« OxyClinton | Main | The Ultimate Internet Scheme »
October 8, 2007
Pushing Daisies - Pushing Daisies on Network TV
The Girl Who Feeds Me is a big fan of Bryan Fuller. The Girl being one of the most intelligent humans ever (she thinks I'm special), this means he's somebody worth watching.
Fuller created Wonderfalls and Dead Like Me, and wrote had a hand in writing and producing Heroes.
For me, Wonderfalls will always be my favorite. The major characters are Republicans, and Sharon Tyler (the protagonist's older sister) is the closest thing to Bruce I've ever seen in a TV show character. She's conservative, she's smart, she's competitive, and every thing she does blows up in her face. The Girl doesn't really have a favorite Fuller show: what appeals to her is an underlying sweetness that runs through Fuller's work, a sense that we should appreciate the people around us. It is this sweetness that apparently threatens Fuller's latest TV show Pushing Daisies. Pushing Daises stars Wonderfalls alumnus Lee Pace as Ned, a man who can bring dead people back to life by touching them. There are two drawbacks to this power. First, if the resurrectee is alive for more than a minute, somebody else dies to balance the equation. Second, another touch from Ned kills the person with no chance for revival. Ned uses his skills to help a private investigator named Emerson Cod (Chi McBride) solve murders. McBride's deadpan lines provide much of the humor.
In the pilot episode, Ned's childhood crush Chuck (Anna Friel) is killed, and Ned revives her to ask the murderer's identity. While Ned is confessing his true feelings to Chuck, the time limit passes and a nearby funeral director dies. Ned and Chuck can now be together for the rest of their lives, so long as they don't touch. (It just doesn't get more romantic than that.) Eventually, Ned, Emerson, and Chuck solve the murder and stop the killer from killing again, and Chuck becomes a partner in the crime-solving business.
The continuous voice-over narration and the use of bright colors gives the whole thing a fairy-tale feel. The result is quite a beautiful thing. Bryan Fuller is one of the few people you can count on to continue delivering quality throughout a whole season, so that's not a worry. The big question is whether this is going to be another Wonderfalls in the sense that it would be canceled during production and in order to see all the episodes we have to wait for a DVD release. For now, things look good: the ratings for the pilot episode were high. The hope is that they'll continue to stay high. Bionic Woman had high ratings for its pilot, too, but it lost 30% of its viewers between the first and second episodes. The Girl, however, thought Bionic Woman was stupid. She likes Pushing Daisies, so it would really upset her if it got dropped from the schedule.
So, as a favor to me, watch Pushing Daisies: Wednesday ABC 8pm, 7pm Central. A happy Girl means happy cats, and the happiness of cats is absolutely critical to the success of our civilization.
Respectfully submitted,
Ferdinand T. Cat
# At Mon 3:05 AM | Permalink | Trackback URI | Comments (0) | More Pushing Daisies | Tags: Anna Friel Bionic Woman Bryan Fuller Chi McBride Dead Like Me Heroes Lee Pace ratings reviews television The Girl Wonderfalls
Leave a comment
Leave a comment