Dead Like Me is a dark supernatural comedy about a young woman who is killed and has the bad luck to become a “grim reaper.” Ellen Muth as George Lass in Dead Like Me
#WONDERFALLS EPISODE 1 SERIES#
Stylistic parallels with both Minear and Fuller’s antecedent series are hard to miss. Whedon’s television trifecta remains popular to this day and is perhaps most notable for its snappy, post-modern, and witty dialogue these are the sensibilities Minear brought to Wonderfalls.įuller himself was not enormously famous at the time-he departed Dead Like Me after only a handful of episodes-but has since developed a cult following with subsequent series such as Pushing Daisies (2007-2009, ABC) and Hannibal (2013-2015). The pedigree of these two showrunners is worth dwelling on. Tim Minear had worked extensively with Joss Whedon as a writer and sometimes-executive producer on Buffy the Vampire Slayer (1997-2003, WB) spinoff Angel (1999-2004, WB) and sci-fi Western Firefly (2002, Fox). Contextįuller, the brains behind the narrative components of the series, had only recently departed his debut series Dead Like Me (2003-2004) on Showtime when Wonderfalls was picked up by Fox.
These are the things that I wish to examine here. It was protagonist Jaye Tyler, combined with the series’ extreme edge and immense wit, that condemned the series to a paltry four-episode broadcast run. The answers are, tragically, not hard to identify. So why did it flounder where others merely stumbled? It is brilliantly acted, written, edited, and directed. But in objective terms, Wonderfalls is quite possibly the best television series ever aired, for what it is. Joan of Arcadia is hardly worth remembering. This reality does not correspond with quality.Īrrested Development is a brilliant, if very silly, comedy farce. None of these three shows were resounding commercial successes, but it should be safe to say that Wonderfalls was by far the least long-lived, failing to broadcast more than half of its first season-much less find renewal for a second. Relative to Arrested Development, the series was a “complex comedy” about a zany, dysfunctional, upper class, and white family. Joan of Arcadia’s core premise is in fact the same as Wonderfalls’ on paper: a young woman receives the ability to communicate with “God” and is compelled to help those around her. One of the most remarkable features of the series retrospect is that it was on the air more or less simultaneously with two eerily similar network shows- Joan of Arcadia (2003-2005, CBS) and Arrested Development (2003-2006, 2013, 2019, Fox and Netflix). Her father is a successful doctor, her mother an acclaimed writer, her elder sister a famous lawyer, and her elder brother an aspiring theologian their names are Darrin, Karen, Sharon, and Aaron, respectively.Įach episode sees Jaye struggle with her newfound powers, grappling with her own sanity, courting her hot (but recently married!) love interest Eric (Tyrone Letso), and generally making the world a better place–accidentally, despite her worst intentions. In Wonderfalls, Caroline Dhavernas stars as Jaye Tyler, a misanthropic 24-year-old Brown University philosophy graduate now living in a trailer park and working at a Niagara Falls gift shop. The rest were ultimately released via DVD some years later, but the series has never been licensed digitally and, as of 2020, appears totally orphaned. A 13 episode season was produced, but only four of these ever aired. It was created by Bryan Fuller, co-executive produced by Todd Holland and Tim Minear, and was not a financial success.
You probably hadn’t heard of it until today.
#WONDERFALLS EPISODE 1 TV#
1 Every episode, these muses enigmatically coerce the heroine into performing acts of kindness, thus creating a fairly standard ‘client’ TV mystery-ish series format. In 2004, Fox greenlit a television series called Wonderfalls about a chronically apathetic “over-educated under-achiever” who is bequeathed the superpower of divination-but only through talking to the spirits (henceforth ‘muses’) that reside within toys, statues, and stuffed animals.
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