THE RETURN OF EVERWOOD. I've been hooked on the television drama Everwood ever since I adapted an episode script for classroom reading.

At the time, I didn't have a high opinion of the show. I had been told that it had to do with a hotshot Manhattan brain doctor named Andy Brown (Treat Williams) who moves with his two kids to a small Western town after his wife's death, and that his son Ephram (Gregory Smith) was some kind of rebellious, resentful punk. That's a fine set-up for family conflict, but Andy was such a dull, never-erring hero and Ephram so unemotive a rebel that there frequently seemed to be nothing but air where drama should have been.

Yet I continued watching. Something about Everwood's plot and characters sparked an interest about what would happen next. And, I'm happy to say, the show's production team steadily improved the show over its first three seasons. (The fourth starts Thursday night on The WB.)

In a character shift worthy of thirtysomething, erstwhile hero Andy has acted more and more like a moron, erstwhile comic foil Dr. Harold Abbott has acquired depth, and Ephram has managed to give his Dad some masterful tongue-lashings even as he himself began to display some of his father's bad judgment. And there has also been less of what fans at the indispensible Television Without Pity call the MEOW, or Medical Emergency of the Week. Too often there seemed to be a rule that some character with a MEOW (usually not a regular) would have to be duly introduced, discussed, and cured within each episode. It was way too formulaic, so good riddance to that.

Everwood is still uneven (a low point last season came when a character's cancer treatment seemed to have been squeezed into a time warp), but unevenness can often make high points higher. (Just think of the roller-coaster ride that was Twin Peaks.) Whenever an episode shifts from being contrived and hammy to being passionate, inventive, and surprising, Everwood can be ever so good.

Photo: David Marc Fischer