Finding Charlie
You guys, I've started filling out this meme in my sleep. Literally, this one's from a dream I had about responding to this meme! Here it is, with some amendments so that it makes sense to an awake mind:
Finding Charlie
Eleven half-hour episodes that aired on FOX, plus two unaired ones on the DVD
Opening Theme: Gravity - Vienna Teng (thanks, batyatoon!)
Tagline: What would you do if you could start all over?
When wealthy businessman Charles Patton III died, he left everything to his sixteen-year-old son Charlie, who at first seemed to be leading the same kind of charmed life his father and grandfather had led before him. He married a Hollywood starlet and his business was booming. But by his early thirties, Charlie's luck seemed to have run out; his wife left him, and a few years later his twin children were killed in a car accident with Charlie himself at the wheel. Eventually his company ground slowly down to bankruptcy, leaving him with almost nothing. Now, in his seventies, he works at a gas station and lives alone, ruminating on his wasted life - all while keeping a curious secret.
One day at the gas station, he encounters a group of young people on a road trip. When he asks them where they're going, they say “to find ourselves”. After they drive off, Charlie abruptly quits his job and goes home, where he takes an old glass coke bottle out of the back of a closet and uncaps it, freeing a genie named Wafiya. She's been in his family for many generations - after granting a person three wishes, technically she ought to be free, but Patton patriarchs have each used their third wish to pass the genie on to their sons. Charlie wasted his own first two wishes when he was young, and has been saving the third ever since, always unwilling to use it just yet.
Now, he wishes for a 'second chance'.
The series took the form of a sort of extended road trip, with stops in various cities and towns where they usually solved some supernatural problem or other while the rejuvenated Charlie tried to figure out what he wanted to do with his second chance. The first few episodes were stunningly mediocre until the show found its groove: wry, subdued humour interspersed with the heartbreak of the characters being cut off from their respective worlds. Wafiya learns that her family punished her human lover by torturing him to death, and Charlie discovers that he has an illegitimate son to whom he can now never be a father. The supernatural creatures they encounter also often have tragic back-stories - malevolent poltergeists turn out to be grieving ghosts, werewolves know what they are and are helpless to do anything about it. The theme of the show is very much one of loneliness and the need to connect with fellow human beings, and its victories are always bittersweet.
A full thirteen episodes were shot, but only eleven aired before FOX executives canned the show, calling it 'depressing'. The fandom disagreed - people who enjoyed the series found it quite life-affirming in its own idiosyncratic way, and argued that Hollywood happy endings would have been unsatisfying conclusions to the stories as presented - but nobody had expected the show to last long anyway. Rumor had it that the two un-aired episodes included either Charlie revealing his true identity to Tom, or Charlie and Wafiya's first kiss. To general astonishment and delight, when the DVD was released it turned out they contained both, along with Jaime's first small victory over his curse.
CHARLIE PATTON (Michael Welch)
Charlie is a curiously tragic character, an awkward square peg in the round hole of the world. Though he looks young, Charlie is still mentally a man in his seventies. He doesn't relate to young people very well, fears taking risks, and is absolutely helpless with technology. He wants to move on and find a future, but is still mired in his past failures as husband, father, and business owner. Finding himself is a slow process, but progress is being made, with Wafiya's help. His insistence on helping Tom actually represents a setback, a clinging to the past he wanted to erase, but he cannot help himself - to him, this is something he must do. Christopher Walken played 'old Charlie' in the first episode.
WAFIYA BINTE SULEIMAN (Parminder Nagra)
Although bitter and frustrated from her long imprisonment, Wafiya is at heart a kindly soul. With Charlie's third wish, she is technically free to go, but chooses instead to stay with him - at first because the only alternative she could see was going back to her family, but she quickly comes to feel sorry for him. As the story progresses, we learn that the rift between Wafiya and her family - she is in fact a djinn princess - is a deep and raw one; she was exiled for falling in love with a human, and refuses to return to the world of the djinn because she feels that doing so would be tantamount to admitting that she did something wrong. Her relationship with Charlie is based on mutual loneliness and feelings of being adrift.
