Summer TV Rewind: Wonderfalls 1.10: "Lying Pig"

“You feel like if he sees you that way, maybe you can be. That’s what I want. I want to be the woman Eric sees me as.”
-Heidi

And so the pain (which still continues to follow many of the beats of Grey’s Anatomy Season 2, down to Jaye/Meredith telling Eric/Derek “you’re not that guy”) continues. I’m not going to lie, the past two weeks have been kind of a rough one out there in the non-TV world for me, and watching this episode didn’t exactly help. When watching this one, I’d kind of like to reach into the screen and slap Jaye for just letting this pain happen to her. I know it’s the Muses who are ultimately directing it all (in this case, constantly telling Jaye to “mend what was broken”), but seriously. To what end are they trying to so royally screw up Jaye’s life? I guess what the message of this episode is supposed to be is that Eric has to make an effort at his marriage in order to have a clear conscience when he finally ends it and gets together with Jaye, but it feels like kind of a stretch. Maybe if we knew more about Eric and Heidi’s relationship pre-Heidi doing the bellhop on their honeymoon I’d buy it more.

As you could probably tell from my rather gloomy introduction (which was written a few days ago before I had to go to a conference for work), “Lying Pig” deals with the immediate fallout of Heidi’s return to Niagara Falls. Eric really wants nothing to do with Heidi, and he prefer she just go back to New Jersey. Heidi is not going to go easily, though. It seems like she’s in it more to beat Jaye than for any real love for Eric. Heidi threatens Jaye and seems to enjoy it. At one point, she even starts lurking around the High and Dry, presumably hoping to threaten Jaye some more. Jaye, meanwhile, has bigger fish to fry. She and Aaron are trying to cleanse her trailer of all potential inanimate animal faces. Aaron even passes Heidi (not knowing who she is) as he drags the bag of animal face items out to Jaye’s car. There’s one place Jaye didn’t think of that could harbor animal faces, though. Her television. When one pops up on a commercial, Jaye throws the television out her window in frustration, and it lands right on Heidi’s head.

Heidi, Jaye, and Eric all end up at the emergency room due to Heidi’s TV-inflicted concussion. Eric really doesn’t want to be there, but he feels some sort of obligation to at least make sure Heidi is okay. Once that’s accomplished, though, he wants to just leave her at the hospital to fend for herself. Then Heidi ups her game. She starts acting like she doesn’t remember cheating on Eric. She acts like she thinks they’re still on their honeymoon. It helps her cause that she booked the honeymoon suite as part of her “get Eric back” plan before the accident. Anyway, even though doctors want to keep her for observation because of her alleged amnesia, Heidi demands to be let out of the hospital, and Jaye and Eric don’t feel like fighting it. One signed AMA form later, they’re on their way to the honeymoon suite, where Eric leaves Heidi and Jaye as he goes to work.

The other major plot happening in this episode (it’s really kind of an afterthought compared to the Jaye/Eric drama, though) involves the rest of the Tyler family. Karen meets one of Darrin’s coworkers, a young Irish doctor, and he turns out to be a big fan of her books. The doctor flirts with Karen rather shamelessly, even though, since he works with her husband, he knows full well that she is married. Karen waives him off by reminding him that she is, indeed, married, but she begins to second guess that decision when she tells Darrin about the incident and he doesn’t seem to care. Darrin thinks he’s showing how much he loves Karen by demonstrating that he’s secure in their relationship, but Karen just sees it as apathy. Karen decides to pursue the doctor a little just to make Darrin jealous. Poor Sharon is just on the sidelines acting mystified at how stupid her parents are being. Anyway, the whole thing comes to a head at the Barrel, where Karen and the doctor go for their dinner. Darrin and Sharon are covertly watching from a nearby table, and when the doctor gets a little too touchy feely with Karen, Darrin finally snaps. The whole thing blows up into a physical fight, and Karen gets just the attention she was seeking. Doesn’t exactly make her more of a likeable character, but it was mildly amusing.

Meanwhile, things get interesting when the notorious bellhop shows up at the honeymoon suite. Heidi looks embarrassed and shuts the door, and Jaye instantly knows that Heidi has been lying about the amnesia. She toys with the idea of telling Eric what she has learned. Eric still really wants to be with Jaye, not Heidi, and Jaye is trying to sort out just how to communicate her feelings to Eric. Eric gains more confidence when Mahandra lets it slip that she encouraged Jaye to break up with him, and Jaye gains more confidence when she tells Mahandra that she thinks the loves Eric and Mahandra finally gets it. I don’t know why Jaye and Eric let Mahandra have such a say in their happiness. Especially considering Mahandra has plenty on her own mind at the moment. She’s kind of disgusted at herself for sleeping with Aaron, because she thinks she should regard him as a brother. Aaron has other ideas, though, and eventually Mahandra gives into the idea that a relationship with Aaron might be what she was looking for.

Anyway, finally back to Jaye and Eric. Jaye is just about to finally tell Eric how she feels (which is really all Eric has wanted all along) when the Muses go into “mend what was broken” overdrive mode and she’s shut down. Heidi wants to renew vows, and out of spite to Jaye, Eric goes along with it. Because she’s a masochist, Jaye tells them the location of the nearest chapel and ends up witnessing the not so blessed event. Afterwards, a more chill Eric thanks Jaye. He’s not the kind of guy who can live with himself if he just gives up on his marriage, and he’s grateful that Jaye saw that. Eric thinks that if he didn’t at least make some effort to make it work with Heidi, he’d end up hating himself for the rest of the life. I don’t think he’s in for an easy time of it either way, really.