Round 2 Strangers: Wonderfalls
Wonderfalls
Vids Used
- "The Frug" by f1renze (flozie@gmail.com)
http://www.kitzeproductions.net/wonderfalls/vids.html
recommended by heresluck
- "Bright Future in Sales" by Gwyneth (gwynethr@gmail.com)
http://www.gwynethr.net/
recommended by mlyn
Gwyneth has a password-protected vid website, but she has kindly authorized me to give you the password to ease your downloading experience. I'm putting it behind a cut to help ward off evil robots.
Gwyneth: (http://www.gwynethr.net/)
username: gwyn
password: cymru
Grokker Synopsis
Wonderfalls was a clever, charming series on Fox, created by Bryan Fuller (somewhere between Dead Like Me, Pushing Daisies, and making HRG awesome on Heroes) and Tim Minear (between Firefly, Drive, and insert-next-already-cancelled-project-here). It was so clever, so charming, and so on Fox that it lasted maybe - six episodes? Then the whole thing went to DVD. Some people may have noticed the sun started shining a little bit brighter that day, and now you know why.
Jaye Tyler is the snarky, cynical, apathetic heroine. She lives in a trailer park and works at the Wonderfalls gift shop in Niagra Falls, selling "Surrender to Destiny" Indian trinkets and resenting her mouth-breathing co-worker/manager with the bowl cut. She's kind of a black sheep to her loving family, always compared to her lawyer sister Sharon (the blonde one who throws a shoe at her head in frustration in both vids) and grad-student brother Aaron (the semi-dopey-looking one in the car in "Bright Future in Sales" who is Ned! from Pushing Daisies!) by her parents Darrin and Karen. I’m not making this up. Jaye's life changes one day when a half-smushed plastic lion looks up at her and starts talking. Her first reaction: swoony faint.
For some unexplained reason, gift-shop items and other objects -- always in the form of silly cartoon animals with adorable faces -- come to life and speak secret messages to Jaye that no one else can hear. Is it God? The devil? Some unseen earthy Native American hand of fate? Jaye thinks she's gone insane, causing her to flip out sometimes and try to smash the talking things to bits. But the plastic lion and his ilk persist, repeating their mysterious commands and keeping her up all night with their annoying singing. When she does what they say, it's often a bizarre instruction that makes no sense or even seems harmful (like: dumping a drink on her old high school classmate) but it sets off a chain of events that ultimately brings good things to people around her. This do-gooding freaks her out most of all. Wacky adventures ensue.
The main romance of the show, seen more in "The Frug" with some kissies in the other vid, is between Jaye and bartender Eric. But I won't spoil too much about their relationship or the obstacles in the way (hint: briefly-glimpsed chapel in "The Frug") or whether True Love Prevails by the end of the show's run.
Stranger Synopses
Stranger 1
All I knew about this fandom was:
It was spoken of as being a rather charming series that was canceled before its time; also, that Lee Pace was involved.
Here's what this fandom is really about:
At 3:45 PM, on March 15, 1981, the town council of the über-secret, tiny municipality of Wonderfalls (a nondescript suburb of the much bigger Wherethehell) reluctantly decided to join the rest of the country by adding fluoride to their water supply. Little did they realize at the time that the CIA had tapped their wee burg as the perfect, out-of-the-way place to experiment upon their populace, and that the fluoride in the tap water had, instead, been replaced by trace amounts of LSD. The results were these: the population of Wonderfalls remained completely oblivious to the fact that everything they experienced was, in their otherwise normal, daily routine, hallucinogenic in nature; one of its teenaged citizens, Ned (a soon-to-be-renowned pie maker), had a cousin from the East Coast visit him for the summer ~ her name was Maisie, and she, not having been brought up in a hallucinogized state, had some difficulty adjusting to her drugged perceptions (not to mention the entire town's total lack of empathy); at 7:35 PM, on August 30, 2005, Maisie, fearing for her sanity, abruptly left Wonderfalls and flew home; at 11:17 AM, on September 1, 2005, the town council elected to cease "fluoride" inclusion in their water supply.