JAIME HOPKINS (Matthew Lewis)
When Charlie and Wafiya found him, Jaime was an angry young man given to skipping school and smoking pot, and plagued by horrible nightmares about the murder of people close to him - which all too often had come true in the morning. While the police put the deaths down to animal attacks, Jaime began to suspect that he was a werewolf. When Wafiya told him that there is no cure for his curse, he considered suicide, but elected instead to travel with Wafiya and Charlie so that he will at least be away from the people he cares about. He has been taking meditation and martial arts in the hope of learning to control his transformation, and has come to look upon Charlie as a father figure of sorts.
TOM GARDENER (Joaquin Phoenix)
About thirty years ago, just before the company went broke, Charlie had a brief affair with an employee, Emma Gardener - when she subsequently lost her job and Charlie could not give her another one, she felt betrayed. She never spoke to him again, and so he never knew about her son. Now an adult with a wife and young child of his own, Tom is a withdrawn workaholic who is literally haunted by the ghost of his mother, to whom he had not spoken in years at the time of her death. Shortly after he graduated from high school he was in a skiing accident that left him with a permanent limp, ruining his childhood dream of being an athlete. He does not know what to make of the sudden appearance of this strange young man who seems oddly invested in Tom's welfare, but the two slowly forge a bond.
SULEIMAN BEN UBAIDALLAH AL-KARIM (Alexander Siddig)
Wafiya's imperious father. He sent her into exile in the human world as punishment for her relationship with Prince Ahmed - this was supposed to be a comparatively mild reprimand, as she would have only had to serve one master; the djinn equivalent of being grounded for a weekend. But thanks to the cleverness of the Crusader Knight who was her first master, and his descendents down to the modern era, she remained in slavery for over seven hundred years. Suleiman was deeply upset by this turn of events and is ready to forgive Wafiya everything if she'll only come home, but does not know how to communicate this to her.
Finding Charlie
Eleven half-hour episodes that aired on FOX, plus two unaired ones on the DVD
Opening Theme: Gravity - Vienna Teng (thanks, batyatoon!)
Tagline: What would you do if you could start all over?
When wealthy businessman Charles Patton III died, he left everything to his sixteen-year-old son Charlie, who at first seemed to be leading the same kind of charmed life his father and grandfather had led before him. He married a Hollywood starlet and his business was booming. But by his early thirties, Charlie's luck seemed to have run out; his wife left him, and a few years later his twin children were killed in a car accident with Charlie himself at the wheel. Eventually his company ground slowly down to bankruptcy, leaving him with almost nothing. Now, in his seventies, he works at a gas station and lives alone, ruminating on his wasted life - all while keeping a curious secret.
One day at the gas station, he encounters a group of young people on a road trip. When he asks them where they're going, they say “to find ourselves”. After they drive off, Charlie abruptly quits his job and goes home, where he takes an old glass coke bottle out of the back of a closet and uncaps it, freeing a genie named Wafiya. She's been in his family for many generations - after granting a person three wishes, technically she ought to be free, but Patton patriarchs have each used their third wish to pass the genie on to their sons. Charlie wasted his own first two wishes when he was young, and has been saving the third ever since, always unwilling to use it just yet.
Now, he wishes for a 'second chance'.
The series took the form of a sort of extended road trip, with stops in various cities and towns where they usually solved some supernatural problem or other while the rejuvenated Charlie tried to figure out what he wanted to do with his second chance. The first few episodes were stunningly mediocre until the show found its groove: wry, subdued humour interspersed with the heartbreak of the characters being cut off from their respective worlds. Wafiya learns that her family punished her human lover by torturing him to death, and Charlie discovers that he has an illegitimate son to whom he can now never be a father. The supernatural creatures they encounter also often have tragic back-stories - malevolent poltergeists turn out to be grieving ghosts, werewolves know what they are and are helpless to do anything about it. The theme of the show is very much one of loneliness and the need to connect with fellow human beings, and its victories are always bittersweet.
