"Better a fallen rocket than never a burst of light."
~ Tom Stoppard, The Invention of Love

Wednesday, June 17, 2020

The Book of Rannells: Welcome to the Wayne: Season 1, Episode 10 – “It’s the Mid-Season Finale” (2019)


Okay, so here’s the thing with Welcome to the Wayne.  It produced 20 episodes for its first season, released nine in the U.S. 2017, and then promptly went into limbo.  Some channels in Europe got the other eleven episodes, but not here – not on TV, not on Nick Jr.’s website, not on any streaming service, nothing for subscription or purchase.  Even more confusing, its renewal for a second season was apparently announced with no news of when the rest of season 1 would air.

When I first watched Andrew Rannells’s episodes of the show and learned this puzzling fact, it frustrated me for two reasons.  One, the show itself is really enjoyable and I’d have liked to see the rest of it (when I rewatched the Andrei episodes to review them for The Book of Rannells, I watched the other available episodes along with them.)  And two, from his last aired episode, it was clear that Rannells’s character was going to figure into the mythology of the show going forward and was pretty certainly in more episodes than IMDb indicated.  Luckily, these later episodes finally aired before the premiere of season 2 in 2019, so I was able to circle back and continue the saga of the Wayne, Team Timbers, and Andrei the vampire! (Episode premise spoilers.)

A storm is brewing outside the Wayne, one made of “rainbow gas”/beam, a mysterious substance the kids have been investigating that have all manners of effects on WPs.  In fact, it’s kind of their fault that the storm is happening – it’s a byproduct of their having involved Andrei in the rainbow gas in his last episode, as the stuff reacts strongly to vampires.  As the gas gets in the heads of all the Wayne residents, Saraline tries to figure out how to stop the storm while Olly and Ansi get a rainbow-gas-induced visit from their favorite cartoon characters and the Wayne’s resident spy tries to capture Andrei.

I’m glad I’ve seen all the previous episodes in the season now, not just the ones with Rannells in them, because this is definitely a serialized show and this episode pulls in a lot of references to previous adventures.  No surprise, since the rainbow-gas storm feels like a very culminating catastrophe, and the resolution somewhat changes the game to the season going forward (I’m assuming that the “mid-season finale” thing doesn’t just refer to Olly and Ansi’s cartoon and that this was in fact written to be the mid-season finale for the show’s first season – has that feel to it.)

Some good jokes, as usual.  I enjoy all the goofy stuff involving Olly and Ansi’s cartoon, both as they’re watching it and once the characters get in on the action.  We also get Olly insisting that he and Ansi need to “water their friendship garden” with TV and Saraline using “Ebenezer-Scrooging” as a verb, which I love.  Oh, and the spy’s right-hand man is officially one of my favorites – nothing like woefully shouting, “That was my calligraphy leg!” after a mid-fight injury.

As soon as I finished watching “Spacefish,” I knew that there had to be more Andrei in the unaired episodes, and I feel particularly vindicated that he factors big into the very first one I watched, with the promise of more to come.  His ultra-casual reaction to crazy stuff cracks me up.  I always like it when he discovers new abilities he didn’t know he had – his almost dismissive fighting style is great – and he has the best responses to the ominous storm brewing overhead.  “Well, it’s definitely doing something to… something,” is such an Andrei line, and Rannells’s delivery on it is a delight.

Looking forward to seeing what more the show has for Andrei!

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