Lottery win brews drama

“Windfall”

Starring: Luke Perry, Sarah Wynter, Jason Gedrick

Thursdays, 10 p.m.

NBC… “Windfall”

Starring: Luke Perry, Sarah Wynter, Jason Gedrick

Thursdays, 10 p.m.

NBC

What happens when 20 strangers win the lottery and have to split it? A predictable new drama from NBC with paper-thin characters attempts to answer this question and little else.

“Windfall” opens with a flower-shop owner inviting one of her employees to come to a party being held by a friend. He doesn’t want to go because he won’t know anyone, but she tells him that no one will know anyone because it’s just a group of random friends and family.

This is the first mistake the show makes. While strangers are more likely to fight about winnings, it would have been more interesting to see friendships torn apart. Instead, it’s a series of unrelated characters dealing with the individual problems that come with winning large sums of money.

The predicaments range from interesting to obvious to absurd. The most unrealistic involves a kid who has to wait four months to collect his winnings because he’s only 17. To get around the eternity he would have to wait, he chooses to marry a mail-order bride so that he can collect immediately. He takes such a drastic measure because his father tells him that he will control what his son spends his money on until he turns 18.

Of course, the new Russian bride is after his money, and previews for the third episode showed her talking to a lawyer about getting out of their pre-nup. Other than marrying a complete stranger from another country, the boy does what any irresponsible person would do — he throws wild parties in his penthouse suite and drops out of school.

Nina (Lana Parrilla) and Peter (Luke Perry) are the resident married couple who seem to lead the perfect life, only Nina is cheating on him with her ex-boyfriend Cameron (Jason Gedrick), who’s married to their friend Beth (Sarah Wynter). Nina played Cameron’s birthday on the winning lottery ticket, so it’s only a matter of time before Peter figures out what the numbers meant.

The only storyline that attempts to stray from the obvious is Sean’s (D.J. Cotrona). He was convinced to go to the party by his boss, then convinced to put a dollar in the coffee pot, and then terrified when he won. As a convicted felon he can’t collect the money, so he turns to Zoe, a beautiful lawyer to whom he delivers flowers.

Zoe agrees to accept the money in her name and split it with him. The thing that makes this work is that she actually does give him half of the money, but then she finds out he was accused of murder and his partner in crime is after the money. Unfortunately, the storyline goes south when they start to fall in love and make plans to run away together.

The main problem with “Windfall” is that it isn’t good enough to be a quality show and it isn’t trashy enough to be so bad that it’s good. They could have gone way over the top with this concept, with lots of backstabbing and greed, but the only greedy people are the ones who kind of know the people who won the lottery.

All the main characters are good people — no one has a dark, greedy side. Everyone’s giving their money to people who need operations, or donating to schools, or taking babies from druggies (seriously).

In order for “Windfall” to succeed, the writers need to reach a level of “Melrose Place” trashiness. Summer shows shouldn’t be about good people doing good things; it’s a time when networks dump their trashy soap operas on us. Please, NBC, give us something we can make fun of, not something that makes us feel guilty because we know we’d spend our money on vacations and new cars.

If you want to fail a morality test and feel really smart for guessing what’s going to happen to characters well before they do, watch “Windfall” Thursday nights at 10 on NBC.