A full thirteen episodes were shot, but only eleven aired before FOX executives canned the show, calling it 'depressing'. The fandom disagreed - people who enjoyed the series found it quite life-affirming in its own idiosyncratic way, and argued that Hollywood happy endings would have been unsatisfying conclusions to the stories as presented - but nobody had expected the show to last long anyway. Rumor had it that the two un-aired episodes included either Charlie revealing his true identity to Tom, or Charlie and Wafiya's first kiss. To general astonishment and delight, when the DVD was released it turned out they contained both, along with Jaime's first small victory over his curse.
CHARLIE PATTON (Michael Welch)
Charlie is a curiously tragic character, an awkward square peg in the round hole of the world. Though he looks young, Charlie is still mentally a man in his seventies. He doesn't relate to young people very well, fears taking risks, and is absolutely helpless with technology. He wants to move on and find a future, but is still mired in his past failures as husband, father, and business owner. Finding himself is a slow process, but progress is being made, with Wafiya's help. His insistence on helping Tom actually represents a setback, a clinging to the past he wanted to erase, but he cannot help himself - to him, this is something he must do. Christopher Walken played 'old Charlie' in the first episode.
WAFIYA BINTE SULEIMAN (Parminder Nagra)
Although bitter and frustrated from her long imprisonment, Wafiya is at heart a kindly soul. With Charlie's third wish, she is technically free to go, but chooses instead to stay with him - at first because the only alternative she could see was going back to her family, but she quickly comes to feel sorry for him. As the story progresses, we learn that the rift between Wafiya and her family - she is in fact a djinn princess - is a deep and raw one; she was exiled for falling in love with a human, and refuses to return to the world of the djinn because she feels that doing so would be tantamount to admitting that she did something wrong. Her relationship with Charlie is based on mutual loneliness and feelings of being adrift.
JAIME HOPKINS (Matthew Lewis)
When Charlie and Wafiya found him, Jaime was an angry young man given to skipping school and smoking pot, and plagued by horrible nightmares about the murder of people close to him - which all too often had come true in the morning. While the police put the deaths down to animal attacks, Jaime began to suspect that he was a werewolf. When Wafiya told him that there is no cure for his curse, he considered suicide, but elected instead to travel with Wafiya and Charlie so that he will at least be away from the people he cares about. He has been taking meditation and martial arts in the hope of learning to control his transformation, and has come to look upon Charlie as a father figure of sorts.
TOM GARDENER (Joaquin Phoenix)
About thirty years ago, just before the company went broke, Charlie had a brief affair with an employee, Emma Gardener - when she subsequently lost her job and Charlie could not give her another one, she felt betrayed. She never spoke to him again, and so he never knew about her son. Now an adult with a wife and young child of his own, Tom is a withdrawn workaholic who is literally haunted by the ghost of his mother, to whom he had not spoken in years at the time of her death. Shortly after he graduated from high school he was in a skiing accident that left him with a permanent limp, ruining his childhood dream of being an athlete. He does not know what to make of the sudden appearance of this strange young man who seems oddly invested in Tom's welfare, but the two slowly forge a bond.
SULEIMAN BEN UBAIDALLAH AL-KARIM (Alexander Siddig)
Wafiya's imperious father. He sent her into exile in the human world as punishment for her relationship with Prince Ahmed - this was supposed to be a comparatively mild reprimand, as she would have only had to serve one master; the djinn equivalent of being grounded for a weekend. But thanks to the cleverness of the Crusader Knight who was her first master, and his descendents down to the modern era, she remained in slavery for over seven hundred years. Suleiman was deeply upset by this turn of events and is ready to forgive Wafiya everything if she'll only come home, but does not know how to communicate this to her.