the pie maker and the pie-lette
Pushing Daisies 1x01: Pie-Lette
It's a cross between Desperate Housewives, The Princess Bride, Twin Peaks and Edward Scissorhands. And I really mean that. It's got a mischievous omniscient narrator like DH, this hilarious and ridiculous fairytale thing like TPB, the weirdest people since ever like in Twin Peaks, and the striking visuals of ES in the colours, costumes and sets.
It's about this man called Ned who has the power to bring the dead back to life. He's no idea where the power came from, and when he first realises he has it, when he's a kid, he doesn't know the rules it comes with. While making pies, his mother dies of an anuerysm, and he brings her back, but in doing so, a life must taken from someone else, and so the father of his best friend Chuck (a girl) drops dead. That night Ned's mother kisses him and she drops dead AGAIN.
Basically, he can bring people back if 1) he does it only for one minute and then touches then again to make them dead once more OR 2) he brings them back and NEVER touches them again. He does this with his dog as a kid, and when he's an adult he still has the same dog and hasn't touched him in 19 years, which is pretty funny.
Ned is now a pie maker and owns a shop called The Pie Hole. In fact, the narrator keeps calling him 'the pie-maker' throughout the episode, which I found hilarious, and it really reinforces the fairytale feel of it, since in fairytales the character would be 'the prince' or 'the knight' or something.
Anyway, a PI called Emerson sees Ned use his power and asks him to partner with him so he can bring murder victims back to life and tell them who killed them, allowing Emerson to find the murderer and split the reward or bounty with Ned. When Chuck, the childhood sweetheart he hasn't seen in 19 years, is found murdered on a cruise ship, Ned goes with Emerson to revive her to find out who her murderer was, but Ned can't bring himself to let her die again after one minute, and so Chuck stays alive (and the funeral director dies as a result). Basically, Chuck and Ned have this big fairytale love story - but can never ever touch one another, or Chuck will die.
There's a lot more stuff in pilot (or the Pie-lette as it's called) that's hilarious, including another case Ned and Emerson work on, and Chuck's former sychronise swimmer aunts with their matching personality disorders. In fact, there was a moment at the end of episode with Ned and Chuck that made me laugh so loud and for so long.
This is such a fun show. It's totally off the wall and ridiculous and it doesn't pretend to be anything else. It feels as if the writing is a cross between Dr. Suess and Tim Burton sometimes. The dialogue is very very funny as are the visuals, and the narrator is kind of stream of conscious and really silly, much like Tom Baker's narration on Little Britain actually.
Yay for great new show!!!!