Stranger 2
All I knew about this fandom was:
Nothing at all. Sounds like a candy, though.
Here's what this fandom is really about:
...This was the weirdest thing I've seen since the Doctor Who season three finale. Alright, let me take a stab at this. Girl with Long Brown Hair (we'll call her Anna) works in a shop and can talk to inanimate characters. Statues, stuffed animals, toys...anything with a face, it seems. I think she gained the power from wishing...but that seems like an odd thing to wish for. You can tell she hasn't always had this power, though, as there are moments when she seems shocked to see them, which I'm guessing are from the first couple episodes of the series. Anna's in love with Scruffy Short Haired Guy, and the inanimate are eager to help her in her quest for love. At some point Scruffy Short Haired Guy does fall for Anna, but ends up marrying some other chick. This was quite shocking as I think Scruffy Short Haired Guy was under some sort of love spell. That's it! This show is about witches! Or wishes. Same difference, really. Anyway, back to Anna. Anna cries, ignores her mum, and eventually gets over it. I think at some point she dates Guy From Shop With Lousy Haircut, but I couldn't tell. All in all, it looks fascinating. I'm off to find out how right (or wrong) I am. Ta!
Stranger 3
All I knew about this fandom was:
All I knew about this fandom was that it was by that dude from Angel, and had something to do with Niagara Falls
Here's what this fandom is really about:
This is the tragic tale of one woman's life as a Disney character. Bad enough that she is forced to work in a gift-shop in Niagara Falls, but even worse, animals talk to her wherever she goes. Fake animals, that is. She also has a drinking problem, possibly as a result of all of this.
Personality: She has a habit of throwing things out of windows, and an ability to catch things which seems to amount almost to telekinesis (possibly it is telekinesis, what do I know?). Strangely, people don't seem to think she's insane for talking to apparently inanimate objects, even though it doesn't seem like they can tell that said objects have become rather chatty. She appears to have several friends, and at least one love-interest (who is also involved with the blonde girl she throws a drink at? And possibly marries someone?). There are also some scenes where there are two people who look like her, and I'm not really sure which she is or who the second person is. I don't think she's a sister, though, because there are several shots of what look like family, and they're all blonde except for Little Miss Doolittle. I think.
These vids have left me pretty confused, actually *g*. I get that she has these bizarre talked-to-by-animals powers, but why? And is she the only one? Do they tell her useful things? Are there actual mystical / questy / world-saving things going on? Or is she just afflicted with annoying voices (sounds like most fic-writers)? Also, there's obviously a complicated romance plot, about which I can tell very little. Is there even more than one love-interest?
The show looks kind of cool, though.
Stranger 4
All I knew about this fandom was:
Nothing at all. I hadn't even known it existed.
Here's what this fandom is really about:
Ally McBeal's younger sister? Amélie's long-haired cousin? Mind-altering drugs? Who knows.
Jen Why is a young woman who lives in a trailer and works in a small store. She's friends with one of her co-workers, a shy and bit awkward young man and she's in - unrequited - love with a different young man (who has a beard). It's a pretty uneventful life, but that's ok. She likes living stress free.
At least she thought that she likes it - her imagination thinks differently. Or was it her fairy godmother? And so one day she gets a big shock: inanimate objects begin to move and to talk with her! Little statuettes! Plastic flamingos! Plush toys! The eagle on a coin! Actually she thinks she's losing her mind at first, then after a while she's only annoyed by them and then she starts to listen to them.
That is probably the best idea she ever had! She listens to the advice of her new friends and begins to become more confident and outgoing. In one pivotal scene of the show she actually spills a glass of wine on the annoying blonde bitch who is her strongest rival for the guy she's in love with - and considering that she was always more shy and reserved that's a pretty big change.
After a few more episodes (in one she saves a baby someone throws through the air!) she then actually gets her man and all her inanimate friends rejoice!
