aye Tyler is a disaffected underachiever who works at the Wonderfalls Gift Emporium, a souvenir shop in Niagara Falls. Her goal in life is to see how little work she can get away with doing, while still maintaining her job and disappointing her overachieving family. Unfortunately for Jaye, destiny has other plans.
On one particularly terrible day, her teenage co-worker is promoted over her, she runs into an old friend who can't understand why she's working retail, and she has an argument with a customer that involves a wax lion with a smooshed face. During the last event, the wax lion becomes animated and tells her not to give the customer back her change. Shocked, Jaye gives the woman her
money and then passes out.
Later, in her mobile home, she locks herself in her bedroom while her father, Darrin (Sadler), her overbearing mother, Karen (Diana Scarwid), her high-strung sister, Sharon (Finneran), and her sarcastic brother, Aaron (Lee Pace), try to understand why she fainted and whether she's having an "episode." Her parents insist she sees a shrink. Unfortunately, at the psychiatrist's office, a monkey statue starts talking to her, too.
Not quite certain if she's going insane or if she's talking to God or maybe even the devil, Jaye just wants the inanimate objects to stop talking. Unfortunately, she soon discovers if she doesn't follow their instructions, there are consequences.
First up, the wax lion instructs Jaye to pick up a quarter. Then an unpredictable chain of events leads Jaye to brawl with a woman she's trying to help, fight with her sister and eventually play matchmaker with two people who are completely wrong for each other. While Jaye realizes she's probably crazy, all she can do is hope it will all end up OK at the end of the day.
A dramedy on the dark side
Fox's new one-hour dramedy, Wonderfalls, isn't like anything else on the air. It's funny, dramatic and more than a little dark. The first thing that becomes apparent while watching the premiere, "Wax Lion," is that Jaye might just be crazy. There's no safe assurance that some higher power is leading her on for the greater good. In fact, she might just be nutty as a fruitcake. But that matters not at all, because Wonderfalls is unpredictable, silly, weird and fun to watch.
Jaye is an unusual heroine. She's smart and sarcastic and actually does want to do the right thing, but not at the expense of being nice. She really just wants to be left alone in the world, but inanimate objects or not, that doesn't appear to be her fate. The characters around her have the potential to be interesting, especially her sister Sharon (Finneran). However, "Wax Lion" is about Jaye and her realization that she's quite possibly going nuts and has no power to stop it.
As Jaye, Caroline Dhavernas is a find. She manages to take this snarky character and make her appealing. Despite all her flaws, we like Jaye and hope that inanimate animal objects really can talk to her. It's a tough balancing act, but Dhavernas pulls it off beautifully.
Creators Bryan Fuller (Dead Like Me) and Todd Holland have come up
with a unique world where bizarre events lead to strange and wonderful conclusions. Odd camerawork and strange camera angles accentuate the fact that not only does Wonderfalls take place in Niagara Falls, it takes place in Jaye's world, which is not quite our own.
It's a place where animal objects talk and sing and give cryptic messages, all the while developing their own little characters. The wax lion with his smooshed face may not come back in a future episode, but it'd be nice if he did.
