Wonderfalls

Wonderfalls (2004) is a comedy-drama television series that was broadcast on the Fox television network. The show centres on Jaye Tyler (Caroline Dhavernas), a recent Brown University graduate with a philosophy degree, who holds a dead-end job as a sales clerk at a Niagara Falls gift shop. Jaye is the reluctant participant in conversations with various animal figurines — a wax lion, brass monkey, stuffed bear, and mounted fish, among others — which direct her via oblique instructions to help people in need.

"I Wonder Why the Wonder Falls" by Andy Partridge - Wonderfalls Opening Theme - Promotional video

• We're bobbing along in our barrel.
  Some of us tip right over the edge.
  But there's one thing really mystifying
  It's got me laughing, now it's got me crying
  All my life I'll be death defying
  Till I know...

• I wonder wonder why the wonder falls
  I wonder why the wonder falls on me
  I wonder wonder why the wonder falls
  With everything I touch and hear and see.

• We teeter along on our tightrope
  Some of us trip and damage our heads
  Poppin' pills is really stupefying
  Get you crawling when you could be flying

• Don't you ever think about this life
  And how strange it all can seem?
  Only way to find the answers out
  Is to wake up from its golden dream.

• I've got to find out from where the wonder falls.

Full episode at YouTube

Gretchen: Did you end up over-educated and unemployable like you said in the yearbook?

Jaye: Yep.

---

Sharon: You tell people we're not related.

Jaye: It was just that one time.

Sharon: It was Grandpa's wake!

---

Mahandra: Disappointing your family is an extreme sport for you.

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Eric: Why do they always sacrifice the pretty ones?

Jaye: I guess killing pretty people is easier than killing ugly people. Although, you'd think the opposite would be true.

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[Jaye picks a quarter out of the fountain]

Girl: You're not supposed to steal!

Jaye: You're not supposed to talk to strangers. Piss off!

---

Jaye: Your voice just got loud.

Jaye: Eric can't talk right now, because he's servicing me sexually.

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Jaye: I don't have a choice. I'm a puppet. The universe sticks its hand up my butt, and if I don't dance people get hurt.

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Mahandra: I've got my own list of things to do. And at the top of it: destroy Gretchen Speck. You may be the universe's butt puppet, but I'm its right-hand fist of fate. And tonight, accounts are comin' due.

---

Karen: Honey, you should go in there.

Jaye: Me?

Karen: Otherwise, I'll have to.

---

Eric: So, did you defy the chicken?

Jaye: Uh-huh.

Eric: And how'd that work out for ya?

Jaye: I think I may have killed a man.

Eric: Oh. So not as well as we'd hoped then?

Bianca: [to store customers] Come again!

Jaye: Don't encourage them.

---

Bianca: I thought I saw those motion lamps in the back.

Jaye: Exactly, in the back, up on a high shelf. If one of us were to fall it would affect workers comp rates, we're not only protecting our employer... but small businesses everywhere.

---

Jaye: You've gotta choose people who aren't much more motivated than you are — but don't surround yourself with total narcissists. Otherwise, things start to be about something other than you.

---

Bianca: Your home is a trailer. Don't you see the beautiful poetry in that? It's a thing that's been designed to go someplace, and yet the hitch isn't hooked up to anything. So it just sits here, never living up to its potential... but never in any danger of breaking down either.

---

Jaye: I should have tossed her out on her buh-buh-butt!

---

Jaye: A brother who lives at home, and is still considered more successful than I am, which could be because I live in a trailer that, while it may look like Jeannie's bottle, is actually slightly smaller.

Jaye: What do you get off brow-beating a hooker? Jesus was nice to prostitutes.

---

Eric: The man, do you remember what he looked like?

Janitor: Strange looking sort. Dressed in all black. I remember thinking that if Johnny Cash had been born an Irishman, the music would have been more lilting.

---

Jaye: If you were so happy with the sisters in the field, why did you leave?

Katrina: It was the cheese. The cheese was my undoing. [indicating her plate] This is the miracle of life melted over these chili fries. The bacterial flirtation with enzymes. The co-mingling of friendly micro-organisms giving birth to curds and whey, "And from dust He created the universe."

Jaye: The dairy-board must love you.

---

Jaye: Yes, but maybe she's just a lazy whore. That happens, right? They can't all have hearts of gold and good work ethics.

---

Jaye: The voices, the animals, I was just mad at them. But they aren’t demonic. It just feels like that sometimes when they make me help people.

Karen: Sharon, go talk to your father. You're his favorite.

[Sharon leaves the kitchen]

Aaron: I thought I was his favorite.