Stranger 5
All I knew about this fandom was:
Um, I think I've heard the name before? It's called Wonderfalls, so I'm going to pretend I know what I'm talking about and say it's a group of people living near some really awesome waterfalls. (Or alternatively, they're skaters. Possibly skaters near a large waterfall? Yeah, I'm sure that's it.)
Here's what this fandom is really about:
…apparently not skaters living near a waterfall, but don't tell me you don't want to see the canon for that show.
Anyway, having watched "Bright Future in Sales", here's what this fandom's really about:
Pilot
The main character is a girl, who I shall call Holly because she reminds me somewhat of Willow from Buffy the Vampire Slayer. Holly's life is in a bit of a slump at the moment. Okay, a bit of a dead end. She lives in a dusty trailer* in a carpark (even the trailerpark kids look down on her), she's been forced to take a retail job at a toy store in order to make ends meet, she really doesn't get on with the boss, and to make things worse, the uniform is a yellow waistcoat that needs only fluorescence to let her blend in at the annual construction worker's convention. On the upside, she can afford to buy an iMac notebook now, *and she's made a friend there! He held up a badge with 'Alec' written on it, so I'm going to assume to expression of horror was that they misspelt his name and I'm going to call him Alex. Oh look! His vest says he is actually called Alec. Score one to me! (More or less. And apparently Holly is really called Joyce. Or possibly Faye. Hmm. Let's stick with Holly.)
*Which is admittedly pretty awesome inside.
Holly has an anger management problem, and this gets her into trouble when she mouths off to someone she shouldn't have (that or she touched something she shouldn't have, but her anger management problem leads me to suspect the first) and gets put under a curse. Now drawings and sculptures of animals talk to her. At first she thought she was going round the bend, but now she's accepted it and they just drive her up the wall. Damn mouthy animals. Unfortunately for Holly, almost everyone else still has their money on option A, 'barking mad'.
Episode 1
Holly's still trying to come to terms with hearing animals speak, and not handling it so well. You know you'll have to pay for those if you break them, Holly? Particularly since your boss is standing right behind you. It's also a bad idea to stop paying attention to your driving, even if the cow did start chatting to you. On the upside, Holly finally plucks up the courage to tell Alec and he believes her. Now he can help cover for her. The episode ends with Holly catching a baby and saving it from certain death, leading Holly also realises that the curse comes complete with a mission - she must use her powers to help people, like it or not.
Over the course of the season, Holly and Alec become reluctant saviours of the world, winding up in all sorts of scrapes along the way (often life-threatening ones, such as the time Sean tried to scare them off by blowing up a car, or when Sarah decided to win Alec's heart by killing Holly - and that's not even mentioning the number of times they end up on the wrong side of a gun). Their arrest records were a lot lower before all this started, dammit. Really, all they want to do is live their lives in peace! Good thing there's lots of alcohol…
Season highlights:
Episode 5
Holly makes a new friend, Stacy, who has black curly hair, when someone breaks into the store and Stacy gets blamed for not locking up properly. Holly uses her mad computer skillz to get the proof that it was an inside job from another employee after the toys in the store tip her off to the real identity of the thief.
Episode 12
Road trip! …again, thank God for alcohol.
Episode 16
Alec gets promoted to assistant manager. He's not happy with this turn of events, but they have bigger problems - like the store being held up!
[Spoiler: after going to see the store manager, Alec convinces her that he's far too inept to be the assistant manager, and things go back to normal. Pity about the pay rise, though.]
Relationships
Holly's mother and father are divorced, and her mum's remarried. Holly doesn't approve. Her relationship with her mother is strained, to her mother's sadness. She gets on better with her dad, who's quite absent-minded but has a heart of gold. As time passes, she reconciles with her mum and their relationship improves, and her entire family goes out for dinner together sometimes. It's nice.
As well as her friends, Alec and Stacy, Holly has a crush on Random Moustache And Jacket dude. (He's probably not the same guy who help up the store, but you never know.)
Having watched "The Frug", I have this to add to my summary:
Apparently she's not cursed, she's destined to save the world. Man, what a bitch! No getting away from that, particularly when there're Native Americans involved.
