’Wonderfalls’ Surrenders to Destiny and Seeks a New Home

(Tuesday, April 06 09:30 AM)

By Kate O’Hare

LOS ANGELES (Zap2it.com) - It’s not an everyday occurrence for shows to find success after changing networks, but it does happen. "JAG" left NBC after one season in 1995-’96 and moved to CBS, where it airs to this day. After a rocky run at FOX, the comedy "Grounded for Life" has found favor with The WB, as did "Sabrina the Teenage Witch," which jumped to the Frog for three seasons after four on ABC.

Now, "Wonderfalls" hopes it can capture some of that magic. Axed by FOX after airing four original episodes (three on Friday, one last Thursday), the 20th Century Fox Television series from executive producers Bryan Fuller, Todd Holland and Tim Minear is taking its already completed 13 episodes and looking for a new home.

In particular, Fuller has set his sights on weblets The WB and UPN. "I think the show would make a great companion piece with ’Smallville’ on The WB," he says, "and it would also make a great companion piece with ’America’s Next Top Model’ on UPN.

"It’s a critically acclaimed drama. We don’t have a lot of that on television right now, so we’re hoping we can find a home on another network that will appreciate the show."

Caroline Dhavernas stars in "Wonderfalls" as Jaye Tyler, a twentysomething slacker who works in a Niagara Falls gift shop. She takes her first step into a larger world when animal figurines start giving her cryptic instructions, each of which leads to surprising and unexpected results for Jaye, her friends, family and complete strangers.

While Fuller believes that there was a lack of support for "Wonderfalls" in the upper echelons of FOX and its parent company, News Corp., FOX Broadcasting corporate communications v.p. Scott Grogin asserts, "The decision was entirely Gail Berman’s. She is the entertainment president for the network, and the decision was entirely hers."

No doubt influencing Berman’s decision was the poor performance of "Wonderfalls" on both Friday — where it drew an average of 3.8 million viewers — and Thursday, where an original episode on April 1 (originally scheduled to air Friday, April 2) couldn’t even match the Friday numbers against new installments of CBS’ "CSI: Crime Scene Investigation" and NBC’s "The Apprentice."

"It didn’t help that TV Guide listed the show as Friday at 9 when it had been moved to Thursday," Fuller adds. "There were a lot of contributing factors that didn’t help us."

Although the show had a great deal of critical support, Fuller feels part of the reason for its lackluster showing lay in FOX’s marketing strategy.

"This is an edgy romantic comedy," he says, "with a lot of rambunctious humor. That will find an audience, if the audience knows those are the elements in the show. Our audience was always very confused as to what the show was. They were marketing it as ’Felicity’ in the beginning, because that’s what they wanted it to be, and it’s not."

Vowing to continue until "I’ve been told ’no’ by all the networks," Fuller makes his pitch for the show’s remaining unaired nine episodes.

"The episode that would have been next week kicks off all the franchise-y, arc-y stuff for the series," he says, "whereas the episodes we’ve aired to so far have been establishing the scenario.

"The next episode, ’Crime Dog,’ kicks it off in a big way. We have Jaye’s brother, who learns that she’s a little bit crazy, and it starts his arc of becoming the first apostle. We have all sorts of nitty-gritty juiciness with Sharon, the lesbian Republican lawyer sister. We’re hoping the tone and scope of these episodes will have a lot of promise for another network and be a tasty little treat to tempt them into picking us up.

"Any of those networks that wants to see those future episodes, just have them drop me a line, and I will send them a DVD or two."

Fuller also reminds his fans (and potential buyers), "The important thing is, we’re not dead, we’re in ICU."