KB Summer Viewing Club: Wonderfalls
I hope you all have had a chance to watch at least a few episodes of the show. Wonderfalls was a great show, killed while still in its infancy. It was supposed to initially air as part of Fox’s fall 2003 lineup, but industry execs postponed it, sending the crew note after note until finally it aired in March 2004. The show was moved from Thursday nights to Fridays after the initial episode, squaring it off against CSI and The Apprentice. Fox, however, did virtually nothing to announce the timeslot change, and ratings plummeted. Three more episodes aired, and the show was canceled after the 4th aired. A fifth show was announced on-air but never shown.
Created by Bryan Fuller (Dead Like Me, ST: Voyager, Heroes) and Todd Holland (Malcolm in the Middle), Wonderfalls‘ executive producer was Tim Minear, the writer and director for Firefly, Angel and Drive. A geek’s dream team, as it were.
The cast, with the exception of William Sadler (the bad guy from Die Hard 2), was virtually unknown. Jewel Staite of Firefly fame plays a recurring role as well in some of the later episodes. Otherwise, you may not have seen any of these actors, before or since. Tracy Thoms, who played Jaye’s friend Mahandra, just had a role in Grindhouse. Tyron Leitso, who played Jaye’s love interest bartender, had a starring role in….. House of the Dead. Diana Scarwid, who played Jaye’s mother, also starred in Mommie Dearest, Silkwood and other top-level movies, but since Wonderfalls has been largely under the radar (except for a notable cameo in What Lies Beneath).
It’s a whimsical show, to say the least. Other common adjectives are quirky, snarky, charming and bizarre. I think it was definitely a show that grew on you with subsequent episodes, which unfortunately meant that ongoing arcs were the key to its survival. Not a smart plan if you want a successful series on Fox. But Wonderfalls was too good to die so young.
…and Caroline Dhavernas, who did such a great job as the central character, has gone on to star in… Nothing you’ve ever heard of.
I’m a sucker for this show in so many ways. The one that has left me thinking a bit as I watched it for this viewing club is this: what is it about stories about very alienated people that I love so much? I have no good answer. Yet it’s worth emphasizing that Wonderfalls is very alienated people central. Our central character is so cut off from the world around her that the elaborate (and often hilarious) Rube Goldberg machines of supernatural intervention are necessary for her to, well, do much of anything other than getting drunk and being lazy. And yet virtually every character around her is also alienated — if not quite to Jaye’s trailer-park extreme. Her closeted-lesbian sister, atheist theologian brother, love interest recently jilted by his wife during their honeymoon… Even the minor characters face a certain distance from their lives, such as the nun who begins to lack faith because of cheese.
This show was probably doomed from the start, Fox mismanagement or no. How many really, really alienated people are there in the television market? Now, how many of them are interested in cerebral, dialogue-heavy television filmed with all of the standard-issue whimsical camera and editing tricks of cereal-box post-modernism? (My least favorite aspect of the show; it was certainly strange and unique enough without the goofy wipes and so forth.)
Comment by RoastedTomatoes — July 30, 2007 @ 5:20 pm
Isn’t Caroline Dhavernas magical? I mean, she was a total unknown, and this show had a lot of faith in her, and she DELIVERED — and then, back into relative obscurity.
The atheist theologian brother is my favorite character, if only once he starts to believe in the cow creamer, etc. and begins to go nuts as his atheism is called into quetsion.
Comment by Supergenius — July 30, 2007 @ 5:34 pm
I also love this show. Love it. I have a couple problems with it, but we can talk about those with the ending. I even like the basic themes of her being inspired to do good, help people. That’s nice.
I’ve seen the mom do spots in things like Prison Break and some other random Lifetime thing. I was flipping channels and stopped cuz I saw her, I swear.
Comment by amri — July 30, 2007 @ 5:58 pm
I saw this in a hotel a few years ago and was dying to watch it again.
Comment by banane — July 30, 2007 @ 9:23 pm
My wife and I saw this when it aired. My wife *hates* TV, but she watched this, and even rented all the episodes on DVD one summer when I was gone. She doesn’t do that for anything, that’s how good it was.
Comment by ben s. — July 30, 2007 @ 9:31 pm
Amri, even better than the theme of her being inspired to do good and help people was the theme of inanimate objects cajoling her and stalking her into helping others. Jaye’s an interesting main character in part because she is so cynical, so mean and so cruel to almost everyone that each time she does good for a stranger, you can see the disgust in her face. One of my favorite parts of the show is Jaye’s insistence that she hates doing these things for people — Mahandra knows this side of Jaye and agrees, while Eric the Bartender knows only the post-’sode Jaye and thinks she’s some kind of Mother Teresa.