She is indeed friends with Curly Black Haired Girl, who may or may not be called Stacy and is a closer friend than I had thought. It would appear she has some siblings too - a brother and sister? - but I can't really tell.
Apparently her name is actually Jen Why (that was some cursive writing on her jacket! also, that is a terrible pun) and she makes the cover of Today's America for being a slacker.
Random Moustache Dude rocks up a lot more, and seems to be her partner in crime on occasion. (Oh hey, is he a bartender? That would explain how they met.) They form two-thirds of a love triangle, and Holly-who-is-actually-Jen seems to be the losing part of it - but I have faith in her ability to wind up with him anyway. Hey, there's always season 2, right?
Stranger 6
All I knew about this fandom was:
A long time ago one of my online friend's told me it was "a quirky show and I'd probably like it."
Here's what this fandom is really about:
This is obviously a more modern take on Beauty and the Beast, in which our young princess rejected the generous gift of a small red lion statue and found herself suddenly cursed. Thus begins her new life, as she is forced to work in a small gift shop for the rest of eternity dealing with incredibly strange customers and several annoying work colleagues.
To top it off, everyone she used to know has been cursed into (not entirely) inanimate objects - everything from a stuffed toy donkey, to a small cow statue, a wall hanging of a fish, and even pink flamingos on sticks - and they can only talk to the Princess. This makes her look rather crazy.
She is also taunted by copies of the original red lion statue, which turn up on a regular basis and cannot be destroyed no matter how hard the Princess tries (melting, smashing, throwing...).
The only way to break the curse is for the Princess to fall in love and get married, something which her cursed companions are aware of and, therefore, constantly try to give her love advice, set her up on dates or otherwise scheme to make her fall in love. This leads to impromptu parties, a ball, a PR campaign involving a small baby, internet dating, and a drunken road trip.
The top candidate for love interest is Guy-with-a-beard, who appears to work at the local bar where the Princess constantly gets drunk and laments how she used to be a Princess for god's sake! Unfortunately Guy-with-a-beard intends to get married to some other chick, but maybe all is not lost. The Princess' (rather animated) inanimate friends are still working on a happy ending.
Stranger 7
All I knew about this fandom was:
I watched the first couple of episodes, way back when it premiered, but I didn't care for it and stopped watching. I remember there was a disaffected post-college girl who worked in a souvenir shop at Niagara Falls. Normally inanimate objects started talking to her. I don't know why.
Here's what this fandom is really about:
This critically-acclaimed but swiftly-cancelled educational show attempted to teach physics, the science of matter and its motion, using the life of a perpetually sour girl to illustrate concepts.
Newton's laws of motion are introduced first, as the girl tries to remain at rest during her dead end job at a souvenir shop. She does as little as possible, preferring to sink into apathy rather than help the customers. However, she eventually learns about velocity, acceleration, and ballistic trajectories thanks to a catapult accident with a baby.
Electromagnetism gets a work out with her romantic adventures. Attraction, repulsion, radiation - it's all there. Including a very cute guy.
Her days seem to stretch into nothingness, time slowing and speeding up depending on her movement, a clear example of relativity. Her family also demonstrates Einstein's theories, with the continual orbit of mother, father, siblings around our sour girl. Space-time warps depending on the mass of the personality involved, keeping the family together just like a solar system. No matter how much she might wish it, the rules of gravity will keep her connected to her family.
The random animals that speak to her are a manifestation of quantum mechanics, a bizarre realm where quarks bounce around like popping corn and you can tell either a particle's position or momentum, but not both. Observation by the outside world changes the state of quantum waves, such that it's impossible to determine reality, much like the talking tchotchkes change the state of the sour girl's life. Heisenberg and Schrödinger were both name-checked in various episodes. Inanimate objects can't normally talk, but in the world of quarks and electrons, anything is possible.
None other than well-respected science luminaries Stephen Hawking and Brian Greene counted themselves fans. Greene, in particular, hailed Wonderfalls as "visionary - ahead of its time" and pitched a script related to string theory prior to cancellation.
