1 – There’s a lot to be said for a good “high concept” well-executed. For those not in the know: a pie-baker with the power to raise the dead for 60 seconds at a time teams up with a private-investigator-slash-knitter and his reanimated girlfriend to solve murders by reviving the victims and asking who killed them. The premise is creative, a bit quirky, and utterly fantastic.
2 – Despite my rugged and rough-chiseled exterior, I’m a sucker for a good romance. The romance in Pushing Daisies is one of the best I’ve ever seen. Ned – the aforementioned baking resurrectionist – brings his girlfriend Charlotte “Chuck” Charles back to life. Of course, the conditions of Chuck’s resurrection prevent her from ever being able to touch him again without dying. A love story where the lovers can’t actually touch is heartrending and touching in a way no other romance can achieve.
3 – Every single character in the show – from the money-loving egocentric Emerson Cod to Charlotte Charles’s introverted aunts, the Darling Mermaid Darlings – is extraordinarily and lovingly neurotic, but in such an artistic fashion that none of them come off as one-dimensional. In fact, every character – even the bit players with one appearance in a single episode – is so well-crafted that they are instantly and completely developed.
4 – Olive Snook – played by Kristen Chenowith – gets a musical number once every couple of episodes, and… DANG, that girl has pipes!
(I know I said the same thing about Amy Adams. So I guess I have type).
5 – Pushing Daisies has some of the best and brightest visuals I have ever seen in any television show. They’re the closest I’ve ever seen to live action emulating a cartoon in a totally classy way.
6 – Jim Dale’s narration is some of the classiest voiceover work I’ve heard.
7 – I’m a sucker for quality writing, and Pushing Daisies is brilliant. Every line of dialog is peppered with enough spicy alliteration and witty metaphor to make even the bookwormiest of English majors weak in the knees.
Alas, Pushing Daisies died young, leaving plot-threads dangling like Chthulhu’s accursed tentacles. Even so, I’ll love it forever.
3 comments:
Maybe you would also enjoy Gilmore Girls, Steve. Lots of good dialogue, and you would love Lorelie Gilmore's character. You know, if I didn't know you were a guy, I would think these last two posts belonged to a girl, haha.
I was on Facebook looking up fan pages or groups that are "Pushing Daisies"-centric (sadly I discovered that there ARE none) when I discovered your blog post. I never thought there was a human alive who could summarize the show's brilliance in a short post until three or five minutes ago. :)
The writing (and the fact that my favorite actress, Kristin Chenoweth, had a major role) was the main thing that kept me hooked. Bryan Fuller is a genius! It was like watching an hour-long bedtime story every Wednesday night before bed depending on your time zone and schedule, filled with mystery and romance and excellent narration. Everything about it grabbed hold of the senses and dragged the viewer deeper into it. ABC says the ratings were low when really I say it was lack of promotion and out-right prejudice....
The ending was disappointing, though. We are never shown who saved Olive and Ned at the end of Episode 2.10 (Ned's father, but we never go into that); Chuck's father is still out there somewhere; the watch thing with Dwight and Chuck's father still confuses me; etc. That's the only thing I hate about it--the fact that it ended in a cliff-hanger. But they mentioned a movie and a comic book series, so I guess we fans have to settle for that.
Sorry for the random comment. I couldn't resist seeing what a fellow fan had to say about this amazing show.
You know, Mary, I actually had a bit of a crush on Rory Gilmore...
I hope to hear more about the comic book - although I really don't know how well the story will transfer to comic form...
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