Review: Pushing Daisies: Season 01
Last year, I ended up doing a full-season review for each television show I watched every episode of. It was a cool thing to do, and I wanted to do it this year as well. The oddness of it all is the effect the writer's strike had on freshman shows. I think every season of every show has been shortened in some form or fashion anyway, but the freshman shows really got the shaft.
In the case of Pushing Daisies, its nine episodes wrapped up last December. Since no one knew when the writer's strike would end and how it would effect this show, I didn't do a review, because I assumed we'd get more episodes once the writer's strike was settled, depending on when it was settled. That isn't the case. I think every freshman show was allowed their run of episodes, and those that are getting renewed, like Pushing Daisies, are holding off on new episodes until the fall season.
Oh well. But if I'd known that ahead of time, you all would've gotten this review last year when I was fresh off my glee of the show. I'm not, so it's hard to put my brain back that far and remember all the wonderful details that entertained me. But I'll try.
Pushing Daisies is one of a kind in the television world. Certainly, it looks like a cross between a Tim Burton movie and Big Fish, and if it's anything, it's very stylized. Not just the look of it, which is so colorful it'll make your eyes pop, but the episodes, scripts, dialogue, everything embraces a particular style, and this show is one of those that you either like or you don't.
So what's to like? Pushing Daisies is about a pie-maker named Ned who has the power to bring the dead back to life with a single touch. There's a couple of catches: 1) one touch brings the dead back to life, but a second touch kills them again, for good. 2) if that dead person/animal/plant/thing is alive longer than a minute, something in proximity will keel over instead. Talk about a great set of rules for a magic system, especially since in the pilot (named "Pie-lette," how cute!) it's his childhood sweetheart who kicks the bucket and he brings back to life, only he can't bring himself to kill her again, and thus the best romantic tension is born EVER.
So why DOES Ned bring the dead back to life? Emerson, a private detective, discovers Ned's powers and offers him a proposal: Ned touches bodies where there's a reward involved in finding out the truth, gets the truth from the corpse, kills it, solves the mystery, and they split the reward. The show then incorporates Ned's love for Chuck (his childhood sweetheart whose real name is Charlotte Charles), who joins the party in helping solve mysteries, and of course, solving mysteries.
You'd think a show like this might be morbid and depressing. It's a procedural at its most basic form, but the touch of magic enlivens it into something much, much more. Pushing Daisies knows how to work morbid humor, and the episodes (and deaths) are so creative that sometimes you can't help but laugh. And even amongst all that death, it's a life-affirming show, and you can't help but feel warm and fuzzy afterwards.
No doubt, Pushing Daisies is magic.
So let's dig into the details of what makes this so great.
First off, we have a love story where the couple is absolutely forbidden to touch. If Ned touches Chuck, she'll die and stay dead. In spite of that, the two find marvelous ways of showing affection: kissing through plastic wrap is just one of the many touching gestures.
But add to that the fact that no one can know that Chuck is still alive, including her two beloved aunts who raised her after her father died suddenly.
Oh, and the reason her father died suddenly was because Ned's mother died of a sudden brain aneurism, and Ned, just discovering his powers, brought her back to life, not knowing the one-minute-only rule, and therefore the person in proximity to died was Chuck's father-Ned's next door neighbor. So no, Ned can't tell Chuck about that either, even though it was, for all intents and purposes, and innocent mistake.
Then there's Digby, the best tv-dog EVER. Digby was the first dead body Ned brought back to life, and the dog's been kicking ever since. A miracle, and it's hysterical watching Ned take care of his dog, which often leads to everyone else around him hugging and petting and scratching the guy.
Each episode opens with brief scene from Ned's childhood. Most often, each incidence sheds light on Ned's current state of being, and sometimes parallels the events going on in the episode. We learn a lot about Ned, mostly that he's always been lonely and walls himself off from people. Even his previous romantic encounters have been awkward: he and one girlfriend had sex on a bearskin rug. Think about Ned's powers to bring back the dead and think about a bearskin rug. You know what happened. ;)
Ned's state of mind is especially frustrating for Olive, the waitress at the Pie-Hole (Ned's shop). Olive is IN LOVE with Ned so much it's not even funny. Actually, it is, because the writers handle her great. She runs the gambit of emotions when she meets Chuck and learns of Ned's involvement with her, starting out from wanting to ruin Chuck by revealing her secret (only Olive thinks Chuck faked her death) to becoming one of Chuck's best friends and confidants. Olive spends this season loving Ned and learning to let him go, and by the end, she realizes that the one man who was head-over-heels for her is out of her reach. Sad, but I suspect this is a plot that will thicken as the show goes on.
Olive also befriends Chuck's aunts. She delivers a weekly pie (made by Chuck, who puts "happy juice" into the pie to cheer them up, as they've been depressed and won't leave the house since her death), and gets to know the women better. She's a cheerleader anyway, and through Chuck, they encourage the aunts to get out of the house and start swimming again. Their act? The Darling Mermaid Darlings-synchronized swimming! Oh, these two are hysterical, and I must say, if anyone believes these two women are really Chuck's "aunts," they're on crack. One of them MIGHT be (actually, might not, thanks to what amounted to the season finale), but there's no doubt in my mind we've got a very casual presentation of a lesbian couple on television, and these two are awesome.
I think my absolute favorite character in the whole series is Emerson, who is just awesome. He's always the one with snarky remarks that make me burst into laughter, and his love of money is always pushing everyone forward. I'd kill to see him hook up with Simone from "Bitches," because that dynamic was freaking awesome, but I loved how we saw a different, more serious side to him in "Corpsicle." That was touching and sad beyond words. I can't wait to see what they do with this guy.
The guest stars in this show have also been wonderfully spot-on. Molly Shannon and Paul Reubens were amazing, and I'm thrilled to see Reuben's character of Oscar is a returning one, obsessed with finding out the secret to Chuck's unique and strange smell.
Considering the nature of the writer's strike, it's amazing this show managed to create and resolve an arc in a mere nine episodes. Each episode has its own stand-alone plot (always a death to solve, always) and the character circumstances are what connects the overall story. Granted, with a premise like this, I'm not sure how long Pushing Daisies can really last. After all, a love story where the couple can't touch is awesome, but how long do you really want to draw that out, or do you? I don't think the writer's are going to break their own rules in regards to Ned's gift, so it'll be interesting to see if Chuck and Ned stay in limbo like this, or if the two will finally move on from each other.
However long this show lasts, it's worth every minute. It's delightful, cute, and heartening, and I'm thrilled it got a second season. It was definitely the best debut of the season (not like I watched them all, but hey!), so if you haven't checked it out yet, keep an eye for reruns or at least go to abc.com and start watching the episodes there. You'll know by the first episode if this show is your cup of tea, and if it's not, that's fine. Like I said, you'll love it or you'll hate it, but lemme tell you, it's so worth checking out that you have to least give it a shot.
Here's to a second (and FULL) second season. I can't wait. :)