Comment by Supergenius — July 30, 2007 @ 9:34 pm
I watched the first three episodes, and then my DVD player ate the disc that arJ made for me. So, then I watched the last episode.
She still bugs the crap out of me! I was thinking, while watching the show, of the Rube-Goldbergness of it. Since I didn’t really like the main character (or most of the secondary characters), what made it compelling was trying to guess the twists and turns that would make everything (relatively) alright by the end of the episode. Actually, that didn’t make it much more compelling.
Catherine D and everyone else do an admirable job of acting, but how the creators expected a show without a single likable character to succeed mystifies me. It is as if they were daring the audience to keep watching. Actually, I shouldn’t say no likable characters. I liked the lesbian sister and that dad. They occasionally (and only occasionally) operated from something more than simple pettiness. But as for the rest…
Comment by John C. — July 31, 2007 @ 7:53 am
I thought the series was a lot of fun. There were a few dud episodes, like the second-to-last episode where they just drop all the tension that had been building since the very beginning and take a detour to the reservation, but most of the individual episodes were really fun. The overarching storyline and character arcs had some flaws, but I wonder if a lot of that was due to their having to move things along and wrap things up faster than they would have if they hadn’t been cancelled.
I liked the characters. I didn’t always believe Jaye was a real person, what with her constant stylized wittyness, but I never disliked her.
Comment by Tom — July 31, 2007 @ 9:54 am
Jaye is pretty interesting. There is a lot to dislike there. She is privileged and smart enough to get an Ivy League education. Degree in hand is not motivated enough to do anything with it other than work in a gift shop. Clearly a job for high school drop outs. Rather than find something to do that would challenge her she sits around hating everyone. So inanimate objects intervene.
I’m reminded a little of my wife. She didn’t go Ivy League (Lisa: Now I’ll never get into an Ivy League school! Bart: You’re going to Stanford! You’re going to Stanford!) but managed to get a degree in Human Biology and into med school. She had over 6 months off before med school and tried to find a job. Home Base (a Home Depot clone) was then only place that would hire her. Because of her degree they put her in the gardening department. I wonder if the plants spoke to her…
Comment by a random John — July 31, 2007 @ 9:58 am
I love Jaye as a charater. She’s so cynical and anti-social but ‘forced’ to do these good deeds that she professes to hate. I love her love interest. I thought that was a great dynamic of very tragic souls.
Loved it. Can see why it didn’t make it on Fox, but I loved it.
Comment by gabby — July 31, 2007 @ 10:17 am
Ok. I get it. This series was the inspiration for Saw and other Torture porn films. Jaye is tortured into doing what is good for her. In the movies, they just used hacksaws instead of tsotchkes.
Comment by John C. — July 31, 2007 @ 10:48 am
John C., you’re not doing a very good job of articulating why the show didn’t work for you — comparing it to Saw probably doesn’t do much to establish your cred…
Comment by Supergenius — July 31, 2007 @ 10:55 am
I think the comparison apt (but then again, I’ve never seen Saw). What I mean is that I don’t want to watch a show where the unlikable main character is forced by god/fate/trinkets to do things that she doesn’t like to do. To me, it isn’t that far to get to the various Saw movies, wherein the torturer tries to teach people things about themselves by torturing them from here. If that is too far out of bounds, I won’t bring it up again.
I thought the acting, direction, and production values of the show were fine. It is the premise and the writing that gets to me. It is Seinfeld’s no-hugs, no-learning policy every single episode. Part of the problem may be that I wound up skipping episodes 4-12 due to my awful DVD player, but it doesn’t seem like Jaye changed much in the interim. She only operates from a position of maintaining her comfort; other people are important to her only in how they affect that.
I like her sister (her brother is mostly a cipher to me since I had to skip most of the season). She at least comes to grips with herself early on. Perhaps the mother and father undergo similar journeys (I couldn’t say). But it didn’t seem so in the final episode.
Of course, the season was meant to last longer. I was intended to like the comedy and the Rube-Goldbergism of the episodes and then the characters were meant to grow on me. To me, this is a case were the premise of the show (the unlikeable is forced by fate, kicking and screaming, to grow up and become a little more likable) overwhelmed all other elements. Without a likable character to latch onto, the viewer is only left with the premise to maintain interest. As I said, I never guessed the outcome of the shows I watched (well, except the one where the girl from high school gets wine thrown on her), but since this wasn’t primarily a mystery show (and I still didn’t really like any of the characters) it never mattered to me. Jaye could remain the same screwed up human and I simply wouldn’t care.
