If you haven’t watched it, the series is currently available on DVD, and episodes of decent quality are constantly being uploaded to YouTube. If you’ve seen the show already, I hope you’ll enjoy revisiting it with me. (It doesn’t really become “great” until the last few episodes.) Nevertheless, this is one of the more unique and unusual one-season shows that television has ever produced, and I look forward to delving into it over the next few months, starting with a review of the pilot next week. The show’s offbeat sense of humor means it’s not one for all tastes, and there are some flaws in its development of tone and story.
The supporting cast includes Lee Pace (from Halt and Catch Fire), Katie Finneran (from The Inside), and William Sadler (from… pretty much everything). The show features a traditional case-of-the-week structure (each episode presents a different type of animal figurine, like a wax lion or a lawn flamingo), along with more serialized character arcs for Jaye, her friends, and her unconventional family. Created by Bryan Fuller (the man behind Hannibal and the upcoming Star Trek: Discovery), the show centers on a young woman named Jaye, played by Caroline Dhavernas (from the aforementioned Hannibal and the delightfully named Mary Kills People) whose humdrum life is thrown out of whack when she discovers she can communicate with nonliving animal figurines. And now, after years of waiting, I’m finally going to review the whole series, from the first episode to the last.įor those unaware, Wonderfalls was an hourlong dramedy that aired on Fox in the spring of 2004. It’s a short series (13 episodes), and one that’s long appealed to me with its mix of dark humor and quirky drama. I’ve considered reviewing this series for quite a long time, having first floated the idea to Mike back in the spring of 2013. So please give a warm welcome to… Wonderfalls.
While I still plan to cover The West Wing right to the end, the time has more than passed to throw another show into the mix. But I’ve never attempted to regularly review a third show, assuming it would be better to wait until The West Wing was complete. And I’ve broken up the monotony from time to time, with a handful of film reviews and a whole slew of blog posts. It’s been tough keeping my mind so focused on just one show, even one I love as much as The West Wing. I began writing the reviews in late 2013 and, nearly four years later, I’ve only covered the first five of those seasons. My second series for CT was The West Wing, which aired a whopping seven seasons and 155 episodes (edging out even the website’s flagship show, Buffy). It was and remains a wonderful show, albeit an awfully short-lived one – I reviewed all 18 episodes in the space of just six months. My first regular series for Critically Touched was Freaks and Geeks, which I pitched to Mike in the waning days of 2012.