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Wonderfalls
Here's a hot one for you.
You're a critic, and you have been enjoying this great new mid-season show
called Wonderfalls. You wait to review it because you feel
everyone's busy watching it, and everyone's heard from numerous other
critics how great it is. So, you (or specifically, this critic)
felt it made more sense to review it upon the first season finale, and
review the season as a whole. Then FOX pulls a fast one; they cancel the
series, after only four episodes! D'oh! Time to review the show anyway, if
just because I liked it as much as anyone else. Too bad FOX did not!
This was the story of Jaye Tyler
(Caroline Dhavernas), a sales clerk in
a souvenir shop near Niagara Falls. Call it a divine gift, an
"X-file," or proof in the Native American belief that there is
life in all things, though suddenly any object even slightly resembling a
living thing starts talking to her. Whether it's the eagle on the
back of a quarter or a lion souvenir, or even the bronze monkey bookend on
her therapist's desk; they all start giving Jaye advice. The bad news is
she is starting to think she's going crazy. The good news is that the
advice they're giving really works.
This was actually a
hilarious premise. Here's Jaye in a psychiatrist's office in the series
premiere, when his little statue of a monkey on his desk starts giving her
better advice than the psychiatrist himself. The monkey then asks to be
taken home, leading to Jaye's sister meeting the delivery man at Jaye's
souvenir store. Was this all to have them fall in love? No; turns out
Jaye's sister is gay, and she was meant to fall in love with the guy's
ex-wife, who is his "ex" because she just found out...well, you
know. That's the sort of quirky scripts at work here...in a good way.
The first problem Wonderfalls
had --or so I can only imagine, when pressed to come up with one-- is in
people comparing it to Joan of Arcadia. That's the problem; people
who love Joan of Arcadia thought that this series was a rip-off at best,
or a disappointment at worst. Well, of course they were disappointed; this
series has nothing similar to Joan of Arcadia at all. Jaye is
contacted by inanimate objects; Joan is contacted by you-know-who.
Joan is sent on tasks that make sense in a religious sort of way; Jaye is
sent on quests that make sense in a comedy sort of way. Most
importantly --and feel free to send
in your letters in droves when I say this, although it's true-- Joan
of Arcadia seems to always take itself way too seriously. Wonderfalls had a fair share of quirkiness that made the episodes more
fun. I liked it.
If there was one big
problem with Wonderfalls --accept it!-- it was its lead actress, Caroline Dhavernas,
who like every comedienne before her, was an acquired taste.
People either love or hate Woody Allen; the same thing for Ellen Degeneres,
Chris Rock, Jack Black, and every comic in between. Caroline performed her
role with a very dark edge that for some was a major turn off. In the
premiere, a cute delivery guy pours his soul out to her about his
emotional divorce, only to have her
say as he leaves, "Gee...poor bitch!" I'm reminded of the
equally short-lived (though infinitely worse) Brotherhood
of Poland, NH, where in the premiere one brother yells at another
brother to shut up. It's just not good salesmanship to have the
"protagonist" of the series be so sardonic and smug. Just put
the shoe on the other foot, and get a clue. Aw...was your new series
cancelled, Jaye? Gee...poor bitch!
It's perhaps the vast
differences in Joan of Arcadia that did the series in. So smug were
the creators of this series when it came to religious beliefs, the
original working title of the series was "Touched by a Crazy
Person"; an obvious joke against the TV series Touched by an Angel.
In one of the first three episodes, Jaye is accosted by a
nun-in-training who nearly stabs her to "exorcize" the demons.
Are you having fun yet?
Did the series succeed?
As I implied earlier, yes. It was a lot of fun when it didn't take itself
too seriously, like when suddenly Jaye finds herself offered breakfast.
After rejecting the offer to breakfast from family and friends, the
cow-shaped dairy creamer starts insisting, "Oh, just have a pancake,
Jaye!" Seeing Jaye insist to the little dairy creamer "I don't want a
pancake!" is actually pretty funny. However, after almost one full
season of the same joke on Joan of Arcadia --where Joan incessantly
embarasses herself trying to "hide" her commincations with The
Man Upstairs-- is this joke anything new?
In the end, what's
really a shame about a series like this is that the overall premise
had potential, and that potential wasn't given a fair shot. Trouble is, now
that this series failed so badly, nobody will try to make a similar
series...and no, I'm not talking about Joan of Arcadia. Give me a
series with talking dairy creamers and eagles that flap their wings on
quarters and stuffed toys that seem to come alive as if they were muppets. Crazy?
You bet. I guess I, too, have been "touched by a crazy person" thanks
to this series. Too bad it didn't last.
---Techtite
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