Everwood: an Overview

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Spoilers, obviously -- through the second episode of season two.

Pics and Bios

Everwood is a pretty character-heavy quirky small town show, so there are many other characters who show up at regular intervals, but the picture below shows the main cast. From left to right, they are: Andy, Delia and Ephram Brown; Harold, Amy and Bright Abbot; and Edna and Irv Harper.

Andy Brown: Played by Treat Williams. Andy is father to Ephram and Delia, whom he ignored for a good part of their lives, before the death of their mother; the fragile relationship between he and Ephram is often at the center of the show. Doctor!Andy is incredibly talented and confident (he was a world famous brain surgeon before Everwood), while in his regular life, Andy tends toward the kindhearted and bumbling. He also likes to make impassioned speeches at regular intervals at Topical Issues.

Delia Brown: Played by Vivian Cardone. Ephram's sister, Andy's daughter. Delia doesn't actually get that many lines, which is a shame, because she's fun and cute as a button and kinda tomboyish. She has random friends we don't care about, and occasionally wacky hijinks. Also, has baseball cap collection.

Ephram Brown: Played by Gregory Smith. Delia's brother, Andy's son. He spent most of the first season with a giant chip on his shoulder, with a big cloud of hatred for Andy for the way he treated him, Delia, and their mother (who had a martyry thing happening in his mind for a while). The two of them have reached some sort of trucelike state now; the fights and annoyances still happen, but there's many more nice moments between them, and much more support from Ephram to Andy. Ephram's had a megacrush on Amy Abbot since the pilot, but despite the two kisses they shared, nothing else has come of it, as Amy already had a boyfriend -- Colin Hart, the kid in the coma. He's an underachiever in school, and plays piano like nobody's business.

Harold Abbot: Played by Tom Amandes. Amy and Bright's father, and Edna's son. Before Andy came to town, he was the town doctor, having followed in his own father's footsteps. He had a sort of distaste and resentment for Andy which has settled into a grudging respect, if not friendship. He has an excellent, close relationship with his daughter and a shakier one with his son. He and Edna were estranged for a while, with Harold angry at how quickly she remarried after his father's death. He's also married to Rose, the town mayor. Harold is finicky, sarcastic, and crabby, and thus much beloved by many viewers.

Amy Abbot: Played by Emily VanCamp. Harold's daughter, Bright's sister. Pretty, popular, smart, gets along with her family, and is fairly nice most of the time. But she's also a teenager, and she has many, many moments of complete brattiness. Amy's life for much of the season revolved around her boyfriend, Colin (see below), to the point of rudeness or ignoring anyone who challenged either of them or their relationship. Right now, she's still grieving deeply over his death, for which she blames Andy; she recently agreed, on her mother's suggestion, to try therapy.

Bright Abbot: Played by Chris Pratt. Harold's son, Amy's brother, Colin's best friend. Somehow, Bright has gone from being the jerk who picked on Ephram in the pilot to being a fully rounded, sympathetic character. Who knew? He's not the sharpest knife in the drawer, and yes, the jokes about his name have been made eighty million times. He's a skilled student athlete, but he was recently barred from school athletics when he failed a class.

Edna Harper: Played by Debra Mooney. Harold's mother, Amy and Bright's grandmother, Andy's nurse, Irv's wife. Formerly a nurse in Nam, her late husband's office, and briefly in Harold's. Gruff, butch, practical and caring underneath.

Irv Harper: Edna's husband. Delia's bus driver. He's not actually on that often, but he's in every episode doing the lame-ass narrator spiels at the beginning and end.

Another important character in the series is Colin Hart (played by Mike Erwin). Colin was only in about half the episodes in the first season, and his death was revealed in the season two premiere, but his accident and the consequences of it are the major plot of the first season, and continue to influence the characters now. He's also very widely represented in fanfiction, with both Bright/Colin and Ephram/Colin being popular slash pairings. Amy's boyfriend, Bright's best friend, operated on by Andy Brown in both his surgeries. He and Ephram struck up a tentative friendship, but it fell apart as Colin got more and more sick, weird and denialy. The entire town rallied around him and was kind of obsessed with him. Is now dead.

