SCOTT Wolf, the hunky star girls love and guys love to hate, is heading back to TV.
Wolf, who played the earnest but troubled Bailey Salinger on Fox’s acclaimed drama “Party of Five,” has joined “Everwood” as a new doctor.
Wolf will play Dr. Jake Hanson, a physician who moves to Everwood, Colo., from California to become the town’s third doctor.
At the end of last season, Everwood’s original doctor, Harold Abbott (Tom Amandes) joined the practice of his former nemesis, good-natured Dr. Andrew Brown (Treat Williams).
Abbott had lost his malpractice insurance and tried to open a bagel store.
By joining Brown, he will be under his new partner’s insurance and continue being a doctor, but Wolf’s character will start stealing their patients.
“We’ve expanded our doctor story lines,” executive producer Rina Mimoun told The Post yesterday, noting that the show also employs Bruce Miller, a writer from “ER.”
“It’s always great when Dr. Abbott has a sparing partner, so it’ll be nice to rejuvenate the comic force of Tom Amandes,” she says.
Mimoun said that Abbott inadvertently leases his old office to Wolf’s character, setting in motion even more tension between the characters.
“We’re trying to say that Everwood [as a town] is expanding,” says Mimoun. “Its population is growing, and that’s why Hansen has noted that the town could use a new doctor.”
While Wolf has appeared in several films since “Party of Five” was canceled, including 1999’s “Go,” he has yet to land a role as popular as the one he had on the Fox drama.
“Everwood” is an ensemble drama that centers on Dr. Brown (Williams), a brain surgeon who moves his family from Manhattan to the Colorado town after his wife dies.