| It’s almost getting to the point where I want to run out and buy the DVD set for any TV show that Fox cancels in the first season.
The outstanding sci-fi western Firefly (2002-2003) got jettisoned by the network before it could find an audience, and wound up as a top-selling disc with a legion of loyal fans.
Now I’m hooked on Wonderfalls (2004), a weirdly original comedy-drama that never even made it to its fifth episode before being canned. Perhaps in the near future, studios will focus on making their product for DVD, and the doomed, abbreviated television runs will just be glorified advertisements for the box sets.
Wonderfalls blew onto screens like the proverbial gust of fresh air and almost as soon as the first episode ended, a massive "save Wonderfalls" campaign hit the Internet. That should tell you two things about Wonderfalls – it’s an original, high-quality non-genre piece of programming that leaves fans wanting more, and everybody knew right away it had no chance of surviving. People loved the show, but with only four episodes aired, it just never had the chance to build up good word-of-mouth.
Cynical 24-year-old Jaye Tyler (Caroline Dhavernas) is an "overeducated and unemployable" slacker from a well-to-do and achievement-focused family. Like many disaffected youths given the ability and resources to do anything, she settles on doing nothing and spends her days folding T-shirts at a cheesy tourist trap gift shop in Niagara Falls, while her university degree gathers dust. She doesn’t really like her crummy retail job or her home in a trailer park, but feels no particular motivation to change anything. Jaye is perfectly comfortable in her rut. Then she starts to hear voices.
Not comforting or reassuring voices, though. Little plastic trinkets and figurines start telling her to do stuff. Remember the cute little computer-generated critters from Amelie (2001)? It’s like that, only Jaye bugs out her eyes and screams when she hears them. She knows that sane people don’t hear voices coming out of vinyl flamingos and fears that it’s only a matter of time before they start telling her to kill people.
The instructions she gets range from the benign ("help her!") to the mischievous ("break the taillight!") to the downright scary ("destroy Gretchen!"), and if Jaye doesn’t obey the voices, they keep her up all night singing "Ninety-Nine Bottles of Beer." Plus, the orders are always vague enough to be easily misinterpreted. Before long it becomes obvious that the voices know something she doesn’t, leading to bizarre and unpredictable adventures. Most of her trinket-influenced actions lead to positive results, but they often do so via complex and horrifying routes. The talking gewgaws and knick-knacks may have a definite plan, but they’re not sharing it with Jaye, and they couldn’t care less about her mental and emotional peace of mind.
Jaye soon adapts to the voices as she adapts to everything else and continues with her slacker lifestyle while letting the voices have their way – just another unasked-for inconvenience in her life, like the annoying customers at the gift shop. Still, nothing can be considered routine in a life where voices keep telling her to track down runaway nuns in the middle of the night or to throw a drink in the face of the homecoming queen at her high school reunion.
There’s a terrific supporting cast, including a smitten bartender (Tyron Leitso), an opinionated best friend (Tracie Thoms), a gangly teenaged boss (Neil Grayston), and a brilliant but unsatisfied family made up of a doctor, an author, a lawyer and an academic (William Sadler, Diana Scarwid, Katie Finneran and Lee Pace, respectively). Most of them know nothing of her strange new circumstances, but take her increasingly unusual behaviour in stride, just the same.
The fan community for Wonderfalls remains quite vocal, and it’s disappointing that only 13 episodes were made (nine of them unaired) when there’s so much potential here for more. In fact, the original plan was for Jaye to be institutionalized at the end of season two, and to have season three set in a mental hospital. I think that’s brilliant. Why the hell aren’t more TV series set in mental institutions? |
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