TV Review: Windfallen Perry and Gedrick

The primetime soap opera has returned. NBC's Windfall (Thursdays nights) isn't body wash operetta. Nor is it laden with dull moments that water cooler critics will rush to see symbolism in. It's pure soap opera.

Like most soap operas it offers an escape. Instead of watching the rich live it up high on the hog (the economy doing so poorly, someone grasped that wouldn't sell), it's about twenty people who hit the lotto. Viewers might lose themselves in the show. Should they?

The poor people's tax (aka the lotto) allows those who play the prospect of dreaming from the moment of purchase until the numbers are announced. (Longer if you wait to look up the numbers.) The show? The message here is (and it's the message for the full summer season), "Oh, see, money just complicates things." More reassurance that, as Sharon Lay once tried to convince the nation, the rich really suffer.

Now the Red Cross never needed to airlift anything into the Lay's various residences but it's a nice little myth that allows the average person to feel that even though they're being screwed by taxes, the economy and the always present attacks on unions and wages, "We are so lucky to be working class!"

The reality is that money, despite the fictional testimonials otherwise (in various mediums and from the mouth of Sharon Lay), doesn't hurt. People have the same human problems regardless of assets. But even with those same problems, money always means better health care, better living arrangements and, if the car goes dead on the freeway, you're not trying to juggle a number of bills just to get it fixed.

Those with money aren't to be pitied because they have money but it's a nice little fairytale that keeps those being screwed over from asking too many obvious questions. (Or tries to.) How much will the message sap the show? A lot.

But what you've got right now is a fast paced show (which slows a little this coming Thursday) that frequently rescues misguided performances with quick edits. It will keep you from dozing off and, hey, at least it's not reality TV. (Or a "franchise.")

There is one potential winner (it's not the audiences, but let's not get ahead of ourselves). Sadly, that's about all the kind things one can say about Windfall.

Let's dumpster dive in.

If the message the show hopes to impart is that "money is the root of all evil so be glad you don't have any," the message they broadcast (unintentionally) is that life ain't all that for former pin ups either.

Take poor Jason Gedrick whose nude scene in Backdraft continues to have a freeze-frame life online. If more people have seen his naked ass than his acting (and they have), it stands to reason that there may be a very good explanation for that and there is: he's not an actor. He was a beautiful poser. When hottie goes chunky, TV is the last stop. Gedrick has arrived and, unlike a few years back, holds no return ticket to films. No more will anyone, as they once did, confuse Jason Gedrick with Jason Patric. Talent should have ended the confusion. But what talent couldn't do, time did.

Now Gedrick's left to play a middle-aged bad boy professor in love with his best friend's wife (and his own former girlfriend). There's something rather sad about a "middle-aged bad boy" and that's long before you tack on "professor." In the pilot (or what aired last week -- the actual pilot was pitched to Fox this time last year), he got ready to move out of town and before he could leave, he had to tell the former girlfriend that he never "loved" his wife the way he did her. That would be his present wife, his living wife. He never "loved" her. Loved, past tense. It's the sort of thing an actor would have noticed, Gedrick didn't.

He dumps that on Lana Parrilla's Nina. But, thanks to a lotto win, he doesn't have to leave to town. So Nina's left to wonder how many betrayals does it take to hop into the sack?

There's the fact that he's married, the fact that she's married. Too many facts and, frankly, not enough heat to justify the tears she works up over the whole non-tragedy.

You'd be crying too if you were caught in a lose-lose triangle with Gedrick and Luke Perry. Perry plays Nina's husband Peter. Perry hasn't ballooned the way Gedrick has. He more or less looks the same. Even his "hair" more or less looks the same. (We feel like we may be spoiling Christmas for a few die hards, but it does require comment.)

Some might argue he's "still the same." He does do exactly the same thing in this role that he did in the one that brought him to national attention -- which is sad not only because the two characters have different names but also because they have very different life experiences.

When he shot to fame, Perry was bad boy Dylan on 90210. He (wisely) left the show when he got tired of too many "Let me explain the moral" storylines. He (unwisely) returned to the show. Here he (unwisely) uses the same squint, pursed lips and head tilt. The three externals are pulled out of mothballs but he's never thought of exploring the interior which is why his performance is as hollow as a chocolate Easter bunny.

