Elijah Wood (The Lord of the Rings Trilogy) plays Ryan, an out-of-work attorney who is suffering from severe depression. So much so, in fact, that he attempts to kill himself, but learns that the anti-depressant medicines his sister, Kristen (Dorian Brown) gave him were actually placebos. At the same time, Ryan finally meets the girl next door (whom he’s been secretly eyeing for a while now) and, her dog.
The problem is, Ryan doesn’t see Wilfred (Jason Gann) as a dog like everyone else. He sees him as a crass man in a cheap dog suit. Both curious and confused, Ryan agrees to keep Jenna’s (Fiona Gubelmann) dog during the day as a way to get closer to her, and thus starts the strange series that is Wilfred.
In Wilfred: The Complete First Season’s 13 episodes, Ryan and Wilfred will become close friends and while they spend a lot of their time together smoking pot, the adventures the two have end up teaching Ryan some interesting lessons, even if they are learned in some unusual ways. In one episode, Ryan refuses to ask his sister for financial help, but Wilfred gets Ryan into some trouble, and Ryan’s pride, plus some conniving by Wilfred, make matters worse and worse for Ryan. This particular episode guest stars Jane Kaczmarek of Malcolm in the Middle fame.
In another episode, Wilfred tries to get Ryan to overcome a fear of confrontation. He does this by making sure their neighbor, a biker named Spencer (Ethan Suplee), knows that Ryan was involved in breaking into the neighbor’s house. While Ryan fast-talks his way out of the situation, he finds that the man now considers him a close friend and Spencer imposes himself on Ryan just a bit more than he is comfortable with. Wilfred knows that the only way for Ryan to really get out of the situation is to man-up and tell the truth.
Ryan eventually learns that Jenna has a boyfriend, and Drew (Chris Klein, Oz from American Pie), a salesman, has a mean competitive streak. Wilfred, who obeys but doesn’t like Drew, works really hard to make Ryan get rid of the boyfriend, but not everything plays out like the dog wants.
Eventually, the question of what exactly Wilfred is and why Ryan sees him this way becomes a hot topic in the show. While the first few episodes of Wilfred: The Complete First Season are fairly isolated and one-off stories, the last half takes the topic of how Wilfred is affecting Ryan’s life to the foreground and it all leads to a rather interesting last couple of episodes where we not only see the kind of lawyer Ryan was, but possibly also a hint at Wilfred’s own past.
This season had some interesting guest stars. Actors like Ed Helms (The Office, The Hangover), Rashida Jones (Parks and Recreations) and singer Dwight Yoakam are just a couple of names. Lost fans will recognize Nestor Carbonell, but my favorite guest star is Mary Steenburgen as Ryan’s mother who has been in a mental institution for many years.
Wilfred: The Complete First Season has a few special features. One is a collection of scenes of Wilfred and Ryan smoking weed, while another contains the more intimate scenes between Wilfred and his giant stuffed teddy bear named simply Bear. There is also a collection of deleted scenes and the 2011 Comic-Con Q&A featuring Wood, Gann, Gubelmann, Brown as well as executive producer David Zuckerman and co-executive producer and director Randall Einhorn. The last special feature of note is an interview with Gann under the Life After Film School series where several film students ask Gann various questions about Wilfred.
Wilfred is a strange show taken from an Australian series of the same name (in fact, Gann portrayed Wilfred in that series as well). On the surface, it is a funny and crass show with an absurd premise, but it has quite a few surprising levels to it since most of the show is about Ryan overcoming his various issues. While I don’t think Wilfred is for everyone, there are a lot of people that will enjoy it.
