It's the old story: boy meets girl; girl charms boy; boy learns girl's real boyfriend is in a coma.
That's just the sort of left turn that viewers have come to expect from The WB's hit family drama "Everwood," which airs on Mondays at 9 p.m. ET, right after the network's other clan-based hit, "7th Heaven."
Created by former "Dawson's Creek" executive producer Greg Berlanti, quirky "Everwood" focuses on Dr. Andrew Brown (a bewhiskered Treat Williams), a Manhattan neurosurgeon and largely absent father who moves his children to the small Colorado town of Everwood after his wife dies in a car accident.
Yet, it's the love triangle that has sprung up among his embittered teen son, Ephram (Gregory Smith), the local physician's daughter, Amy (Emily VanCamp), and her comatose boyfriend, Colin (Mike Erwin), that is the series' most compelling story line.
Dr. Brown operated on Colin, who has been in the hospital since a Fourth of July truck mishap, and he has begun the slow journey toward recovery. But there are no happy endings: Amy's started to fall for Ephram, causing guilt and tension for both; and Colin's parents gave Amy her walking papers after her unrelenting efforts to bring back the boy's shattered memory cause pain and strain for all.
In reruns for December, "Everwood" promises big changes when it returns with original episodes in the new year.
"Especially in the stuff we're shooting now," says the 19-year-old Smith, fresh off a piano lesson (Ephram plays; Smith didn't, until now). "Ephram's a brooder, he's got a little bit of an edge, but when the audience picked up on his life, it was after all this stuff has happened, he's got nobody to talk to. That's how he dealt with it, being angry."
"As he and his dad get closer, it changes the dynamic of the relationship a little bit."
The big question still remains though: Colin or Ephram, what's a girl to do?
"He can understand where her character's coming from," Smith says. "It sucks for Ephram. He loves her, and it's not like he can do a lot. He can't veer off."
"Teenage girls play manipulative games like that," VanCamp, 16, says. "It was all about getting Ephram's dad to do the surgery. That's where all of these crazy emotions come in, and that's why she loses it sometimes. She's starting to really have feelings for Ephram. It's really sad. I read the scripts, and it's sad."
"She wants to tell him. She wants him to know how much she really cares for him, but she just can't. She can't. In her mind, it would just be wrong in one too many ways. She would be betraying Colin, and she's trying too hard."
It's only going to get worse when Colin finally comes home from the hospital. "He comes back," VanCamp says. "He had to -- Mike Erwin got a great response. Colin comes back, and she's trying to avoid Ephram as much as she can. It hurts her to be around him, because she really loves this guy, but Colin comes back. She's torn."
"She wants to hang out with Ephram. She wants to be friends with him like they used to be, but it's just this weird, complicated situation. She doesn't really have the life experience to deal with it. She's very young and innocent. She doesn't really have Ephram to talk to anymore. It's a bad situation."
Between his strained and occasionally explosive relationship with his father, and his yearning for -- and frustration with -- Amy, there's not a lot of joy for Ephram right now.
"That will change," Smith says. "People give me a hard time, 'You're so down; you're so angry all the time.' But it comes from a real place."
