Joss Whedon

Question: One of your readers wrote in recently to say that "only Joss Whedon understands the concept of having a character evolve." I have to disagree with that, and I humbly submit the example of Everwood to prove my case. One of the brilliant things about Everwood is that, at times, its characters make miserable decisions or go through phases in which they are really unappealing. It’s a brave thing for a show to do, and I think they do it better than any other show on TV. I know you’ve supported the show in the past, and I wonder if you think that its refusal to make its characters always likable helps or hurts it in terms of ratings. I’d really like to see it find an hour on CW. - Nicole

Matt Roush: You and me both. First, I should note that more than a few readers wrote in to gripe about that random Joss Whedon comment. Gotta love his rabid fan base, and gotta cut them some slack when they go a bit overboard. (What else are these poor souls going to do, given that we’re in a non-Joss lull here in TV land.) I love Joss, too, but clearly he doesn’t have a monopoly on great character development; just think of J.J. Abrams’ shows, for a start. And too many more to mention. Including, of course, my beloved Everwood. Which is beloved for the very fact Nicole notes: that unlike many more saccharine family dramas, the characters here often do dreadful things and suffer pretty dire consequences as a result. It can take a long time for the characters on this show to get over broken relationships and pick up the pieces of their shattered lives, which is as it should be. If it were a lighter, brighter, more pandering show, I suppose it could have enjoyed more robust, 7th Heaven-level ratings. But until WB started screwing with it this season, moving it to Thursday and then subjecting it to another long hiatus, I hadn’t really worried about its future. Now, of course, as we face the merger into the new CW, I fear it may not make the cut. Which would make me very sad.

On another Everwood front, this from Lauren: "As someone who has loved Everwood from the get-go, I have grown more and more annoyed by the fact that since the beginning of Season 3, more and more focus has been taken away from the main characters and put on supporting characters, like Jake, Reid and, most of all, Hannah. Do you think there is any chance that the rest of the season will concentrate on the main cast and their multiple issues? It seems unfair to the longtime fans that there are so many unresolved issues between main characters (Andy and Ephram, and Ephram and Amy being obvious examples, the difficult relationship that Bright has with Harold another one), and still we are expected to be more interested in story lines surrounding supporting characters."

An interesting and possibly fair complaint, but a show like Everwood can only thrive by bringing in new characters to play alongside the core cast, in order to stem a feeling of sameness. If the show were still dealing each week with Andy and Ephram coming to grips over Andy lying about Madison and the baby (the epitome of the sort of miserable decisions Nicole was talking about), fans would probably be knocking the show for having fallen into a rut. The Bright-Hannah relationship has been one of the bright spots (so to speak) of the show the last two years, and Scott Wolf as Jake has been a tremendous addition to the show’s appeal. (Adding him as a barrier to the Andy-Nina relationship was first-rate soap opera.) It’s not like these newer folks are living in their own separate series. They’re intimately connected to the stories of the show’s primary original characters.