How This Mostly Forgotten 2000s TV Show Was Radically Bisexual (for its time)

The 2000s are not especially known for stellar representation for LGBTQ characters on main stream television. While queer characters were becoming more acceptable, they were almost all stuck in various cliched boxes.

The way mainstream television dealt with queer characters created numerous tropes that became running jokes for the queer community. One show managed to buck (most of) those tropes to become a quietly radical representation of both a lesbian character and her bisexual girlfriend.

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. It took demand from the hugely passionate (but small) fan base to get the DVD release at all.

What Was Wonderfalls

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. 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.

Caroline Dhavernas starred as Jaye Tyler, a proto-Millenial character that was caught between being overeducated and unemployable. I say proto-Millenial because at the time they were still called “Generation Y” and everyone involved is clearly Generation X.

Jaye Tyler has created an expectation-free middling existence for herself. 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.

This all changes when inanimate objects start telling her to do stuff. “Anything with a face” such as wax animals, monkey statues, stuffed animals, etc. start forcing her to perform seemingly random acts that have spiraling consequences that always end up for the best.

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. Her sarcastic critical outlook of the world doesn’t stand for cosmic acts of the universe, so she kinda unravels.

It’s perhaps not hard to understand why audiences and television executives were mostly “wtf is this shit” upon first viewing.

But the show had a strong empathetic core. There were no villains or really any stakes. 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.

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.

Sharon Tyler: Queer Pioneer of 2000s Television

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. Their personalities existed only to support the main character and see how many times “because I’m gay!” could be used as a punchline. They wouldn’t have love lives of their own, and if they did it was also a joke or some chaste cutesy thing.

And bisexuals mostly didn’t exist. 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.

Sharon managed to buck all these tropes… well, most of them.

The Not-So-Great Treatment of Queer Characters in Wonderfalls

Okay, Wonderfalls wasn’t perfect in this. There were too many times where the word “lesbian” or being a lesbian was treated as inherently funny. I would not say it’s not that bad for the time, and still sensitive to Sharon as a character.

Sharon herself mostly seems annoyed that people would focus on her sexuality when she has a whole personality and successful professional career they could ask about instead. That as much as anything seems to be the reason Sharon spends the show half in the closet.

…more than just “lesbian sister, side character”

Having a closeted adult character worrying that their parents will find out their gay was already tired in the 2000s, at least with parents that were not raving homophobes (the Tyler parents are portrayed as loving and understanding, if generally oblivious parents). They *are* probably Republicans, but not like, the raving lunatic variety.

Fuller, himself a member of the queer communitey, has gone on record saying he was forced to “het-wash” a lot of his early work, so there is some benefit of the doubt to be given.

Also, Sharon was more than just “lesbian sister, side character”, and that’s where Wonderfalls started to get it right.

More Than A Sidekick

Jaye finds out Sharon is gay in the first episode, but it’s not a big, shocking revelation. It’s played as two sisters who have never been close and oblivious to each other’s lives finally learning more about each other and forming a real relationship. Okay, it’s played as a little shocking, but not in a “oh noooooes, gay” way.

While the sisters continue to bicker and fight throughout the season, it’s clear they’re becoming closer and forming a real relationship. The show wants us to know Sharon too, which is why I would argue she’s almost a co-lead with how much time she’s given to let her personality shine.

Actress Kate Finneran brings her big broadway sensibilities to the role, creating a character that is visibly neurotic, stubborn as hell, and an endless people pleaser that seems annoyed by everyone she meets all at the same.

She also not only gets her own romantic subplot, she’s probably the most sexually active character in the series. Her navigating her relationship with her bisexual girlfriend feels real and spins compelling drama from what starts as an admittedly hacky sitcom plot.

A Bisexual Character: From a Rough Start to Real Person

Sharon’s meets and begins dating Beth in the first episode. They meet after some of Jaye’s supernatural meddling lands a delivery man in the hospital. His emergency contact is still listed as his ex-wife whom he’s recently divorced from.

The ex-wife is, of course, Beth.

Originally the show does the hacky trope of “woman leaves husband, starts dating woman, is 100% lesbian now.” Jaye even remarks to the delivery man “well, at least you know it wasn’t you.”

Now I’m not saying there aren’t people that realize they’re 100% gay later in life after leading a heterosexual life, but this is often done in the service of ignoring that bisexual people exist. Luckily the show doesn’t just drop Beth after she’s used as Sharon’s coming out moment to Jaye.

As we get to know Beth the person, she states very matter of factly that is she is attracted to both men and women. The reason her marriage to a man fell apart was because their relationship had ceased to work for her (having a baby had been a driving wedge between them).

Sharon then has to decide whether she wants to date a woman who is also sexually attracted to men, as she is categorically not attracted to men. This is presented thoughtfully and somewhat realistically, although Sharon still kind of misses the point.

“I don’t want to be a rest stop on your road to heterosexual bliss. I wanna be one of those spiked mats they use in high-speed chases. I want to rip the rubber off your hubs and I want your car to spin out of control and into my arms and I don’t ever want to let you go. Because I am here to stake my claim. And I will peck to death any bird that gets in my way. And I know that’s a bird and a car metaphor and I think there’s a mining reference in there somewhere, but they all hold. You are mine. I’m never gonna let you go. And I’m not afraid anymore. Just don’t say anything else, just dominate me.”

Sharon kind of missing the point doesn’t take away Beth calmly asserting herself and her sexuality. She lets Sharon know that she won’t stop being attracted to men just because she’s dating a woman. The response above can be interpreted as Sharon gaining the security in her sexuality and confidence she needs in herself to date anyone.

The closeted adult thing is even (sorta) dealt with. Beth points out she’s adult and an adult relationship doesn’t involve sneaking around and hiding your relationship from your family. Sharon explains she needs baby steps and is willing to work in her own comfort level to make the relationship work.

Plus this was all season one stuff. We don’t know how the characters would have continued to grow. Not to say it would have necessarily been great. An insanely convulted planned season 2 plot line had Sharon getting pregnant after sleeping with Beth shortly after Beth had slept with her ex-husband and there being some sort of sperm transference, which…. seems to misunderstand a lot of sexual mechanics and raises oddly horrifying questions about consent.

Which is all to say, 2000s bisexual representation, even when done (comparatively) extremely well, was still lacking. Mainstream (i.e. broadcast television, which is only tenuously holding onto the ‘mainstream’ term as it becomes increasingly meaningless in a divided and vast digital landscape) tv still needs to do better. It’s still either in super straight or token gay mode, with “good” representation still receiving attention for being rare.

Anyway, at least Bryan Fuller has gotten better with seemingly impossible sexual mechanics, as evidenced by the time a cab driver got gay railed by a Djinn in American Gods (you should really check out season 1).