Vids Used
- "The Frug" by f1renze (flozie@gmail.com)
http://www.kitzeproductions.net/wonderfalls/vids.html
recommended by heresluck
- "Bright Future in Sales" by Gwyneth (gwynethr@gmail.com)
http://www.gwynethr.net/
recommended by mlyn
Gwyneth has a password-protected vid website, but she has kindly authorized me to give you the password to ease your downloading experience. I'm putting it behind a cut to help ward off evil robots.
Gwyneth: (http://www.gwynethr.net/)
username: gwyn
password: cymru
Grokker Synopsis
Wonderfalls was a clever, charming series on Fox, created by Bryan Fuller (somewhere between Dead Like Me, Pushing Daisies, and making HRG awesome on Heroes) and Tim Minear (between Firefly, Drive, and insert-next-already-cancelled-project-here). It was so clever, so charming, and so on Fox that it lasted maybe - six episodes? Then the whole thing went to DVD. Some people may have noticed the sun started shining a little bit brighter that day, and now you know why.
Jaye Tyler is the snarky, cynical, apathetic heroine. She lives in a trailer park and works at the Wonderfalls gift shop in Niagra Falls, selling "Surrender to Destiny" Indian trinkets and resenting her mouth-breathing co-worker/manager with the bowl cut. She's kind of a black sheep to her loving family, always compared to her lawyer sister Sharon (the blonde one who throws a shoe at her head in frustration in both vids) and grad-student brother Aaron (the semi-dopey-looking one in the car in "Bright Future in Sales" who is Ned! from Pushing Daisies!) by her parents Darrin and Karen. I’m not making this up. Jaye's life changes one day when a half-smushed plastic lion looks up at her and starts talking. Her first reaction: swoony faint.
For some unexplained reason, gift-shop items and other objects -- always in the form of silly cartoon animals with adorable faces -- come to life and speak secret messages to Jaye that no one else can hear. Is it God? The devil? Some unseen earthy Native American hand of fate? Jaye thinks she's gone insane, causing her to flip out sometimes and try to smash the talking things to bits. But the plastic lion and his ilk persist, repeating their mysterious commands and keeping her up all night with their annoying singing. When she does what they say, it's often a bizarre instruction that makes no sense or even seems harmful (like: dumping a drink on her old high school classmate) but it sets off a chain of events that ultimately brings good things to people around her. This do-gooding freaks her out most of all. Wacky adventures ensue.
The main romance of the show, seen more in "The Frug" with some kissies in the other vid, is between Jaye and bartender Eric. But I won't spoil too much about their relationship or the obstacles in the way (hint: briefly-glimpsed chapel in "The Frug") or whether True Love Prevails by the end of the show's run.
Stranger Synopses
Stranger 1
All I knew about this fandom was:
It was spoken of as being a rather charming series that was canceled before its time; also, that Lee Pace was involved.
Here's what this fandom is really about:
At 3:45 PM, on March 15, 1981, the town council of the über-secret, tiny municipality of Wonderfalls (a nondescript suburb of the much bigger Wherethehell) reluctantly decided to join the rest of the country by adding fluoride to their water supply. Little did they realize at the time that the CIA had tapped their wee burg as the perfect, out-of-the-way place to experiment upon their populace, and that the fluoride in the tap water had, instead, been replaced by trace amounts of LSD. The results were these: the population of Wonderfalls remained completely oblivious to the fact that everything they experienced was, in their otherwise normal, daily routine, hallucinogenic in nature; one of its teenaged citizens, Ned (a soon-to-be-renowned pie maker), had a cousin from the East Coast visit him for the summer ~ her name was Maisie, and she, not having been brought up in a hallucinogized state, had some difficulty adjusting to her drugged perceptions (not to mention the entire town's total lack of empathy); at 7:35 PM, on August 30, 2005, Maisie, fearing for her sanity, abruptly left Wonderfalls and flew home; at 11:17 AM, on September 1, 2005, the town council elected to cease "fluoride" inclusion in their water supply.
