WOLF LIKE ME – created by Abe Forsythe – Season One – (SPOILERS)

This is the story of Gary (Josh Gad), a forty-year-old man whose wife died of cancer seven years ago. In the course of events, Gary will have three dates and three car accidents, and all of those accidents are directly related to the second date, which is with Mary (Isla Fisher), a woman who somehow instantly gets along with Emma, Gary’s eleven-year-old daughter. This is unusual because after her mother’s death, Emma became something of an emotional recluse, distancing herself from everyone including her father.

After the first crash, Mary shows up at Gary’s house with a gift for Emma, a copy of Carl Sagan’s novel CONTACT. (Her description of the book makes one wonder if she gave it more than a cursory read.) Then she and Gary talk, and how she answers Gary’s questions illustrates how differently the two approach life. Curious about why she moved to Adelaide from Chicago, Gary asks: “What brought you here?” Thinking he is asking why she came to visit, she answers: “Truthfully, there was something about your daughter, at the accident.” Gary tries another question.

GARY: “What do you do?”
MARY: “I volunteer places. I do stuff for charities, so I go to a nursing home every day. I make and donate stuff. [Pauses, having again misunderstood] Oh, did you mean what do I do for a living? Oh right, I give relationship advice in a column.”

The two have a lunch date the following afternoon, and three music-related things happen. First, “Preacherman” by Melody Gardot plays in the background and Mary explains how Gardot’s recovery from a head injury was facilitated by musical therapy. Next, in one of the series’ most poignant moments, Mary convinces Gary to sing “Don’t Dream It’s Over“, the song he used as a lullaby for Emma long ago. And finally, the song that caused the accident (“Fortress“, by Queens of the Stone Age) interrupts what would have been their first kiss, and makes Mary run for home because she realizes that sunset is near.

Gary’s third date is with My-Gyung (Helen Kim) who wants to practice her English, but shows no interest in getting acquainted and eventually gets up and leaves. Gary follows, and Mary (who is somehow nearby) almost immediately collides with him (this time without a car) dousing him with hot coffee.

Mary is forever bumping into, and then fleeing from, Gary. The reason for the fleeing becomes apparent when, after she inadvertently pockets his car keys, he follows her home and discovers to his horror that she transforms into a wolf during the full moon. The best scene of the series is the one where Mary (dressed in a bloody sheet) explains the hows and whys of being a werewolf to a terrified Gary.

It does seem like Mary, at least subconsciously, wants her secret found out. She is forced to run home from her first date with him when she finds out the moon is about to rise. Shouldn’t she have an alarm set on her phone to warn her of this? At the start of another full moon, she accidentally picks up his car keys, causing him to follow her home. Later in the season, Gary, Emma, and Mary find themselves stranded in the outback 200 kilometers from the city when their car breaks down, just before yet another full moon. Why cut it so close?

Gary’s late wife was named Lisa, and Mary’s deceased husband was David. In Frank Perry’s 1998 film DAVID AND LISA, David has a fear of intimacy which is a bit more severe than Gary’s. David eventually becomes interested in Lisa, who, like Mary, suffers from Multiple Personality Disorder (although Mary’s version manifests in a more physical way).

Mary crashed into his car after she was startled by her late husband’s favourite tune on the radio, and the accident happened on the anniversary of her husband’s death. This shocks Gary because it was also his anniversary.

Emma is eleven years and ten months old. Mary’s husband died “about twelve years” previously, and the song that precipitated the crash was the song they were listening to just before he was “torn apart by a wild animal”. That song (Mary says) seemed like it was written for the child she and David never had. This is sheer speculation, but Mary may have been (unknowingly?) pregnant when she transformed for the first time and it caused her to lose the baby, which then was reincarnated as Emma. Mary’s pregnancy at the end of the first season complicates that hypothesis, but her body may have adapted by now, so even if she lost the first child, she might not lose the second (which, if it takes after its mother, could also be a werewolf).

Each episode intro has a different visual and each uses a different snippet from the show’s theme (which is “If I had a Tail“, by Queens of the Stone Age). The bar where Gary and Mary have lunch plays jazz, but the posters along the stairs leading to the place all advertise rock groups from Australia: The Villanettes, Bad Dreems, Hivemind, and The Chats. (None of those bands has music on the show.) Also, unless Fisher did it herself, the stunt double for Mary’s leap over her garden fence in Episode Two was Olga Miller. Of uncertain significance is the fact that Rome, Italy, where Mary finally figured out that she was a werewolf, is on nearly the same latitude as her hometown, Chicago.

---

All episodes of WOLF LIKE ME can be streamed on Peacock TV