gwyn | I wonder why the wonder falls on me...

I'd seen a couple of the unaired episodes of Wonderfalls thanks to a friend with Bit Torrent ability, but as with the airing of the four (count 'em, four) episodes on Fox when it originally ran, they were scattershot and not in any comprehensible order. If for nothing else than having them together, in some kind of run order (unlike the Keen Eddie discs, for instance), I have to be grateful to 20th Century Fox's home video group, but I'm also grateful that they saw the value in releasing this and that other little show that could, Firefly. Fox as a network may be made up of cretinous, intellectually disenfranchised, witless morons, but at least the home video folks have some tickets for the clue bus.

They've also done a nice job on the packaging for this wonderful series, much better than the stuff they usually employ for the Buffy and Angel discs. Like Firefly, they're using the thin plastic cases inside a box, and for shorter sets, this is an ideal setup. The box cover, with Jaye's face behind a View-Master, perfectly captures the quirky, light-hearted nature of the series: how many other series cartons would obscure their lead's pretty face behind a clunky thing like a View-Master? My only real complaint with them is that like all the other Fox series discs, they don't offer a Play All feature on the menus, so you still have to step through multiple menus to get to the episodes. Here, at least, the interface doesn't require you to wait a few minutes while the graphics do their little thing, and listen to annoying music snippets over and over before you can select Play. The best part, though, is that the discs themselves are designed just like View-Master slide rounds, with little pictures from episodes, and... something the other Fox discs haven't provided, the names of all the eps on each disc! I fell madly in love with the series all over again just because of these charming discs. I've really begun to hate the companies that refuse to provide the names of the ep titles on the discs, especially those that make it difficult to access booklets or information by having lengthy pull-apart designs. Thin cases, like these, let you get a quick scan of what's on the disc, at least, but the best box design I've seen so far is the book-like one for La Femme Nikita.

But the packaging design at least reflects what this series was about, and that's important when you're trying to sell people on something they're not certain about. It didn't help Wonderfalls at all, I think, that it arrived the same year as Joan of Arcadia -- pretty, dark-haired young girl has conversations with God/talking plastic and stuffed animals, who tell her to do things that might make an impact on others' lives. While the shows couldn't be more different, Fox's abandonment of Wonderfalls and its surface similarity to Joan probably didn't help it win an audience, even if it could in the Friday night death slot that producer Tim Minear is now calling his "DVD preview time slot."

The worst part was that Fox could have marketed this show to appeal to a family audience, even though Jaye, the main character, is seen drinking a lot at the Barrel tavern, where she hangs out with her waitress friend Mahandra, and her love-interest bartender friend Eric, as well as some adult situations that aren't really too adult for older kids (lesbians! talk about sex! premarital sex! Russian mail order brides!). In a lot of ways, it's like Gilmore Girls in that it frankly deals with grown-up and growing up situations, but it has a very family friendly and positive tone. Not that that makes it smarmy and depthless -- for a largely comedic show, it had surprisingly kind and generous insights into its characters and into the challenges of just getting through life when it keeps throwing obstacles up in your path. Being able to see episodes like Danger Canary, now, really bring that home.

To me that was the brilliance of the series -- it was frequently laugh out loud funny (while I often laughed out loud, nothing got to me as hilariously as when the bank robber meets the ambulance in the final episode, and both Jaye and her nemesis, Eric's wife -- played by Jewel Staite from Firefly -- start screaming), but at heart it was a really forgiving, warm-hearted look at a person who doesn't know where she's going in life, and those around her who are with her on the journey. No matter what the flaws of each character were, they had wonderful qualities as well, and they are all ultimately likable in spite of or because of their flaws. One of the hallmarks of great writing is that the author has to love and forgive all their characters, no matter what, and the creators of this series did that beautifully. It's often very warm-fuzzy-giving, leavened with droll humor and a skewed view of the world.