Stranger 2
All I knew about this fandom was:
Nothing at all. Sounds like a candy, though.
Here's what this fandom is really about:
...This was the weirdest thing I've seen since the Doctor Who season three finale. Alright, let me take a stab at this. Girl with Long Brown Hair (we'll call her Anna) works in a shop and can talk to inanimate characters. Statues, stuffed animals, toys...anything with a face, it seems. I think she gained the power from wishing...but that seems like an odd thing to wish for. You can tell she hasn't always had this power, though, as there are moments when she seems shocked to see them, which I'm guessing are from the first couple episodes of the series. Anna's in love with Scruffy Short Haired Guy, and the inanimate are eager to help her in her quest for love. At some point Scruffy Short Haired Guy does fall for Anna, but ends up marrying some other chick. This was quite shocking as I think Scruffy Short Haired Guy was under some sort of love spell. That's it! This show is about witches! Or wishes. Same difference, really. Anyway, back to Anna. Anna cries, ignores her mum, and eventually gets over it. I think at some point she dates Guy From Shop With Lousy Haircut, but I couldn't tell. All in all, it looks fascinating. I'm off to find out how right (or wrong) I am. Ta!
Stranger 3
All I knew about this fandom was:
All I knew about this fandom was that it was by that dude from Angel, and had something to do with Niagara Falls
Here's what this fandom is really about:
This is the tragic tale of one woman's life as a Disney character. Bad enough that she is forced to work in a gift-shop in Niagara Falls, but even worse, animals talk to her wherever she goes. Fake animals, that is. She also has a drinking problem, possibly as a result of all of this.
Personality: She has a habit of throwing things out of windows, and an ability to catch things which seems to amount almost to telekinesis (possibly it is telekinesis, what do I know?). Strangely, people don't seem to think she's insane for talking to apparently inanimate objects, even though it doesn't seem like they can tell that said objects have become rather chatty. She appears to have several friends, and at least one love-interest (who is also involved with the blonde girl she throws a drink at? And possibly marries someone?). There are also some scenes where there are two people who look like her, and I'm not really sure which she is or who the second person is. I don't think she's a sister, though, because there are several shots of what look like family, and they're all blonde except for Little Miss Doolittle. I think.
These vids have left me pretty confused, actually *g*. I get that she has these bizarre talked-to-by-animals powers, but why? And is she the only one? Do they tell her useful things? Are there actual mystical / questy / world-saving things going on? Or is she just afflicted with annoying voices (sounds like most fic-writers)? Also, there's obviously a complicated romance plot, about which I can tell very little. Is there even more than one love-interest?
The show looks kind of cool, though.
Stranger 4
All I knew about this fandom was:
Nothing at all. I hadn't even known it existed.
Here's what this fandom is really about:
Ally McBeal's younger sister? Amélie's long-haired cousin? Mind-altering drugs? Who knows.
Jen Why is a young woman who lives in a trailer and works in a small store. She's friends with one of her co-workers, a shy and bit awkward young man and she's in - unrequited - love with a different young man (who has a beard). It's a pretty uneventful life, but that's ok. She likes living stress free.
At least she thought that she likes it - her imagination thinks differently. Or was it her fairy godmother? And so one day she gets a big shock: inanimate objects begin to move and to talk with her! Little statuettes! Plastic flamingos! Plush toys! The eagle on a coin! Actually she thinks she's losing her mind at first, then after a while she's only annoyed by them and then she starts to listen to them.
That is probably the best idea she ever had! She listens to the advice of her new friends and begins to become more confident and outgoing. In one pivotal scene of the show she actually spills a glass of wine on the annoying blonde bitch who is her strongest rival for the guy she's in love with - and considering that she was always more shy and reserved that's a pretty big change.
After a few more episodes (in one she saves a baby someone throws through the air!) she then actually gets her man and all her inanimate friends rejoice!
