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Homepage > Joss Whedon Off Topic > Wonderfalls DVD - Ign.com Review
From Ign.com Wonderfalls DVD - Ign.com ReviewBy Peter Schorn Saturday 5 February 2005, by Webmaster Wonderfalls: The Complete Viewer Collection How wonderful is the DVD? February 03, 2005 - When the Fox Network wants to create a hip and/or successful show like 24, The O.C., American Idol or Arrested Development, they can be very good at it. But when a show takes a few too many steps past third base into left field, Fox can also be very quick on the trigger to cap a quirky show prematurely. This was the case with Greg the Bunny, which only had 11 of 13 episodes air before cancellation, and Wonderfalls, which managed to get only 4 of their 13 episodes aired in two murderous time slots before going over the falls into cancellation oblivion. However, thanks to an Internet fan campaign, the entire series is now available as Wonderfalls: The Complete Viewer Collection. The center of the show is Jaye Tyler (Caroline Dhavernas), a 24-year-old girl who’s putting her philosophy degree from Brown University to good use by wage-slaving at Wonderfalls, a gift shop next to Niagara Falls, and living in a trailer park. To say she’s the black sheep of her overachieving family is an understatement - her father’s a doctor, her mother’s an author, her sister’s a lawyer and even her brother, an atheist theologian (huh?) working on his doctorate in comparative religion while living rent-free at home, is considered a greater success than her. She’s a snarky, bright and sarcastic chick who looks and acts like a cross between a young Demi Moore and Daria of MTV cartoon fame (if you liked Janeane Garofalo before she became an unfunny crank radio host, you’ll like Jaye), comfortably stuck in her "expectation-free zone" and working for an assistant manager she calls "the Mouth Breather" (Neil Grayston). Things change after a malformed wax lion starts to speak to her. It doesn’t stop there, as eventually she’s being hectored by everything from her family shrink’s brass monkey bookend and her dad’s lawn flamingos to stuffed animals at work and the mounted trout at The Barrel, a restaurant/bar/hangout where her best friend Mahandra (Traci Thoms) waitresses.
These muses bombard her with cryptic repeated phrases like "Get her words out," "Bring her home," "Give it back to her" and "She’s going to kill him," which don’t usually make sense at first or may take on a second meaning later in the show. She thinks she’s going crazy, but relents and starts doing their bidding with the expected wacky consequences. Of course there’s got to be a love interest and that would be Eric (Tyron Leitso), a sensitive hunk with a wounded soul because he’d come to the Falls on his honeymoon only to catch his wife providing some room service of her own to a bellhop. In despair, he ended up sitting and drinking at The Barrel’s bar for so long they gave him a bartending job and he’s sleeping in the store room. It’s easy to understand how this whimsical show gathered an intense cult following after its short run because the episodes that ran have a witty, surreal snap to them that made it stand out from the typical formula boob tube junk that pollute the airwaves. (If you’re sensing a "but" may be coming, you’re right.) The arch manner of her family members and their tart banter is nicely nasty.
But... ....over the entire series, it doesn’t develop much and their one-note characters begin to become one-dimensional and grating. Also, the quirky animal muse and chain reaction plotting precipitously drops off as more traditional - and boring - storylines encroach in the later going. The loud praise for the series as a whole has been coming from people who only saw the first third of its run. That’s like saying that Elvis’ life and career was great based on the part ending with his ’68 comeback show. If you didn’t see the "fat Elvis in Vegas" years, you’d think he was lean and mean to the end. Same thing for Wonderfalls - its fans never saw it decline over time, so they cherish it in its best form, its early episodes. This isn’t to say that the show tracked a straight diagonal line into terra firma - it didn’t, but it definitely had some dips and ebbs in consistency. But when it works, which is most of the time, Wonderfalls is a quirky charmer of a show that may’ve improved its consistency with time and tuning.
Dhavernas is just adorable with her open face, blue eyes and weirdly big mouth frequently contorting into endless expressions of stunned incredulity. The supporting cast is uniformly strong given the limitations of their narrowly-crafted roles, particularly Diana Scarwid as Jaye’s mother, Karen - she recalls Lauren Bacall in her patrician manner and style. Some have noted that Buffy the Vampire Slayer had a tentative first season only to get its game on with its second, so it’s plausible that Wonderfalls could’ve gotten better - reportedly the creators had stories plotted into a third season - but that’s coulda-shoulda-woulda wishful thinking.
While it’s a shame that Fox didn’t have the sack to back their investment properly - who puts a show opposite The Apprentice and CSI to help it build an audience?!? - at least fans who were left hanging have an opportunity to see what happened next, for better or worse. Episode List (shows with commentaries marked with an asterisk): Disc One: Wax Lion*, Pink Flamingos, Karma Chameleon, Wound-Up Penguin Disc Two: Crime Dog*, Muffin Buffalo, Barrel Bear, Lovesick Ass* Disc Three: Safety Canary*, Lying Pig, Cocktail Bunny*, Totem Mole, Caged Bird* Score: 7 out of 10
The Video Presented in 1.78:1 anamorphic widescreen, I was disappointed that such a recent show shot for modern televisions looked this way. Overall sharpness is lacking and there is a lot of grain, not only in darker scenes but outdoor daylight ones as well. These defects vary in pronouncement from one episode to another. While background detail never dissolves into abstract blobs of nothing, the foreground could’ve been better. Colors are nice and solid and free of smearing and black levels are adequate. No offensive edge-enhancement, print damage or interlacing errors were noted. Score: 6 out of 10
Languages and Audio Audio comes in English Dolby 5.1 Surround with subtitles in English or Spanish. As expected from a character-driven television show, the audio is generally parked in front of you and your surround speakers are those things you had to spend $50 for stands. Dialogue is clear and there is some decent stereo panning of off-camera dialogue. It’s not very exciting, but it does the job well. No hiss or distortion was noted and the volume level is adequate. Score: 7 out of 10
Packaging and Extras The 3 discs of this set come in a pair of slim Scanavo keep cases inside a cardboard slipcase. There are no loose inserts, but the interior cases have full artwork including the specific episode and features lists. In a nifty touch, the discs tie into the show’s Viewmaster scene changing device by looking like Viewmaster wheels. Very cool. The best hunks of extras goodness are the SIX episodes featuring full-lengths commentaries from creators Todd Holland and Bryan Fuller and actresses Dhavernas and Karen Finneran. Generally dominated by the men, they’re lively, breezy tracks that nicely balance the broad themes of the show and chatty gossip with technical tidbits and production trivia. The frequent constraints of tight budgets and shooting schedules and the incessant nit-picking of the network frequently pop up, but the overall attitude is that they had a good time creating this doomed series.
Welcome to Wonderfalls is a good overview of the creation, casting, production and eventually realization that they were doomed before the first show aired that runs about 20 minutes. A brief Visual Effects Featurette provides a cursory glimpse at the CGI effects and the Music Video is a cheerful clip featuring the cast lip-synching to the entire theme song, "I Wonder Why The Wonder Falls," written and performed by an absent Andy Partridge of XTC fame. Score: 7 out of 10 |
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