Entertainment Weekly

Review: Windfall
by: Gillian Flynn
June 2, 2006

While ABC's Lost asks that grown-up question — what is the nature of reality and faith — and Fox's 24 asks that teenage-boy question — how would you save the world, and how many gadgets would you need — NBC's Windfall, debuting June 8, lasers in on every grade-schooler's fantasy: What would you do if you won, like, a gazillion dollars? Our soon-to-be-swimming-in-it group of lottery winners gather at a party that's pointedly described as ''a total mix of friends and neighbors.'' Meaning, the players include smart-ass high schoolers, white yuppie thirtysomethings, hardworking African-American moms, and hot Latina hospital nurses. Never has a pizza night been so beautifully integrated, merely one blind dwarf away from a ''We Are the World'' medley. The group, including Professor Cameron (LAX's Jason Gedrick, one of those solid, busy actors who deserve a hit show for a change) and his cash-strapped chum Peter (90210's Luke Perry, now captured emoting on screen for the first time ever), start a lottery pot and win a whopping $20 million. Each.

Fans of the Pretty Woman shopping-montage scene — which skillfully mixed orgasms of consumerism with comeuppances to Those Who Were Mean Before — will be pleased with Windfall for sprinkling in splurges both decadent and dutiful: Hospital nurse Maggie (Luis' Jaclyn DeSantis) tells off her bitchy boss and buys a Mercedes to replace her beater. Kimberly (Soul Food's Malinda Williams), a single mom who threw a buck in the pot when she delivered pizza that night, writes a huge check to her son's underfunded school.

But money changes...you know. Windfall (originally developed for Fox, and previously announced as part of NBC's midseason slate) is smart enough to tighten the screws immediately. A former student of Cameron's suddenly appears, claiming her child is his. A perkily threatening neighbor pops up on the news, swearing it was she, not pizza lady Kimberly, who contributed the final dollar. Most obviously (and least interestingly), there's ''Sean Mathers'' (Skin's D.J. Cotrona), a man with a criminal past who persuades a pretty lawyer (Sarah Jane Morris) to accept the money in her name so certain ''associates'' don't find him. That situation seems so destined for a screwup — he could be bad, she could be worse — it's ironically boring. Windfall's more insidious money-made fissures are the ones that catch the imagination: If you've been working your whole life to reach a career apex, does $20 million make all that effort moot? If you weren't linked to your spouse by a bit of love and a lot of financial obligations, what would happen — or, as Perry's nice guy Peter asks his spouse, ''If your wildest dream came true, would I be in it?'' Windfall doesn't need its big mystery: These small ones work just fine. Grade: B