A character could sleep with both sexes, but that typically meant they “turned gay now” or were just experimenting or confused, possibly just very slutty, or basically anything but attracted to both sexes. They wouldn’t have love lives of their own, and if they did it was also a joke or some chaste cutesy thing.Īnd bisexuals mostly didn’t exist. Their personalities existed only to support the main character and see how many times “because I’m gay!” could be used as a punchline. Unless you were on a “gay” show, gay characters in mainstream television generally found themselves as comic relief sidekicks with no lives of their own. Sharon Tyler: Queer Pioneer of 2000s Television This was most clear in it’s treatment of Jaye’s sister Sharon Tyler, who was arguably the co-lead given how much screen time she had. It was just a messy universe trying to sort itself out with the kind of eagerness and sincerity that began to bubble up after the apathetic 90s. There were no villains or really any stakes. It’s perhaps not hard to understand why audiences and television executives were mostly “wtf is this shit” upon first viewing.īut the show had a strong empathetic core.
Her sarcastic critical outlook of the world doesn’t stand for cosmic acts of the universe, so she kinda unravels. Jaye finds herself improving the lives of everyone around her and herself, with the slight annoyance of increasing mental health concerns due to the whole talking to fake animals things. This expression is plastered across her face more or less all the time start forcing her to perform seemingly random acts that have spiraling consequences that always end up for the best. “Anything with a face” such as wax animals, monkey statues, stuffed animals, etc. This all changes when inanimate objects start telling her to do stuff. She spends most of her time working her dead-end job in a gift shop, drinking at the local bar with her friend Mahandra (Tracie Thoms of “Rent” fame), and convincing herself she’s happy this way.
Jaye Tyler has created an expectation-free middling existence for herself. I say proto-Millenial because at the time they were still called “Generation Y” and everyone involved is clearly Generation X. He made such other shows you’ve either never heard of or love too deeply as Dead Like Me, Pushing Daisies, Hannibal, and American Gods.Ĭaroline Dhavernas starred as Jaye Tyler, a proto-Millenial character that was caught between being overeducated and unemployable.
Wonderfalls youtube tv#
Wonderfalls was the brain child of Bryan Fuller, who has since to become a television legend among people who cultishly devote themselves to weird TV shows. It took demand from the hugely passionate (but small) fan base to get the DVD release at all.Ĭast of Wonderfalls (from left to right) Darrin Tyler (William Sadler), Karen Tyler (Diana Scarwid), Mahandra McGinty (Tracie Thoms), Eric Gotts (Tyron Leitso), Sharon Tyler (Kate Finneran), Jaye Tyler (Caroline Dhavernas), Aaron Tyler (Lee Pace) What Was Wonderfalls Unfortunately that show is Wonderfalls, a show pulled from the air after only 3 episodes, given a cheap DVD release of all 13 episodes that were produced (10 never saw broadcast), and then quickly forgotten by basically everyone. One show managed to buck (most of) those tropes to become a quietly radical representation of both a lesbian character and her bisexual girlfriend. The way mainstream television dealt with queer characters created numerous tropes that became running jokes for the queer community. While queer characters were becoming more acceptable, they were almost all stuck in various cliched boxes. The 2000s are not especially known for stellar representation for LGBTQ characters on main stream television.
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