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Insidebayarea.com

Hot neighbors get ’Windfall,’ summer run "Windfall" 10 tonight NBC-Channel 11 (buffy mention)

Susan Young

Thursday 8 June 2006, by Webmaster

HERE’S THE PITCH: Twenty people win a lottery pool. It changes their lives.

This sizzler has been sitting in the can for a year, waiting for a premiere date. That says all too much about the network’s confidence in the project. Yet judging from the first, admittedly too crowded, episode, we’re hoping for a summer home run.

Maybe it’s just those hot guys.

Trying to keep track of all these people is almost as hard as figuring out who’s who in the "Lost" cast. The major problem with "Windfall" is that although there are several interesting

stories lurking out there, we don’t really need to hear about them all at once.

Stripping the plot points down to the core, Peter (Luke Perry) is married to Nina (Lana Parrilla), the college sweetheart of Peter’s childhood best buddy Cameron (Jason Gedrick). Cameron ditched Nina and married Beth (Sarah Wynter).

They are now all neighbors, and while Peter is the best husband and father ever, Nina still longs for the sexy Cameron. And really, who wouldn’t? You may remember Gedrick’s appearance on "Ally McBeal" with the steamy car wash scene in which Ms. McBeal got more than her car waxed.

Peter’s the better husband,

but Cameron drives her dreams.

After hosting a lottery party, Nina and Cam go to the store to buy tickets. He gives her a mega-jolt kiss and the dazed Nina staggers into the store.

The distracted Nina is approached by high school neighbor kid Damien (Jon Foster) who gives her a buck to get in the drawing. She impulsively adds Cam’s birthday as the additional lottery pick.

His birthdate wins the record-breaking jackpot.

That’s when everything starts tumbling down. Playing off the cliche of money not buying happiness, we watch as the lives of the winners start spinning out of control.

Damien marries a mail-order bride so he can become an emancipated minor and collect his earnings. His neighbor Frankie (Alice Greczyn), who has had a crush on Damien, discovers she’s practically abandoned when her lottery-winning mom takes off to live the high life.

And sexy, reclusive, Sean (D.J. Cotrona) fears the win will reveal he’s been living a secret life. He takes up with an attorney who claims the money for him - yet seems more interested in his abs than his bank account.

Gedrick and Cotrona burn up the screen. Those smoldering looks between Gedrick and Parrilla are enough to cause a forest fire of Yellowstone proportions.

Meanwhile, the gentle romance between Damien and Frankie harks back to those 1980s John Hughes’ films such as "Sixteen Candles."

Almost perfect for a summer’s night viewing.

"Hex"

10 tonight

BBC America

Oh, what a delicious dilemma - to watch Gedrick and Cotrona, or the British version of "Buffy, the Vampire Slayer" meets "Charmed"?

If only we had a crystal ball to see which is worth the effort.

Oh, wait. We do. You see, "Hex" aired for two years in Britain before it was canned, and what appears to be an interesting series in the pilot apparently self-destructs.

Tonight, the pilot offers up insecure beauty Cassandra "Cassie" Hughes (Christina Cole), who discovers she’s being haunted at her private boarding school. It turns out she’s cursed by a terrible link to the premises back when it was a private estate.

Cassie desperately tries to blend in at her school, but her only friend is her lesbian roommate Thelma (Jemima Rooper). Oh, the memories of Buffy and Willow.

Things get ugly for both Cassie and Thelma when Azazeal (Michael Fassbender) comes on the scene. It turns out he’s the leader of a group of fallen angels who were banished from heaven for making whoopee with mortal women. (Could he be the next Angel to her Buffy, sans vampires?)

The two-hour premiere certainly has enough going for it to pique our curiosity. Perhaps we shouldn’t pay too much attention to the fact that the show had low ratings in the U.K. Still, the prognosis for this patient isn’t good, given future storylines.

Too bad.

Although not as witty as "Buffy" and not as frothy as "Charmed," "Hex" did seem to hold promise. We looked forward to enjoying Cassie’s journey as she navigated boarding school life with the added burden of her supernatural powers.

Alas, we’ve decided not to take that journey based on our look into the future.