Thursday, August 21, 2014

Relationship Spotlight: Aaron & Jaye Tyler (Wonderfalls)

 
Strictly speaking, Wonderfalls is my least favorite Bryan Fuller show, but that speaks more to the quality of the other series than to the faults of this one.  I get that it can be a little to insular for its own good, and that Jaye’s acerbity sometimes overtakes her better traits, making it hard to relate to her.  Still, it’s a highly original, entertaining series in its own right, and nowhere is it more successful than in the various Tyler family dynamics.
 
The Tylers are great because you can pick any two members and find a distinct and believable dynamic between them.  This is rare enough on TV, even more so when the show doesn’t actually center around the entire family – while Jaye’s parents and siblings get plenty of screentime and characterization, the youngest Tyler very squarely drives the narrative.  I like pretty every character combination within this family, but my favorite remains the brother-sister duo of Aaron and Jaye.  Caroline Dhavernas and Lee Pace have pitch-perfect sibling chemistry, and the writing for these two is fun, funny, and endlessly interesting.
 
Like most of Jaye’s relationships on the show, her interactions with Aaron change considerably over the course of the far-too-short series.  At first, Aaron, while mildly ridiculing of her “trailer park, hillbilly lifestyle,” doesn’t concern himself much with Jaye, and that’s the way the antisocial retail clerk likes it.  She thinks her family spends way too much time in her business and appreciates that Aaron doesn’t bug her about her life or her increasingly-odd behavior.
 
Until the day Aaron catches her talking to his mother’s cow-shaped creamer (quick tutorial for the uninitiated:  at the start of Wonderfalls, inanimate objects – usually animal tchotchkes – begin talking to Jaye, giving her cryptic instructions that ultimately lead to helping others.  Only Bryan Fuller, people.)  Suddenly, he’s worried that she’s losing it, and when she tries to bluff her way out of his accusations, he resolutely decides to get to the bottom of it.
 
This is where the good Jaye-Aaron stuff really starts.  Aaron is almost more concerned that Jaye won’t confide in him than that she was talking to the cow creamer in the first place.  Though admittedly out of practice, he wants to protect her and gets upset that she won’t let him in.  From here on out, Aaron is the closest thing Jaye has to a confidante – one she doesn’t want, one that she spends a fair amount of time trying to avoid, but a confidante none the less.  When she’s at her most desperate, it’s Aaron that she turns to.
 
Not that either of them turn into Siblings of the Year.  No, a lot of their entertainment value comes from their oddly-compatible dysfunctionality.  Both frequently snipe and insinuate at one another, having unspoken conversations in the middle of family game nights or fondue fests that fly under the others’ radar.  Jaye’s sullen snarkiness goes well with Aaron, who tends to vacillate unpredictably between in-control laidback and panicked.  And, like all Tyler relationships, when the chips are really down, they’re there for each other.  I think of “Crime Dog,” where, despite implying pretty hard himself that Jaye is off her rocker, Aaron is quick to defend her against someone else side-eyeing her mental health.  And when Aaron’s championing gets him in trouble, Jaye jumps in with a less-tactful rebuttal of her (it involves her fist.)  She’s as surprised as anyone to discover it, but “you don’t screw with [her] family.”

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