As a counter-example, I was fascinated by the first season of Joan of Arcadia. The police bits were lame, but the rest of the show rang much, much truer. Wonderfalls comes across to me as a gimmick, through and through. In JoA, the family dynamic seems real, the relationships develop naturally, and the characters developed. Joan never stopped being entirely disaffected or started being entirely selfless, but she did grow. In Wonderfalls, being fate’s bitch applies to every element of every story (that I saw). There is no element that doesn’t seem like it occurs simply to further the plot and there are many elements that are there only to further the plot (This is especially the case with Jaye’s father who is caring or indifferent based on whether or not the plot calls for him to be caring or indifferent, not, apparently, based on what someone like his character would actually do).
I keep harping on the Rube-Goldberg aspects of the show because I think that IS the whole show. I love those cartoons, but I don’t think I would want to watch a season’s worth of them.
Comment by John C. — July 31, 2007 @ 12:50 pm
John C,
So you don’t want another copy of 4-12 then?
Comment by a random John — July 31, 2007 @ 1:45 pm
I gotta say I watched the pilot and am on the fence about watching any more episodes.
I thought the show was pretty caught up in its own cleverness. The dialogue in particular got to be a little too chatty and a little too clever. I consider the show a descendant of DAWSON’S CREEK–another show where the people all talk like screenwriters who want to call attention to themselves and not like real people. Even worse, they sound like bitter, cynical screenwriters. I’ve spent my whole life with bitter, cynical screenwriters, so the show didn’t transport me anywhere.
There’s also a certain amount of contrivance, not only in the animation, special effects, and whipshot camera movement, but in the plotlines–the way Jaye’s good deeds play out.
It made me appreciate VERONICA MARS a lot more. VERONICA has drama and suspense, and a heroine that is vulnerable beneath her crusty exterior. It seems a far superior show, even in its 2nd and 3rd seasons.
Right now, I’m debating sending back WONDERFALLS to Netflix. Maybe I’ll give another few episodes a chance.
Comment by Brian G — July 31, 2007 @ 3:16 pm
Brian, that’s an interesting point. I think there is a sense of being self-aware and convinced of your own cleverness here. I do believe they get over it soon enough, but the initial episodes have a tinge of that feeling. Man, Veronica Mars ruled.
Comment by Supergenius — July 31, 2007 @ 3:24 pm
arJ,
I am willing to watch the rest, if you are willing to send them to me again. I shall punish my VCR player in preparation.
Brian G,
I agree, but would just note that I don’t think it is just the dialogue. The whole script reads that way to me.
Comment by John C. — July 31, 2007 @ 7:32 pm
Isn’t half the point that the main character is convinced of her own cleverness?
Comment by a random John — July 31, 2007 @ 9:14 pm
I do think the noises the delivery man who got the backseat tracheotomy made were funny.
arJ,
I think that my biggest issue is not the cleverness of Jaye, but the lack of obstacles in her path. My feeling after the first episode is there’s a lack of drama because there’s a lack of conflict. What is Jaye overcoming, but her own lack of motivation, and good will toward others. Those seem like small hurdles to me. And what are the stakes? If she doesn’t change, she’s back in the souvenir shop and loses nothing.
Comment by Brian G — July 31, 2007 @ 10:04 pm
John C., I think you’re making my point from comment #1 above; there are a lot of people who don’t empathize with super-alienation. But Jaye isn’t actually a bad person. She’s lost track of life and is mired in depression, but she doesn’t by nature go out of her way to be hurtful. She’s lost and alienated, not negative by nature, and that’s why the supernatural Rube Goldbergs don’t seem invasive to me. They’re an intervention designed to help her get beyond her depression, not an imposition forcing her to act against her nature.
Comment by RoastedTomatoes — August 1, 2007 @ 7:21 am
I think that the souvenir shop is her own personal hell. What fate could be worse for her than stuck in that life?
Comment by a random John — August 1, 2007 @ 10:12 am
I’ve seen the first five episodes now, and I like it. I think Steve’s right and it’s the kind of show that grows on you. I was pretty annoyed by some of the pilot. The sister is my favorite character. And I can’t say how tickled I am that the family is comprised of Darrin, Karen, Sharon, Aaron … and Jaye. ha. My mom watched the fifth episode with me and I think she liked it too. We both laughed anyway.
Comment by Heather P. — August 1, 2007 @ 7:35 pm
Okay, and I’m in love with Eric the bartender. Can anyone give me directions to The Barrel?
Comment by Heather P. — August 1, 2007 @ 7:37 pm
Also, some trivia (thanks, IMDB!) for you LOST fans: Jaye’s mother was the constable of the Others, and the nun (the one who ran away) was Ben’s mother.
Comment by Heather P. — August 1, 2007 @ 9:51 pm
No!!! I remember her now!! And the nun, too! holy crap, Heather.
Comment by Supergenius — August 1, 2007 @ 11:19 pm