Stranger 5
All I knew about this fandom was:
Um, I think I've heard the name before? It's called Wonderfalls, so I'm going to pretend I know what I'm talking about and say it's a group of people living near some really awesome waterfalls. (Or alternatively, they're skaters. Possibly skaters near a large waterfall? Yeah, I'm sure that's it.)
Here's what this fandom is really about:
…apparently not skaters living near a waterfall, but don't tell me you don't want to see the canon for that show.
Anyway, having watched "Bright Future in Sales", here's what this fandom's really about:
Pilot
The main character is a girl, who I shall call Holly because she reminds me somewhat of Willow from Buffy the Vampire Slayer. Holly's life is in a bit of a slump at the moment. Okay, a bit of a dead end. She lives in a dusty trailer* in a carpark (even the trailerpark kids look down on her), she's been forced to take a retail job at a toy store in order to make ends meet, she really doesn't get on with the boss, and to make things worse, the uniform is a yellow waistcoat that needs only fluorescence to let her blend in at the annual construction worker's convention. On the upside, she can afford to buy an iMac notebook now, *and she's made a friend there! He held up a badge with 'Alec' written on it, so I'm going to assume to expression of horror was that they misspelt his name and I'm going to call him Alex. Oh look! His vest says he is actually called Alec. Score one to me! (More or less. And apparently Holly is really called Joyce. Or possibly Faye. Hmm. Let's stick with Holly.)
*Which is admittedly pretty awesome inside.
Holly has an anger management problem, and this gets her into trouble when she mouths off to someone she shouldn't have (that or she touched something she shouldn't have, but her anger management problem leads me to suspect the first) and gets put under a curse. Now drawings and sculptures of animals talk to her. At first she thought she was going round the bend, but now she's accepted it and they just drive her up the wall. Damn mouthy animals. Unfortunately for Holly, almost everyone else still has their money on option A, 'barking mad'.
Episode 1
Holly's still trying to come to terms with hearing animals speak, and not handling it so well. You know you'll have to pay for those if you break them, Holly? Particularly since your boss is standing right behind you. It's also a bad idea to stop paying attention to your driving, even if the cow did start chatting to you. On the upside, Holly finally plucks up the courage to tell Alec and he believes her. Now he can help cover for her. The episode ends with Holly catching a baby and saving it from certain death, leading Holly also realises that the curse comes complete with a mission - she must use her powers to help people, like it or not.
Over the course of the season, Holly and Alec become reluctant saviours of the world, winding up in all sorts of scrapes along the way (often life-threatening ones, such as the time Sean tried to scare them off by blowing up a car, or when Sarah decided to win Alec's heart by killing Holly - and that's not even mentioning the number of times they end up on the wrong side of a gun). Their arrest records were a lot lower before all this started, dammit. Really, all they want to do is live their lives in peace! Good thing there's lots of alcohol…
Season highlights:
Episode 5
Holly makes a new friend, Stacy, who has black curly hair, when someone breaks into the store and Stacy gets blamed for not locking up properly. Holly uses her mad computer skillz to get the proof that it was an inside job from another employee after the toys in the store tip her off to the real identity of the thief.
Episode 12
Road trip! …again, thank God for alcohol.
Episode 16
Alec gets promoted to assistant manager. He's not happy with this turn of events, but they have bigger problems - like the store being held up!
[Spoiler: after going to see the store manager, Alec convinces her that he's far too inept to be the assistant manager, and things go back to normal. Pity about the pay rise, though.]
Relationships
Holly's mother and father are divorced, and her mum's remarried. Holly doesn't approve. Her relationship with her mother is strained, to her mother's sadness. She gets on better with her dad, who's quite absent-minded but has a heart of gold. As time passes, she reconciles with her mum and their relationship improves, and her entire family goes out for dinner together sometimes. It's nice.
As well as her friends, Alec and Stacy, Holly has a crush on Random Moustache And Jacket dude. (He's probably not the same guy who help up the store, but you never know.)
Having watched "The Frug", I have this to add to my summary:
Apparently she's not cursed, she's destined to save the world. Man, what a bitch! No getting away from that, particularly when there're Native Americans involved.
