Tru Calling, Wonderfalls - Talking to Spirits

[nerd4hire]

Notice I asked, what's the best, not what's your favourite? That doesn't mean we can't discuss our favourites, though. 🙂

I Wanna give my opinion in order, from worst to best.

5.Joan of Arcadi - I could never get into this one. I tried, but it just wasn't for me. I know a lot of other people loved it though.

4. Ghost Whisperer - I really liked this at first, but I'm getting tired of it. It's too locked into it's format for me. It's getting tiresome. It's alway's "Ooh, look how spooky", then "Only joking. Everything is warm and Fuzzy.

3. Tru Calling - I thought this one was just starting to get interesting when they cancelled it.

2. Dead Like Me - Too cool, and if the same producer hadn't followed it with Wonderfalls I'd say unique.

1. Wonderfalls - Not unlike Dead Like Me, but after the 4th ep. it becomes something special, with the complex, and steadily more likeable characters coming into full and deeper focus, along with the chemistry that exists between each other. There's also what I believe is a greater abundance of quoteable superior jokes. Also the Tim Minear tricks of layers hidden stuff. You can always tell a great TV series, because it gets better the more times you watch it. Wonderfalls does that.

 

[goldenboy]

Hmm. I'm not qualified for this thread cos I haven't watched Dead Like Me or Joan and I've only seen a third of Wonderfalls. But I wanna comment!

I agree that Ghost Whisperer could use a dose of real darkness and an actual arc. Melinda sometimes seems to see a shadowy figure somewhere then it's never followed up on. Is that what's going on? Can't tell. This is old fashioned, 80s style self-contained episodic TV. Feelgood TV.

What I've seen of Wonderfalls is impressive. Great looking, very well-drawn, quirky characters. Haven't got past ep 4 yet, actually, lol. It feels very 1990's to me"”a sarcastic, ironic, cynical slacker chick, ya know? This attitude, style is almost starting to exhaust me...I guess the point of the show is that Jaye is growing out of slackerhood...she's being guided to grow up and take responsibility for her world...so I'll keep watching. I guess it has a bit in common with Buffy, attitude-wise, right?

And I do watch Medium. There's something very sort of mundane about the direction, the look. But, I personally like the acting, writing style...naturalistic, trying to approximate actual human conversations. And I think Patricia Arquette's really good in this. Always liked her. It feels like the most mainstream, conventional take on a fantasy show possible, but that's OK.

And out of curiosity, I recently got the old show American Gothic on DVD. I like what they were trying to do"”create sort of an authentic, Southern gothic atmosphere, in the vein of Capote, Flannery O'Connor, To Kill a Mockingbird...but then add a supernatural twist. This kid Caleb talks to his dead sister Merlyn each ep, other spirits sometimes. A basic good vs evil morality tale. Its kind of crude by 2006 standards. The quality of the direction, writing varies a fair amount. But most of the leads' acting is top notch. It's kinda fun.

I didn't stick with Tru Calling. It depressed me cos it seemed bland. Tru's personality was no match for Faith's and I couldn't get that out of my head.

 

[nerd4hire]

To be honest I'm playing kind of fast and loose with the whole talking to spirits thing. Medium would fit what I'm talking about though.

I never understood American Gothic well enough to qualify to offer an opinion on what exactly was going on there.

Dead Like Me isn't really talking to spirits, although one guy gets post-its from the other side, there's these little spirit-gremlin things - I think they're called gravelings, or something like that - and the Reapers seem to be spirits which have passed on, and are now inhabiting other bodies. With Joan of Arcadia, does talking to God qualify as talking to Spirits? I don't know.

To be honest I just called this little sub-genre talking to spirits, because I couldn't think of anything else to call it.

There's this little lesser-known gem called The Others I was tempted to add also. It concerns this little group of mis-fits gifted with a connection to the spiritual, and such. It's another one of those ones like Tru Calling that looked to be discovering it's potential right about the time it was cancelled.

Oh, and Jaye starts to grow on you, and grow within herself. By the end you can almost stretch the word a bit, and call her nice. 🙂

 

[goldenboy]

The Others sounds cool.

American Gothic was apparently somewhat of a mess on TV, cos CBS aired the eps out of order, Firefly style. It is a little murky in its "mythology" or whatever you'd want to call it.

I guess you could call most these shows "spiritual fantasy", right? Mysticism, spirituality really seemed to pick up steam in the 90s as a TV theme. Exploring morality, fate/freewill, religion, society through fantasy. Now, this theme seems everywhere on TV.