Karen: We don't have favorites.

---

Aaron: Oh my God, that guy just blew his nose on the ground. I thought Canadians were supposed to be clean.

Jaye: Just don't make eye contact.

---

Jaye: Well, if it isn't the squealer. Thanks for squealing, squealer.

Sharon: How am I a squealer?

Jaye: Uh, could it be the squealing? You ambushed us with the fuzz. You were all back-lit and evil-smoking like that guy on the X-Files.

---

Officer Hale: The blonde one's queer. Look at her. Those fingernails are a dead giveaway. Cut all nice and short. Clean cuticle beds. Lesbians always trim their nails like that. You know why?

---

Jaye: Just try to get Aaron out.

Sharon: He's already out

Jaye: Bastard! He sang?

Sharon: No, you admitted to driving the car.

Jaye: Oohh, I sang...

Sharon: There are like six Law & Orders on the air now, have you not seen one of them?

Aaron: If your portly chupacabra doesn’t emerge soon I’ll be forced to go home and work on my dissertation.

Jaye: I don’t call him that anymore. He might be of Mexican descent and I don’t want to be insensitive.

Aaron: What do you call him?

Jaye: Fat Pat. It was Fatsquatch but... [shrugs]

---

Jaye: I do admit the whole shut-in thing has a certain appeal. Dress is optional, and there’s the part where you get to avoid people.

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Jaye: [wandering the deserted trailer park] Did we have a Rapture?

---

Aaron: There’s something out there and it’s laughing at us.

Darrin: I don’t think your sister’s special lunch is an appropriate place for an existential crisis.

Aaron: It’s not an existential crisis.

Karen: You’re studying religion for God’s sake, you were bound to have one sooner or later.

Aaron: I’m not in existential crisis! Just the opposite. I was fine when existence had no meaning. Meaninglessness in a universe that has no meaning — that I get. But meaninglessness in a universe that has meaning... what does it mean?

Jaye: It doesn't mean anything.

Aaron: Did the cow creamer tell you that?

Karen: I’m throwing that creamer away the second we get home.

---

Jaye: You lost 300 pounds; you can’t just gain it all back!

Marianne Marie: Well Sieg Heil, Miss Jenny Craig!

[Millie is sitting at the autograph-signing table and is being ignored.]

Mahandra: This is sad. This is sadder than that hooker we saw getting beat up by that other hooker.

Alec: At least a hooker fight would draw a crowd.

---

Jaye: [to Sharon] How long have you been using the Republican party as a lesbian dating service?

---

Viv: I was supposed to ride that barrel right out of this crummy town.

Jaye: And you never considered a bus?

---

Mahandra: ...the story of Millie Marcus and her barrel.

Eric: It is sort of the quintessential American tale.

Mahandra: Yes! It teaches us there's nothing a person can’t do.

Eric: Or nothing a person actually has to do. I mean look at her, she’s 100% fabrication. She decided what she wanted to be and damn the facts. You don’t get much more American than that.

---

Jaye: Look at me: I’m 24 and I’ve never done anything. I have a worthless philosophy degree that's gotten me no further than a dead-end retail job working for a mouth-breather so I can continue to support my trailer park lifestyle. Do you think I sit around feeling sorry for myself?

Viv: God, I would if I were you.

Lovesick Ass: Girl needs a—

Jaye: Girl might actually find time to have a boy if you'd ever shut up!

Lovesick Ass: ...donut. Girl needs a donut.

Jaye: Finally, something sensible.

---

[Playing with the Wax Lion and Brass Monkey]

Mahandra [as Wax Lion as Jaye]: Your man-sweat is like honey-mustard glaze on my tongue.

Brass Monkey: Inappropriate touching.

Wax Lion: This isn't fun for anybody.

---

Jaye: It's impossible you could've liked any of your three portions. It's fish jello! You do realize that's jello and fish?

---

Peter: With eyes that beautiful, how can you be so blind?

---

Peter: He wants you all to himself. He won't share you with anyone. You're in danger. He's dangerous. I saw him smoking a cigarette.

Jaye: He doesn't smoke. He doesn't hit people. He doesn't deface synogogues and he doesn't frequent gay bath houses.

Peter: I have pictures.

Jaye: You have photo-imaging software!

Peter: I'm only trying to protect you. Come with me to the cabin. I'll keep you safe. We have a cellar.

---

Eric: You know, even if you got rid of me, you'd still be left with the biggest obstacle to Jaye's heart.

Peter: What's that?

Eric: Jaye.

Rufus: You know what happens when a fairy's wings lose their dust? The fairy dies, that's what.

Jaye: Uh, restrooms are for customers only.

