urgency despite an avalanche of red flags in the run-up to 9/11, and then acting as Bush's enabling stooge in the ill-advised push to invade Iraq. It was also bad enough that he plunked his former aide and speechwriter, Karen Hughes, into the position of Undersecretary of State for Public Diplomacy, an arena in which the Bush administration has failed miserably. We all know about Michael Brown and his epic bungling of the post-Katrina efforts. But has Bush learned the lesson? HELL no.

Now he wants to appoint his good buddy and personal lawyer to the position of Supreme Court Justice! This move is enraging his conservative base because they say she's not right-wingy enough, but really, is that the worst of it? No. This woman has absolutely zero time as a judge. She's never served in a judiciary sense. Never sat on a bench (at least not one that's in a court of law). She says she's "honored and humbled" by Bush's appointment. Well, what fucking mid-grade personal attorney wouldn't be honored and humbled to receive a promotion to the best job in the entire legal profession: an interminable seat on the highest court in the land? Bush's arrogance knows no bounds. How he can think that appointing a woman with absolutely no judiciary experience whatsoever to the Supreme Court would just be okay with everyone because he said so... well, it just defies all logic. But then, so does the bulk of his Presidency. After all, Bush isn't at all qualified to be President, so by that sort of math, you can figure you don't need any qualifications to be a Supreme Court justice, a Secretary of State, or a FEMA Director. You just need to be buddies with Bush.

And I see Tom Cruise is back in the news again, having supposedly impregnated his young victim. I'm not going to play too much into whether this is or isn't still a total sham, but I'll say this much: If Katie Holmes really is pregnant, it's my guess there was a turkey baster involved at some point. This whole sorry epic just smacks of a press junket.

Oh, and Nick and Jessica are heading for divorce again and this time, they ... snorrrrrrrre. Who bloody cares??! Good grief. And then for those two knuckleheads to even spit out a single word about wanting to have the press leave them alone and give them their privacy, blah blah blah... my thought is that if you want your married life to be private, don't make it the basis of a tell-all, show-all MTV series for two damn years! Morons!! Gah! Why is our society so obsessed with the mundane details of these toolbelts' lives? I don't need to hear about Britney Spears' latest trailer-trash escapade or her newest designer fragrance (Eau de Truck Stop Diesel Fumes?). And I certainly don't care about TomKat being pregnant (expecting a kitten, perhaps?) -- big deal, she's knocked up. Like nobody in the world has ever done that before. Lord.

Moving on, I see that the latest poster child for hype and hysteria is this avian flu thing. It's been on every major news magazine cover from Time to National Geographic. (And no, US Weekly doesn't count as a major news magazine, sorry.) So far, I think there have been six unconfirmed deaths in Indonesia which may or may not have been a result of avian flu. But according to all the hype, it's going to be the next great circle-the-world pandemic, killing millions. Better start panicking now, folks, and avoid the holiday rush! Anyone remember SARS? Remember the nonstop hooey about that? Anyone remember the great Y2K global meltdown fears? Yawn.

Stop the insanity. Go hug a goose.

Inexorable

That's an interesting word, isn't it? "Inexorable." At its most basic level, it simply means "unstoppable." But it evokes much more than that, at least to me. It's the unflagging, ceaseless, indefatigable procession of an event, and seems to be used most frequently with the concept of the passage of time. A song by Anna Nalick has a line, "Life's like an hourglass glued to the table." What a great lyric. The grains of sand keep trickling down, and you can't invert the hourglass. She continues, "No one can find the rewind button now." Inexorable.

It's long since been clear to me that there are three, and only three, possibilities of what happens to us when we die. One possibility is that there is an afterlife, whether it's heaven, hell, purgatory, the second ring of Saturn, whatever. Our physical body dies, our spirit continues living. A second prospect is that of reincarnation, the rebirth of our soul. The remaining choice is that death is final; that our time in this world is finite and this life is not a test, not a proving ground, not a preparation for bigger and better things, but that this is indeed it.

That final possibility is one that's been intriguing me of late. What if the time we spend here on Earth is truly all we get? It definitely makes sense that, if there is no God, no afterlife, no greater good, that we'd create the concepts in our minds and collective culture. It's very comforting. To think that this life is our only shot is a frightening prospect. Indeed, most of the world's religions are based upon one of the other two possibilities of what happens when we die. But any objective person will surely concede that the third option, that death is final in every sense of the word, must be considered as a distinct possibility.

Beyond being a somewhat disquieting thought, the notion that we have no destiny beyond the time we spend here can also be profoundly liberating. Think about it -- we all know we're going to die, even if we don't embrace or even genuinely accept it. It's utterly inescapable. Human beings are supposedly the only living creatures that have the foreknowledge, even from a young age, that life is finite and that each of us, all of us will one day perish. Death is truly the great equalizer. But for almost everyone, the notion of our own death is so abstract, it's almost a paradox. "I'll die one day," we think, "eventually." In our minds, "one day" is a far-off, unnamed day in the distant future.

So what if you knew in advance the actual day of your own death? What if you knew you had exactly 5,229 days left to live? It's not a short time, but it's not that long in the grand scheme of things, either, just a bit over 14 years. That's probably still far enough off in the future to be pretty hard to grasp, though. It's less than half the time most of us pay on our mortgages. But would you live your life differently if you had a countdown? Maybe, maybe not.

But what if that number were substantially reduced? What if the date of your death was 351 days from now? Just under a year. One more Christmas. Your next birthday would be your last. Each season that passed would be the last one you would live to see. Would you change your day-to-day mode of living? Of course you would. Most of us would quit our jobs, certainly. Travel. Spend time with loved ones. Make a difference in our community or in the world at large. Help propel humanity to be even just a little better. Really live our lives. We would, as Thoreau wrote, live deliberately and suck all the marrow out of life. We'd make each and every day truly count.

So the prospect of death can be frightening... but it can also be liberating.

In the face of the inexorable march of time, the death sentence to which every one of us will fall prey... we can fear death or we can embrace life. While they sound as if they could be complementary, they're almost inevitably going to be mutually exclusive. It's an interesting way to think.