Cave of Cool Recommended - Wonderfalls

 

If you somehow missed it or forgot about it, "Wonderfalls" starred Caroline Dhavernas as Jay, a Brown philosophy major putting her Ivy League degree to good use working at a Niagara Falls gift shop, lacking the people skills to even become an assistant manager. She lives in a trailer park and she's constantly disappointing her Type-A parents (William Sadler and Diana Scarwid) and siblings (Pace and Katie Finneran). She has distain for everyone around her and approaches the world with perpetual ironic detachment until two things happen: First, she meets a dreamy bartender (Tyron Leitso), still smarting from the recent betrayal of his bride. Then animal figures start talking to each other, including a wax lion, a mounted fish, the eagle on the back of a quarter and the Hear-no-Evil/Speak-no-Evil/See-no-Evil monkeys (Mizaru, Kikazaru and Iwazaru). The animals give Jaye cryptic advice leading her to become the strangest of Good Samaritans. 

 

Is Jaye crazy? Are the animals a manifestation of divine intervention? Are the talking animals agents of Satan? Or do they relate to Native American mythology and are they her spirit guides and is Jaye some sort of slacker oracle?

 

 

I just got back into this great series again. Like Firefly it's one of those great lost properties that FOX didn't know what to do with so it died a quiet death. I came across it years after it's 2004 debut thinking it was one of those quirky British shows that lasts only a dozen or so episodes on purpose. I can be forgiven for thinking that since the show is quirky and different with a winning cast - just like many of those British sit-coms. Caroline Dhavernas is especially adorable as Jay. To earn my love a movie or TV show has to surprise me then continue to meet my expectations. Wonderfalls did that to me right from the beginning.