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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