TV: Wonderfalls

Sorry I disappeared for a while there. I've just had an unusually busy week since my last post on Wednesday (unusual for me, anyway, including a Thursday poker game that went till after midnight, a crazy Friday night that didn't wrap up until 6 AM Saturday, and another poker game on Saturday night that kept me up until 4:30 AM Sunday), and if you combine that with my natural inclination toward laziness, well, posting on the ol' blog just ain't gonna make the cut. But thanks for coming by and leaving comments. I should write about music more often.

But not today. Today I ask the musical question: "I wonder why the Wonderfalls?" Or: why did the show Wonderfalls fail so spectacularly to gain an audience?

I've finally gotten around to watching the DVD box set of the complete series (13 episodes), and it strikes me as every bit as wonderful as it did when it first aired. It's smart, funny, clever, edgy (though I hate using that word, almost as much as "extreme"), and different without being alienating. Or so I thought; I guess it alienated the hell out of the majority of the TV audience, since it got cancelled after only four episodes.

Think about that: thirteen episodes on the DVD, but only four ever aired. Thirteen is an unusually large number of episodes to produce for a new show before its debut; generally, it's more like six or eight. That indicates Fox had a huge amount of confidence in the show, and probably had the testing to back it up. But then Fox, as it is wont to do, withheld it from the Fall schedule for some reason, then, when they finally did air it in March, put it up against the other show focused on a young woman who reluctantly obeys mysterious voices which tell her to do odd things that result in helping people in unexpected ways, Joan of Arcadia. Joan was already a hit, and Wonderfalls got its ass kicked. Rather than switching time slots or showing any other kind of support, Fox let it wither and die.

It can't all be Joan's fault, though, can it? So why didn't it catch on? Probably a big part of the problem, I have to admit, was that the main character, Jaye Tyler, wasn't immediately, conventionally likeable, she wasn't syrupy sweet, full of light and goodness. She was a slacker, and proud of it, and a practicing misanthrope to boot, extremely resentful that she was being made to help people. (In one of the unaired episodes, she catches a baby, saving its life; when the people around her applaud, she snaps, "Shut up!") Pamie at Television Without Pity, for example, constantly expressed hatred for Jaye and her negative attitude in her recaps of the show (which is hilarious, since Jaye's attitude strikes me as remarkably similar to that of your typical recapper for Television Without Pity). It's not like Pamie doesn't give good reasons for her dislike of Jaye; I just happened to have the opposite reaction. I immediately and completely liked Jaye. Her sour, darkly humorous crankiness was refreshingly unusual for a lead character on TV, and her view of humanity often mirrored mine (in brief: people suck). And I think the actress who played her, Caroline Dhavernas, is great; she's beautiful, she has fantastic comic timing, she's got an extraordinarily expressive mouth that makes her line readings endlessly fascinating to me (which also goes back to point one: lovely as the day is long). She really sold me on the character, and on her strength, I could buy into the wacky concept of the show.

The supporting cast is an odd group, possibly also unlikeable to the typical television watcher, but I was taken with them as well. Her family (Darrin, Karen, Sharon, and Aaron -- is it any wonder non-rhyming Jaye feels like an outcast?) is especially good; my favorite is William Sadler as her father (I'm a lifelong fan, following from his performance as the Grim Reaper in Bill & Ted's Bogus Journey). He's a staunch Republican, but he's portrayed neither as an unfeeling drone nor as a buffoon, as often happens on TV; he's a loving, understanding, supportive family man (although he can be obliviously inappropriate; in trying to get to the root of Jaye's fainting spell in the first episode, he asks her, "When was the last time you had an orgasm?"). Katie Finneran is also greatly appealing as Jaye's conservative, closeted lesbian sister Sharon; on the DVD commentary, the show's creators point out how she can make a simple line like "Nice to meet you" hilarious bitchy every time she says it. And Jaye's brother is an atheist theologian, which may have made certain viewers uncomfortable, but I don't think the "atheist" part was revealed in the episodes that aired.

Then, of course, there's that central conceit of the series: animals talk to Jaye. Not real animals -- fake ones, like lawn flamingoes, or wax lion sculptures. Why do they suddenly start talking to her? Who -- or what -- is behind it? Is Jaye just plain nuts? It seems that there must be some purpose to it, some order to the madness, since everything they tell Jaye to do results in the betterment of someone around her, though it often comes in roundabout ways that make Jaye look bad. (For example, in one of the episodes that did air, Jaye frees one of her high school classmates from a loveless marriage, but only by throwing a drink in her face at their class reunion with the deadpan statement, "I destroy you.") The animal voices are an admittedly goofy twist, which may unfortunately have turned people off to the show before they could connect with its real charms: romance, family warmth, and at its center, an outsider taking steps toward rejoining the rest of society -- all of which may have been filtered through offbeat, black humor, but all were definitely present.

Wonderfalls was a great, uniquely entertaining show, killed far too early. I don't know if it was the worst programming decision Fox has made, but it's certainly right up there with the premature cancellations of Action, Andy Richter Controls the Universe, and The Tick. Oh, and Firefly, for those of you who are so inclined. You know, I never cared for Firefly, but since Fox only seems to cancel the good stuff, maybe I should give it a second chance on DVD, too.