Sitting over lunch with Scott Wolf of The WB’s “Everwood,” it’s impossible not to like him. He’s charming, articulate and very cute. He’d probably rather hear “handsome,” but, oh, well.
“The combination of having clear skin and dimples has me looking eternally 12,” says Wolf, who was born in 1968. “I am aging, but no one’s told my face.” It works for his character, Los Angeles expatriate Dr. Jake Hartman, who has brought microdermabrasion, Botox and other kinds of Hollywood medicine to the small Colorado town of “Everwood.” After running on Thursday nights until Dec. 8, then going on broadcast hiatus, “Everwood” finally returns to its former night on the schedule Monday. It re-launches with back-to-back hours that kick off a run of new episodes leading up to the finale of the season, perhaps the series and definitely The WB.
While “Everwood” has never quite strayed into the kind of magical realism perpetuated on “Northern Exposure,” it’s come close. The show could use a little magic to survive the amalgamation of The WB and UPN into a new network called The CW, launching this fall.
Since his arrival, Jake has amused and delighted some and irritated others. In particular, he bugs Dr. Andy Brown (Treat Williams), from whom he rented his office space, especially since he conveniently forgot to mention it was going to be a medical office until after signing the lease.
“What’s fun about the role on ‘Everwood,”‘ Wolf says, “is that there is some sort of ulterior stuff going on beneath the surface of this guy. He’s maybe not the guy who’s looking out for everybody’s best interest.
“People almost missed how deceitful his whole introduction was. It was done so sincerely and with a big smile, so eager to just fit in, that it was just forgiven. But the very first thing this guy does in this town is really ulterior: when he says to Andy, ‘Oh, my God, did I not tell you I was a doctor?”‘
When we last saw Jake, he confessed his pill addiction to fiancée Nina (Stephanie Niznik) and admitted he had relapsed. That sent her sobbing into the arms of Andy, her next-door neighbor, who carries a torch for her but declared his love a bit too late.
“From Jake’s standpoint,” Wolf says, “whether he’s in the relationship for the right reasons or not, he believes he’s the right guy, that she should be choosing him. He looks at Andy as somebody who’s very selfish.” Andy came to Everwood from New York to patch back together his broken relationship with his children (Gregory Smith, Vivien Cardone) after his wife’s death. Jake arrived in search of an “authentic” small-town experience.
“The producers are heading in the direction of exploring whether, in the end, you can take L.A. out of the guy, but can you take the guy out of L.A.?” Wolf says. “Is the town changing him? Does Everwood contain that?
“It’s one of the stories they’re going to explore, which is not everyone who comes to Everwood becomes an Everwoodian. Some people are too much something else. It’s almost one of those things where this place is only really magic if you believe. So maybe Jake, in the end, doesn’t believe as much as everybody else.”
Whatever the fate of Jake or “Everwood,” Wolf has something to look forward to, since he’s signed on to an ABC pilot about nine people who were hostages in a bank robbery.