---

Penelope: We answer to a higher law.

Eric: We do?

Jaye: Love. Love is our higher law. And we're here to save it. Not that it was ever in any danger. From me.

---

Aaron: I wanna see an engorged cloaca!

Penelope: You can't. I told you, your powerful sexual chemistry is too distracting.

Aaron: I get that a lot, actually.

---

Jaye: I'm trying to save him. By avoiding him. So I can be with him. But I can't go near him or I'll destroy him, so if I can just manage to stay away from him maybe we can be together. Please don't repeat that back to me.

---

Jaye: I've never seen anyone work so hard to get someone else laid in my entire life. You are like the total mac daddy bird pimp.

Heidi: You hit me with a television!

Jaye: It was a portable!

---

Jaye: Fine, I'm the crazy one... but I had the snake!

Heidi: Well, it's my snake and I want it back.

[Jaye looks puzzled]

Heidi: The snake... that's a penis reference, right?

Jaye: No, God! With a mind that works like that no wonder you cheated on your honeymoon.

---

Mahandra: Alright, what're we drinking to?

Eric: How about crazy women and losers who love them.

Mahandra: You are not a loser. She is your wife. You don't just stop loving her because...

Eric: I am not talking about Heidi.

Mahandra: Uh... wow, really? [Eric gave her a convincing look] You love her? [another look from Eric] well, then you have to tell her.

Eric: Not until she tells me.

Mahandra: Now you're playing chicken. She has to say it first?

Eric: Not it, but something, anything. I just need a word. One word, so I'd know I am not the only one feeling this. But she can't say it and I don't know why.

---

Mahandra: You're like a brother to me.

Aaron: So, I make love like a black man?

Mahandra: Not that kind of brother, you idiot!

---

Mahandra: Nobody can hurt by just admitting how they feel.

Jaye: I think I might love him. Uhh. See that, it hurt.

Jaye: [to melted Wax Lion] Tell me why. Why make me make the man I love re-marry his hussy bride? How is that helpful? Who does that benefit besides the hussy, 'cause I'm not in the business of benefitting hussies.

---

Heidi: [to Jaye] We're both reasonable women.

Mahandra: Ha!

Heidi: We're both capable of reason.

---

Jaye: Of course she's not pressing charges. Murderers don't press charges. It calls unwanted attention to themselves.

---

Brass Monkey: Lick the light-switch.

---

Jaye: [to Brass Monkey] Tell me why you talk to me!

Brass Monkey: Because... you listen.

Jaye: I couldn’t stand the thought of spending another day looking at those faces with their stupid little mouths constantly running and making all sorts of unreasonable demands on me.

Mahandra: Are you sure you should be in a customer service industry?

---

Aaron: St. Paul was just a punk until he was blinded by the light, and Gandhi was just drinking and whoring it up with his friends until he heard the cry of his people.

Jaye: And Neo was just a geek until he swallowed that little red pill.

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Bill: Thank you for supporting this imperialist establishment. Enjoy your purchase and have a racist day!

---

Bill: They really look up to me!

Jaye: Yeah, you made them sit down.

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Sharon: Behind this door is one very dehydrated, very angry, and very litigious woman! Pry, man! Pry!

Caged Bird: Let him go!

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Wade: Is this one of those stores that gives its employees a cash bonus when they apprehend a shoplifter?

Jaye: Ten percent of whatever they were gonna steal! One time I accidentally left the watch case open and I got, like, 500 bucks.

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Jaye: I make good life choices — mostly because they’re forced on me — but I make them, and I find myself in unpleasant situations all the time. You know why? Because even if you have a choice it can and will be taken away from you. We’re all fate’s bitch. You might as well go ahead and bend over for destiny now.

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Alec: No! Please, don’t kill me! I can’t die! I’ve never been with a woman!

Bank robber: [to Sharon] You...

Sharon: I have been with a woman!

---

[Eric is holding a bag full of Wonderfalls souvenirs.]

Eric: I'd like to return these items.

Jaye: Did they break? 'Cause we sell a lot of crap here.

• Caroline Dhavernas - Jaye Tyler
• Katie Finneran - Sharon Tyler
• Tyron Leitso - Eric Gotts
• William Sadler - Darrin Tyler
• Diana Scarwid - Karen Tyler
• Lee Pace - Aaron Tyler
• Tracie Thoms - Mahandra McGinty

• Save Wonderfalls
  • Thanks from Bryan Fuller
• Get Her Words Out Forum
• Wonderfalls quotes at the Internet Movie Database
• Wonderfalls Scripts, Music Video, Interviews, & deleted scenes