She is indeed friends with Curly Black Haired Girl, who may or may not be called Stacy and is a closer friend than I had thought. It would appear she has some siblings too - a brother and sister? - but I can't really tell.
Apparently her name is actually Jen Why (that was some cursive writing on her jacket! also, that is a terrible pun) and she makes the cover of Today's America for being a slacker.
Random Moustache Dude rocks up a lot more, and seems to be her partner in crime on occasion. (Oh hey, is he a bartender? That would explain how they met.) They form two-thirds of a love triangle, and Holly-who-is-actually-Jen seems to be the losing part of it - but I have faith in her ability to wind up with him anyway. Hey, there's always season 2, right?
Stranger 6
All I knew about this fandom was:
A long time ago one of my online friend's told me it was "a quirky show and I'd probably like it."
Here's what this fandom is really about:
This is obviously a more modern take on Beauty and the Beast, in which our young princess rejected the generous gift of a small red lion statue and found herself suddenly cursed. Thus begins her new life, as she is forced to work in a small gift shop for the rest of eternity dealing with incredibly strange customers and several annoying work colleagues.
To top it off, everyone she used to know has been cursed into (not entirely) inanimate objects - everything from a stuffed toy donkey, to a small cow statue, a wall hanging of a fish, and even pink flamingos on sticks - and they can only talk to the Princess. This makes her look rather crazy.
She is also taunted by copies of the original red lion statue, which turn up on a regular basis and cannot be destroyed no matter how hard the Princess tries (melting, smashing, throwing...).
The only way to break the curse is for the Princess to fall in love and get married, something which her cursed companions are aware of and, therefore, constantly try to give her love advice, set her up on dates or otherwise scheme to make her fall in love. This leads to impromptu parties, a ball, a PR campaign involving a small baby, internet dating, and a drunken road trip.
The top candidate for love interest is Guy-with-a-beard, who appears to work at the local bar where the Princess constantly gets drunk and laments how she used to be a Princess for god's sake! Unfortunately Guy-with-a-beard intends to get married to some other chick, but maybe all is not lost. The Princess' (rather animated) inanimate friends are still working on a happy ending.
Stranger 7
All I knew about this fandom was:
I watched the first couple of episodes, way back when it premiered, but I didn't care for it and stopped watching. I remember there was a disaffected post-college girl who worked in a souvenir shop at Niagara Falls. Normally inanimate objects started talking to her. I don't know why.
Here's what this fandom is really about:
This critically-acclaimed but swiftly-cancelled educational show attempted to teach physics, the science of matter and its motion, using the life of a perpetually sour girl to illustrate concepts.
Newton's laws of motion are introduced first, as the girl tries to remain at rest during her dead end job at a souvenir shop. She does as little as possible, preferring to sink into apathy rather than help the customers. However, she eventually learns about velocity, acceleration, and ballistic trajectories thanks to a catapult accident with a baby.
Electromagnetism gets a work out with her romantic adventures. Attraction, repulsion, radiation - it's all there. Including a very cute guy.
Her days seem to stretch into nothingness, time slowing and speeding up depending on her movement, a clear example of relativity. Her family also demonstrates Einstein's theories, with the continual orbit of mother, father, siblings around our sour girl. Space-time warps depending on the mass of the personality involved, keeping the family together just like a solar system. No matter how much she might wish it, the rules of gravity will keep her connected to her family.
The random animals that speak to her are a manifestation of quantum mechanics, a bizarre realm where quarks bounce around like popping corn and you can tell either a particle's position or momentum, but not both. Observation by the outside world changes the state of quantum waves, such that it's impossible to determine reality, much like the talking tchotchkes change the state of the sour girl's life. Heisenberg and Schrödinger were both name-checked in various episodes. Inanimate objects can't normally talk, but in the world of quarks and electrons, anything is possible.
None other than well-respected science luminaries Stephen Hawking and Brian Greene counted themselves fans. Greene, in particular, hailed Wonderfalls as "visionary - ahead of its time" and pitched a script related to string theory prior to cancellation.