zwolanerd

SUMMARY

While watching Eric install a satellite dish, Jaye tells Mahandra that while she’s attracted to Eric, but she feels like now is not a good time for her life to get complicated with a relationship. The next day at work, both the Barrel Bear and the Lovesick Ass tell her that a “girl needs a boy”. Jaye finds Eric giving donuts to a woman at the fountain outside, and she says that she is from Russia and came here to meet a man but he didn’t show up.

Eric and Jaye help Katya find out what happened to her fiance. They show up at his house, where they discover Peter is a 12 year old boy. Katya is furious and when Peter shows up at Jaye’s trailer later, she throws assorted objects at him. Eric and Jaye try to talk some sense into him, but this only results in Peter developing a crush on Jaye. He thinks that Jaye and Eric are in a relationship, so he gives himself a black eye and blames it on Eric to garner Jaye’s sympathy.

Jaye drags Peter to his father to explain the situation, but Peter storms off angrily to steal Jaye’s car and kidnap Eric. Jaye shows up at the cabin that Peter has taken Eric to and after a heart-to-heart where Eric asks Jaye out on a date, they kiss. Peter comes out of the cabin and admits that the better man got the girl, and says that he’ll probably be ok, while Eric’s car bursts into flames in the background, presumably caused by Peter.

This episode is where things start moving along in the Eric and Jaye romance. There is a lot of back and forth dialogue about the status of their relationship to get there, and it spells out why nothing has happened yet even though these two characters clearly like each other and have basically said so in some very direct ways many times. Jaye doesn’t know if she likes the idea of being in a relationship that can be “potentially messy”. She also seems to pinpoint the muses’ interference in her life as a reason why she shouldn’t be dating anyone, but I get the impression that Jaye probably wasn’t clamoring to share her life with someone before this started happening. Eric also admits that he’s still wounded by the fallout from his marriage, and that while he is on the road to recovery it will take some time for the damage to be undone.

This episode does follow our traditional Client formula, but I appreciate how subtle it is in comparison to previous episodes. We don’t have a character saying “wow, this is exactly what I’m going through!” Jaye’s concerns about love being messy and complicated are interwoven through all of our subplots, as both Katya’s desire for romance and Peter’s need to feel secure are facets of love and how important it is in our lives even though it also can bring heartache.

“I’m smarter than you, and I can’t solve the riddle that is Jaye.”

We see the Wax Lion and the Brass Monkey at the beginning of the episode, in a comedic scene where Mahandra pushes them together and they are both unimpressed by the physical proximity. But the directives come from the Barrel Bear and the Lovesick Ass, the latter of whom is a new muse. They both tell Jaye that a “girl needs a boy”, although the donkey quickly amends his to “girl needs a donut” after Jaye threatens him. After the plot gets going, we don’t really see the muses again. They are mysteriously missing while Katya is in Jaye’s trailer.

TRIVIA & REFERENCES

• Eric was given a tan in post-production, although he had gotten a spray-on before filming.
• Mahandra’s line about Eric being “ready for your jelly” was almost censored by the network (although it never aired). However, naming Peter’s father Dick Johnson was apparently a non-issue.
• This was the fourth episode filmed.
• The scene with Eric fainting in the chapel was originally in the opening credits sequence, but they had to change it because Eric didn’t appear “manly” enough.
• Magdalena Alexander (Katya) had to eat in many of her scenes, so she had a spit bucket handy for the donuts and chicken wings. The actress is from Toronto, and while Polish, did not actually have an accent.
• The Fountain of Love chapel is actually a Mexican restaurant.
• The “fish jell-o” dish that Katya prepares utilized a real fish, and one of the props was forgotten on the sound stage for three days. The crew complained of a rank odor and the building had to be fumigated.
• The scenes with Peter biking used a stunt double, or Peter being pulled by a golf cart.
• In the scene that Jaye asks Mahandra for her car, the barrel in the background is actually a fiberglass septic tank that was repurposed as a barrel.
• The cabin that Peter takes Eric to was the second choice of the creators. Their first choice was the same cabin that was used in the Dawn of the Dead movie, but the owners of the cabin rejected their request based on the content of the episode’s script.
• The creators loved Spencer Breslin (Peter) so much they had planned to bring him back in the third season. It would open with Jaye and Peter as inmates in the same mental institution.
• Continuity goofs: The satellite dish that Eric installs at the opening of the episode is absent in a later overhead shot of the trailer park. Peter says that he is 13, but his father says he is 12 and Peter doesn’t correct him.

Tags: LWST, Wonderfalls