It's not the role of a young man beginning a journey but Perry plays it as though it is. It wasn't all that convincing on 90210 but, for the first seasons, the pull-her-pigtails-and-smirk non-performance benefitted from his co-star Shannen Doherty who brought a lot more to the scenes than she was ever given credit for. "We work together," Perry once infamously replied when asked what his relationship with Doherty was like. And did he like her? "We work together," he repeated.

Parrilla is who he works with now and there's nothing but dialogue between them onscreen. It's a bit hard to get worked up over Nina's 'conflict' of whether she should leave her boring husband for a boring ex-boyfriend but the editing may distract some. When Perry begins slamming fists and doing his earnest, slow, loud voice, water cooler critics may hail it as "acting" and start humming "Papa Has A Brand New Bag," but the reality is that Felix has the same bag but far less tricks.

The real winner in this lotto is D.J. Cotrona. Rudy e-mailed Friday and Ty passed it along to us. Rudy had a request: Please don't call Cotrona "handsome." Rudy's read several (print) reviews of the show and every one called him "handsome."

Rudy, first off, he's called "handsome" in some of the press material sent out with the show so male critics might be typing "handsome" because they're aware they rave over the looks of far too many women while never commenting on the looks of men. Second, not being middle-aged males, we won't call him "handsome." Cotrona isn't "handsome."

He's shiny, he's glossy (like the lipstick he needs to lay off), he's got one eyebrow that's naturally higher than the other which may be the most interesting thing currently about him. The word is "pretty" -- which doesn't have to be a bad thing. Johnny Depp started out pretty and has remained so.

Countless pretty boys who achieved some level of fame, during the mid-eighties and since, probably think they're only one lucky break from Depp's career. Cotrona may kid himself that Depp's career is the natural arc he'll be on as well.

It's not that easy. Depp has talent. Depp had talent as Tom Hanson, Jr. on 21 Jump Street. Though a feast for the eyes (then and now), Depp always had a lot more going on than that. Cotrona has high cheekbones but that's due to his current weight, not to a gift of genetics. That matters and if anyone doubts that -- look at Jason Gedrick.

Hopefully, Cotrona will. He'll look at Gedrick and he'll look at Perry and realize that's the work life for 'successful' faded pin-ups. One thinks he's still got it (he doesn't) and the other really wishes he could act (all these years later) but can't.

Cotrona's hit the lotto. He's face to face with the reality Freddie Prinze Jr. is currently attempting to cope with. This is his moment and he can see what happens after the moment -- just by looking around the set.

He can't act currently. He's getting by on his looks. (When he loses the stubble, he loses the purported 'bad boy' charm.) Looking around will demonstrate where that road leads. Does anyone give a damn about former pin ups other than a sliver of their most devoted fans? If they did, wouldn't Scott Wolfe be starring in Lost right now? Matthew Fox can act. He could act when all the young females and males were screaming, "Bailey!" Wolf could have used his moment for something other than photo sessions and interviews, but he didn't. There's a lesson in that too.

Cotrona could clean up big if he wanted. Mia Farrow in the sixties, Keanu Reeves in the nineties, both didn't play the p.r. game, both are still working, and both still got the covers at the height of their fame. Cotrona would be wise to learn from that and spend some of that "promotional" time actually working on his craft.

Odds are that he'll be like the characters on Windfall, he'll blow his opportunity. If that happens, if he ends up, for instance, working at Home Depot in ten or twenty years, he may, as one does currently, say, "Oh, this is so much better. I'm happier now." It's a lie, kind of like the premise of the show that will give him his moment.

The show's trash. But it's watchable trash. It deserves an Emmy for editing -- which is where the performances, such as they are, get pieced together. Should you watch? If you're buying lotto tickets and losing (the odds are, you're losing), the intended message may reassure you that you're better off. As the corporate salaries continues to rise while the workers real wages drop, you may need some sort of Platonic noble lie to avoid reality. Windfall will provide you with that if not a great deal more.