“Lovesick Ass” (season one, episode eight, unaired)
“If I were in a position to be interested in somebody, I think it could be safe to say it’d be someone very much not unlike you.” — Jaye Tyler, “Lovesick Ass”
Of the many disparate genres and tropes that come together in the delightful melange that is Wonderfalls, the most pronounced of those elements is that of a romantic comedy. In the midst of various good deeds and sarcastic quips, Jaye’s attraction to Eric has been her constant, the only thing other than the threat of near-insanity from muse nagging that’s led her to be even slightly motivated. It’s a plot that’s developed gradually over the course of the series, the two enjoying easy banter and getting involved in various schemes. The relationship is easy and human enough that it’s not hard to imagine a reality in which Wonderfalls didn’t get picked up but that core concept—jaded retail clerk and jilted bartender find love amongst the waterfalls—survived and was adapted into a screenplay sans talking trinkets and drastic tonal shifts.
For the majority of Wonderfalls to date the developing connection between the two has played out in the background, with “Wound-Up Penguin” being the only episode to tie it into the weekly muse structure as Eric projected his inner turmoil onto Sister Katrina. “Lovesick Ass” goes a step further than that and brings seven episodes worth of flirting to a head, Eric finally questioning why he and Jaye can’t be together and Jaye scrambling to find a way to explain her situation without discussing the fact that inanimate objects speak to her randomly. It’s a move that takes us through the conflict stage of the romantic comedy arc and delivers a satisfying end to the initial stages of their courtship—even though the attendant conflicts and adventure feel more off-putting than they ideally should.
The events that lead to this resolution are set in motion when Eric spies a woman sleeping by the fountain outside Wonderfalls and opts to listen to her grievances and share his donuts. (Donuts he was bringing to Jaye, who’s first annoyed at this interloper and then horrified by his aside that a “little voice” told him to stop.) The woman identifies herself as Katya, a recent immigrant from Russia who’s come to meet her online boyfriend Peter, the man of her dreams who’s promised to marry her—and yet didn’t show up at the appointed time. As in “Wound-Up Penguin,” Eric’s empathy for someone in distress leads him to adopt her cause, and Jaye’s desire to spend time with him drags her along on the quest. Once again there’s a good interplay between Caroline Dhavernas and Tyron Leitso as they follow various leads and commit a series of misdemeanors, and there’s some additional shading to Eric as being in a wedding chapel again leads him to have a panic attack.
And the plot thickens once they track the messages to its source, as it turns out Peter’s not the man he said he was—in fact, he’s not even a man at all. Peter is one Peter Johnson (Spencer Breslin), a 13-year-old boy whose conception of relationships isn’t even close to healthy: “I found a woman, I paid for her, I intend to marry her” forms the crux of his argument. Katya, understandably horrified at her “uncooked dumpling” of a betrothed, holes up in Jaye’s trailer and hurls every last knickknack at him when he comes to collect, leaving Jaye and Eric to play parents and try to convince him he’s too young to know what love is. Unfortunately, that argument is undermined by a variety of factors, played hilariously in a crosstalk between the two adults full of “thinly veiled subtext” as Jaye angrily puts it. Eric expresses that a relationship doesn’t work if the other party isn’t interested, Jaye counters that there is interest, he throws her attitudes about love back in her face (comparisons to bad fish and open wounds form the basis), and she’s left sputtering about an “insurmountable” obstacle.
And that gets to the oddest part of “Lovesick Ass,” in that this obstacle—the muses—are almost entirely absent. They rope Jaye into the mystery early on by suggesting “Girl needs a donut” and sending her out into the world looking for one, but beyond that they’re apathetic to Katya or Peter’s plight. It isn’t out of character for the show to go without their voices for a while, as “Muffin Buffalo” provided ample evidence that Jaye’s capable of doing good deeds without their direction. What feels off about their absence this week is that Jaye’s spent so much time claiming potential clinical insanity as the reason why she can’t be in a relationship with Eric, and when that reason doesn’t even show up it undermines Jaye’s central argument. I can see how that may be intentional—the muses are a convenient excuse for her not to take a chance that changes her life—but the execution isn’t where it could be, and as presented, Jaye comes across as self-contradictory in a way that feels notably out of character.
It might not be such a big deal if the rest of the episode was more cohesive, but “Lovesick Ass” feels a little off in several ways. When Jaye resorts to threats to get Peter to leave Katya alone he switches his attention to her, though where he takes it leaves things in an ugly place. Here the romantic comedy tropes are reversed; unlike About A Boy or Love Actually, this is not a circumstance where adding a kid to the mix brings about a cutesy resolution to romance. Peter’s legitimately unsettled, first giving himself a black eye to make Eric seem abusive and then proposing “an evening of Tchaikovsky and heavy petting” with Jaye. His implication that he can keep her safe in a cabin with a cellar is even creepier, and makes one wonder when Bryan Fuller will dig back into his rolodex and add this character to Hannibal.