Laynie Hart. Played by Nora Zehetner. Colin's sister. She showed up late in S1, went out with Ephram for three seconds, and then disappeared again. She's back for S2, though.

Nina Feeney. Played by Stephanie Niznik. The Browns' next-door neighbor. She was pregnant at the beginning of the series, and gave the baby to the friend she was surrogating for after it was born. She has a really annoying 3 year old, and was married to a traveling salesman. They just broke up after she found out he was cheating on her with men.


Overview of the show

After his wife dies, Andrew Brown goes a little loopy and quits his job, grows a scruffy beard, and moves his two kids from New York City to Everwood, Colorado (chosen because of a childhood memory of his dead wife's). There, he sets up his office in an old train station and starts practicing medicine for free. The other doctor in town, Harold, thinks he's a jerk, and they banter throughout the season. For the first few episodes, he also has vivid hallucination-type memories of his wife, but they fade away.

Ephram hates Everwood, hates his father, hates the kids, hates more or less everything. Except not Amy, whom he falls for like *that*. Only, oops! Turns out Amy was only cozying up to him because Andy's a brain surgeon, and it just so happens Amy has this boyfriend, see, who could really use a brain surgeon! Ephram lies to Amy and tells her Andy won't do it, but changes his mind later and tells Andy about Colin.

Andy ends up operating on him, and Colin wakes up from his coma. He has no memory of his life before, though. He has to relearn who and what everything is, which leads to big angst once he gets home. There's so much pressure! Everyone expects him to be this guy he doesn't even know! He latches on Ephram as the one person who doesn't expect anything of him, doesn't remember 'the old Colin'. Ephram is a little weirded out by this -- being friends with the guy who's going out with the girl he loves? -- but goes along with it, partly just to show Amy she can't control what he does and partly just because.

By this time, Ephram and Amy have gotten much closer and become pretty good friends. During the fall, they exchange two kisses. Once Colin comes back, though, he becomes Amy's total focus, and she basically ignores Ephram and pretends they barely know each other. She also tells him to stay away from Colin because it's just weird, and she thinks he's doing it to get back at her.

In some ways, Colin starts getting better as the episodes go on -- his memory slowly starts returning, his damaged arm heels, he and Amy get closer and closer. At the same time, bad stuff starts happening, ranging from Psycho!Colin (who smashes trophy cases, vandalizes his gym coach's office, and tries to beat up Ephram and Bright) to Sickly!Colin, who's still getting headaches, nausea and seizures. Andy thinks he needs more surgery, and Colin eventually agrees. The season-ending cliffhanger was all about what the result of his surgery was. He died. The entire town blames Andy. Amy blames him even more when she finds out that Colin had asked Andy not to bring him back if the surgery went badly, and that Andy did that.

Status quo at the beginning of the second season has a dead Colin, a mourning Amy, a semi-ostracized Andy, a somewhat more serious Bright, and a slightly-less-sullen Ephram, who has adjusted somewhat both to Everwood and his father. (He was given the choice in S1 to go back to New York to live with his grandparents, but decided instead to stay.) Amy and Ephram are still friends, but nothing more.

Besides the main character plots, most episodes typically also include a Socially Relevant Issue that may or may not tie in with the rest. Surrogate motherhood! Medicinal marijuana! Abortion! Teenagers with plastic surgery! It's all so very topical. Harold and Andy get to argue and make speeches a lot.


Archives and Resources

Seeking Grace -- Everwood all-fic archive, but it's still in beta stages. It does have screencaps and transcripts up already, though.

bus_riders -- Livejournal community for Everwood fiction and episode discussion. Slash heavy, but not exclusively.

everwooddrabble -- Livejournal community for Everwood fiction under 1000 words.

everwood100 -- Livejournal community with a weekly drabble (100 word story) challenge.

Anyone with links to other archives or recs sites is welcome to comment.