Oh, and the Book of Daniel. Got canned because of low ratings or tons of complaints or whatever, not sure...

 

[zombie.apparatus]

I think Tru Calling was the best.... 🙂

 

[Summers Blood]

When I first saw the list I almost voted automatically for Tru Calling then I spotted Joan of Arcadia and I had to pause! You see I just can't chose between them! They are both so great.

I love how the dead people talk to Tru, but I am really amused by Joan and how she talkes to god. She just makes such a fool of herself, most of the time! It's so funny....

I haven't made a decision yet!

 

[Primal Slayer]

WonderFalls totally was the best for me. It had the great mixture of dramatic comedy. And I watched it in class with people who had never seen it and they loved it.

I have always wanted to see Dead Like Me, but dont have the channel and HBO shows are always so expensive.

 

[goldenboy]

Just finished off Wonderfalls. I think it is the best of these "spiritual" shows (that I've seen). At first it just seemed really really clever and visually slick, but kind of annoying somehow. Too Malcolm in the Middle for my taste. But, by the time people start thinking that Jaye is truly, dangerously disturbed"”and it gets a little dark"”then it was on a different level of goodness.

It reminds me a little of Northern Exposure and even Ally McBeal, but unlike Ally, I actually like the characters by the end. There's more than just neurosis and dysfunction and complete self-absorption in the characters. It's sort of morally, spiritually searching, inspiring, in a Buffy sort of way...

 

[Xander]

Ghost Whisperer hasn't been shown in the UK yet (I think...) and never did get round to see Joan or Dead Like Me. Shame UK rental stores rarely rent out boxsets, and when they do they charge you per disk. Which just sucks.

Anyway so out of Tru and Wonderfalls I'd say Wonderfalls all the way. I forced myself to watch the whole of season one of Tru because people said it improves at the end, and maybe it does. But due to my extreme masochism I hated it, the show couldn't redeem itself. It was formulaic and blah, I just completly gave up. I never thought of it before but I'm probably the same as goldenboy when he said: "Tru's personality was no match for Faith's and I couldn't get that out of my head."

Wonderfalls is so perfectly witty, silly and interesting. As others have said, it takes a little time to grow but it really picks up. The last few episodes (mainly the ones around Jewel Staite's character's arc) were terrific and then of course it got cancelled. Anyone else heard the intended future storylines? They sounded great.

 

[goldenboy]

I haven't listened to the Wonderfalls commentaries yet...sounds interesting...

Although the series creators had intended for the 13 episodes of Wonderfalls to tell a standalone story (perhaps anticipating cancellation after the first season), apparently the writers were already thinking as much as two years ahead. According to an interview featured on the 2005 DVD release of the series, the producers revealed that they already had plans for the third season, which would have begun with Jaye being institutionalized with "Jesus Syndrome."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wonderfalls

I like the Andy Partridge theme too:

"...I wonder wonder why the wonder falls
I wonder why the wonder falls on me..."

 

[Xander]

Oh god the theme tune, thats damn catchy. May put it on my iPod and play it at work.

 

[Jenny]

Well I'm a huge Dead Like Me fan and as much as I love Tru...DLM would have to get my number one vote. LOVE the characters and where they were taking the storyline.

Tru coming a close second and a large part of it is a blog I ran into where one of the writers for the second season was talking about the story arcs they had planned and written out for the characters...in particular that blonde med student she began seeing (I can not for the life of me remember his name!) and the repurcussions of Tru saving him when he wasn't meant to be saved....and also why Jack and Tru's dad seem to be more tuned in to the 'Powers that Be' and why what she's doing is wrong.

And out of curiosity, I recently got the old show American Gothic on DVD.

My mother and I were huge fans of American Gothic when it did it's original TV run. I managed to buy her the DVD boxset for Christmas. They never aired the final 4 eppys so we never got to find out how it ended!

 

[mayukhers112]

Has anybody seen the TV show 'Missing'? It's based on a series of books by Meg Cabot.

And, speaking of Meg, she has a series of books called 'The Mediator', which is very, very good. It's about a girl who can talk to and see ghosts and all.

 

[goldenboy]

I don't think I've ever commented on a particular episode of Medium anywhere, but last night's ep was pretty fun. David Carradine! That was one of the more amusing cameos I can recall. Pretty clever, heh. It was kind of a rip-off of A Beautiful Mind, but...