Sunday, March 21, 2004
Don't Let This Wonder Fall 
I must plug a little show known as
Wonderfalls. It's received rave reviews but less than stellar ratings. Want to know how bad? Worse than
Roswell. Worse than
Roswell!! The show airs Fridays at 9pm on Fox. It's about Jaye, a cynical young women in her early 20s with a degree in Philosophy from Brown who now works at a Niagra Falls souvenir shop and lives in a trailer. Look at how poetic that is, her stalker tells Jaye, a trailer --so much possibility to move forward and go places yet always staying still in one place, never losing going backward nor forward, maintaining potential. However she simply goes about her day, going through the motions, until one day, a plastic lion speaks to her. And soon after many other inanimate objects speak to her as well. What is this,
Joan of Arcadia? The answer would be no. The first episode possibly left most
Joan hopefuls scurrying away because this isn't a wholesome show about helping people. Jaye is a young adult and therefore this show is targeted at an older audience. But back to the
Joan reference. In the pilot of
Joan, God immediately tells her who He is. Of course, otherwise it would be a show about a teenage girl who takes orders from strange crazy people. The explanation was needed. On
Wonderfalls however, the writers do not pause to explain why or what is happening. For all we know, Jaye could be imagining it herself. The next episode, the third I might add, which airs on the 26th takes a moment to try to explain what is happening. But in the previews, Jaye confesses she doesn't know. It could be God or the devil or something else.
Wonderfalls is brilliantly directed, smartly written, well crafted show, supported by a charming cast lead by the wonderful Caroline Dhavernas (and William Sadler --shout out to Roswell fans!). It's quirky and cynical but most importantly, it's laugh-out-loud funny.
I wonder, wonder why the wonderfalls?
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