4-Everwood

[scarfman]

John Beasley was on local morning radio today, and he talked for a moment about the end of Everwood. He said the politics of the cancellation had less to do with the WB/UPN merge than with a new administration at the WB that's more interested in their own creations than in what they inherited.

He said, "I was done anyway. They killed me off in episode twenty. [Beasley didn't say whether that was the writers' decision or his.] It was a great scene. And then the next episode was the funeral, and they did flashbacks, and it was about eighty percent me. I got a chance to show my range.

"But they didn't know if they were going to to be picked up until April. So I went out with a bang, and everyone else went out with a whimper."

I dunno, I wonder if whoever made the decision didn't do the show in kharmically by killing Irv off. Irv's was the first voice you heard when the program came on. Irv's novel, based on the events of the series till now, had just been published and was doing well at the bookstores. Irv was always the most level-headed character on the show, the one through whose eyes we'd always seen everyone, even himself - the Merlin figure, the character who exists to tell the viewers true things. When Irv died I wondered aloud to qtrhorserider whether the series was coming to its planned conclusion.

I'm going to miss Everwood. I'm going to miss Andy and Efram, Nina and Amy, Hal and Rose, Delia and Edna, Bright and Hannah. I'm sorry to see it end, and now I'm sure they had plans for more stories that now won't get told: last week I read one of Berlianti's staff quoted to say they'd told the writers to prepare both season- and series- finale versions of the script for episode twenty-four. I think they shot both versions too, because Madison was in the previews even though she didn't appear in the episode, and in the hair color the actress wears in What About Brian?. Certainly the resolution of the Andy-Nina and Ephram-Amy relationships seemed a little rushed, though that may only be because I knew they were. And the thing about Merlin figures is that they're observers, watchers, and they don't really figure in the plots very much. But I still can't see that it could have gone on without Irv.

Comments

[scarfman]

I bet the season DVD set has both versions of the finale, and Madison's in the other one.

Say, this didn't belong in the essay above, but: remember when I got sore at the ads for the Gilmore Girls finale because they gave away the end? About ten minutes from the end of the Everwood finale I remembered that the ads for it had included a shot of Madison, and I began to fear that she was going to show up in the last shot. But about the time Amy showed up with the ferris wheel I stopped.

[drake57.livejournal.com]

They same new group at WB killed off Charmed and 7Th Heaven for the same reasons,then they realized their new net "CW" needed a show with a loyal audience and could only revive 7Th Heaven.

[scarfman]

"Killed off Charmed"? I thought the Charmed cast quit a season ago and only came back for a last one because they were coerced somehow. Like The Bob Newhart Show's last season.

[drake57.livejournal.com]

The cast had no clue they were being axed and wanted to keep making the series.
Only Alyssa Milano was leaving after the last season.

[scarfman]

Well, it's true that everything I think I know about the behind-the-scenes at Charmed is our own interpolation from the way the last episode of the 2004-2005 season seemed to write everybody out ... and the way it took half the 2005-2006 season to undo what had been done. But it sure smelled to me like a series finale having to be unhappened. Or maybe it just smelled, because that was when we stopped watching.