Jaye has issues with her family, but they become fully rounded characters by the end whom you really love and cherish, the way she begins to understand she can, too. Her sister, who alternates between being abrasive and sweetly caring, is a magnificent character, as is Jaye's atheistic theologian brother who begins to question his own spiritual bankruptcy when he finds out about the animals that tell Jaye to interfere in people's lives. But it's her parents I loved most: her brittle, overbearing mother (played by my long-time fave Diana Scarwid -- and no, not because of Mommie Dearest but because of a little '80s movie called Inside Moves) who turns out to have a specific life wisdom and abundant love that comes totally out of left field; and her father, played by the always great William Sadler (whose pervy appearance in Kinsey can't even tarnish his wonderfulness) -- a seemingly clueless, dorky guy who actually knows more about what's going on than even he realizes. The scene at the end of Pink Flamingos always makes me sniffle a little. (The pilot, btw, has one of my all-time favorite scenes on TV, a quick throwaway where Jaye's sister tries to pull her seatbelt on in a rage, only to be locked; she yanks it again in a huff, and it locks, and then she takes a deep breath, then slooowly slides the harness over and buckles it. Brilliance.)

A lot of people didn't like the device of the talking animals, thinking it was hokey or just stupid. But when you get to see the animals over time, you notice that they speak less and less, as Jaye adjusts (or doesn't, as in Cocktail Bunny, when she tries to get rid of them all and go into therapy) to her "burden" and as the show settles into itself and its own peculiar rhythms. I personally loved them; I especially liked the wax lion, that first one to talk to her, and loved it when they kept her up at night singing 99 Bottles of Beer on the Wall inscrutably (or chanting "Sharon and Poor Bitch sittin' in a tree..."). That's what made the show so funny and fun to me -- that inscrutability, where she keeps trying to do the things they tell her, without having any clue who the pronouns refer to, or what steps she's supposed to make. In some eps that humor turns poignant, like in Wound-Up Penguin, or at the end of the final episode. The audience, like Jaye, has no clue where we are heading, and I always love stories that keep me guessing.

My favorite episode is still Lovesick Ass. I've seen the kid who plays Peter elsewhere since then, and the shows he's been in have utterly failed to capture his bizarre adult-like qualities, which is a shame, because that kid is priceless. I also like the episode because Wonderfalls avoided something I've grown tired of from years of soap watching and other show watching: the characters who are in love who refuse to act like normal people and, you know, try to be in love. Here, they actually talk about their feelings without dragging it out pointlessly. While some shows drag things out well (Firefly), most of them just irritate the hell out of me because in real life, people wouldn't do that. Their problems with their feelings come after they start dating, and the animals start telling Jaye to do things that hurt both her and Eric. It was a refreshing change of pace.

But then, everything about this show was refreshing to me. Its heartfelt good nature, its positive slant on life through the eyes of a cynical Gen Y-er, its pop culture humor, its quirked out characters... the whole thing was doome from the start just because it was so different and so good, and on a network that used to value that and no longer can see anything good even if it bites them in the ass. In lesser hands than the producers' (and with a lesser actress than Caroline Dhavernass, whose perfectly realized American accent is an incredible achievement), this would have been only about quirks with nothing at the heart. But even though there are only 13 eps, and I'm sad about that, they did a truly amazing job of wrapping up the story so that it could conceivably continue, but doesn't have to. The second to last scene of the series had me sniffling, because it was such a nice, quiet example of what's right about the show. I'm glad they knew that it was over before they created it, as they were able to give us a nice bow on the package, something few of my cancelled series have the chance to.

So if you haven't given it a shot, run out and rent it or add to your Netflix queue. In my best wax lion voice, What are you waiting for? Rent it.

Thanks again to everyone who's sent me wishes about my sister. Things have gotten very bad very suddenly, and I don't know what's going to happen just yet, but they're not looking good right now. If you can spare her some more prayers, we need them.