The 411 Pushing Daisies Review: Episde 1 - "Pie-lette"
Posted by Brendan Newton on 10.04.2007
Does it live up to its' hype and Pedigree? Yes.
It sometimes seems as though every TV series I’ve watched and really enjoyed in the past few years has involved Bryan Fuller in some way. A Star Trek writing veteran, Fuller co-executive produced and wrote for Heroes last year, and also created the series Dead Like Me and the frustratingly short-lived Wonderfalls, probably the two best examples of Magical Realism on TV ever. Fuller has a great creative mind for sci-fi and is an admitted fan, but what really sets him apart from other accomplished TV writers/producers (except for maybe Six Feet Under creator Alan Ball) is his ability to create works of true Magical Realism, an interesting genre of fiction that is, with a few notable examples, ignored by mainstream TV. Critics differ on the exact definition of Magical Realism, but it essentially involves stories that are set recognizably in our world without too many outrageous fantasy/sci-fi elements (no spaceships, vampires, dragons, or schools of magic), but yet there’s a notably quirky vibe that suggests the existence of the magical or supernatural, and weird things do happen. The best example that I can think of is Fuller’s Wonderfalls, for the most part a realistic show about a young woman struggling with her dead-end job and lack of direction in life, but to whom inanimate objects would occasionally give cryptic advice. Wonderfalls was Fuller’s Magical Realism at its’ best, and my fond memories of that show are the main reason that I was excited about tonight’s debut of his new show, Pushing Daisies. My excitement was well justified.
Like Fuller’s earlier work, this series focuses on a young individual, who while not unattractive and certainly intelligent, is virtually a complete outsider from society, seemingly via a combination of fate and choice. Pushing Daisies main character, Ned (Lee Pace), is a pie-maker who shies away from contact with anyone anyone besides his dog, Digby, much to the frustration of Olive Snook (Kristin Chenoweth, whose 4”11 height as compared to Pace’s 6”3 plays as an amusing but sweet sight gag), a waitress who works with and lives in the same building as Ned and wants to get to know him better. The reason for this, the narrator (Jim Dale) tells us, is Ned’s mysterious ability to ressurect the dead with one touch. If he touches them again, they go back to being dead, but if they stay alive for more than one minute, some other random person in the vicinity will die. It is important to note that even if this happens and a second person dies, the first person that was resurrected will still die if touched by Ned. The only one who’s in on Ned’s secret is a private investigator named Emerson Cod (Boston Public’s) Chi McBride), who, finding out Ned’s secret, realized that murders are that much easier to solve when the victim can tell investigators what happened., and proposed going into business with Ned to solve crimes. Theirs is a successful partnership; in the opening scenes of the pilot (entitled “Pie-lette”), they solve a mystery involving a man who was supposedly mauled by his dog but was actually killed by his secretary, leading to an amusing scene in which the dog, which had been sentenced to be put down, is released from the pound in melodramatic slow-motion. Their next case, however, hits a snag when Ned realizes he knows the victim, a young woman who was murdered on a cruise ship. Her name is Charlotte “Chuck” Charles (Anna Friel), and she’s Ned’s childhood sweetheart, the girl next door with whom he shared his first kiss. Ned harbours an odd mix of affection and guilt when it comes to Chuck; while he has loving, idealized memories of growing up with her, his powers led to her father’s death, and left her to be raised by two eccentric aunts (Swoosie Kurtz and Ellen Greene), former synchronized swimming stars who have refused to leave the house after an accident cost one of them the use of an eye (the idea that if one synchronized swimmer became an agoraphobe, the other would therefore also become an agoraphobe is one ot those ideas that’s so silly it’s really clever). Chuck ended up stuck looking after them, and when she finally got up the nerve to get away and take a trip, she ended up becoming embroiled in smuggling Tahitian Plaster Monkeys (perhaps a shout-out to Wonderfalls?) and was murdered as a result. There’s a $50, 000 reward to find her killer, but when Ned and Emerson go to speak to her, Ned can’t bring himself to let her die again. To this end, he smuggles her out of the funeral home (as a result of Chuck’s ressurection, the owner of the funeral home randomly drops dead) and sneaks her back home to his apartment, where he confesses his love to her-and explains why he can never touch her again-in a series of sweet, sharply written scenes. Ned and Chuck are two very likeable characters whose love and frustration are palpable, and their relationship will be a worthy anchor for the ongoing series. There’s also a quirkily dark scene where Chuck flips through news channels on TV, only to see them all covering her murder.
Once Chuck finds out about the $50 000 reward, however, she puts two and two together and figures out just why Ned brought her back in the first place. Once she gets over the initial shock and anger, she makes a proposal to Ned and a stunned Emerson; let her join the business and split the reward money three ways. With her help, they determine that she was murdered for the mysterious Plaster Monkeys, which they track to her aunt’s house, where the mysterious assassin has also shown up in search of the monkeys. The denouement is by turns touching as Chuck takes a bittersweet final look at her aunts and their house, and hilarious as Ned, Emerson, and Chuck team with Chuck’s aunts in a slapstick fight with the assassin, with Chuck having to make sure all the while that her aunts don’t see her, leading to a terrific final gag with the one-eyed aunt not noticing her due to poor depth perception. With the mystery solved, Emerson reluctantly agrees to take Chuck on as a third partner in his and Ned’s business, but not before Ned and Chuck share another heart-to-heart about their love and why he did what he did.
Folks, this is hands-down the best new series of the year. Fuller does not disappoint, as this series keeps up his brand of off-the-wall Magical Realism. As with Dead Like Me in particular, Pushing Daisies manages to take a look at death and love that is both lighthearted and sobering. In particular, Ned’s gift addresses the issue of selfishness as it relates to love and grief. Is the only reason for our outrage at the randomness and cruelty of death a selfish desire for it not to have to happen to us? Is love just a matter of another person making us feel good? And therefore, is the only reason we grieve for loved ones’ tragedies a selfish sadness at not having them around anymore? Ned is an extremely heroic and likeable man, and yet he uses his gift to make money while letting most of the people he resurrects stay dead, and yet when it’s someone he cares about, he’s willing to sacrifice another random person’s life in order to save her (“it could have been me“ points out Emerson, bringing home just how much Ned was not rationally thinking things through. Ned is even aware of his selfishness; “I was being selfish. I'd love to tell myself I was being unselfish, but I was being unselfish for selfish reasons.” he tells Chuck with regards to her resurrection. He wants her alive because he loves her, and yet this is the reason that he cannot be with her. He is, to use a favourite phrase of mine that Chuck quotes, hoist on his own petard (“what’s a petard?” asks Ned cluelessly). The show manages to mask the deep, dark existential questions it raises under an aura of frothy, comedic fun.
And to be sure, the show is fun. Unlike Bionic Woman, which I felt was dully written with cliches aplenty, Pushing Daisies’ dialogue sparkles. It has the cleverly naturalistic, sweetly snarky vibe that I’ve come to expect from Fuller. If it takes off, it’ll be one of those shows that people quote en masse, it has so many clever little jibes about love, death, life, and selfishness. The dialogue’s naturalness lies in its’ quirkiness; in real life, people don’t talk in the stiff, cliched manner of most TV or movie dialogue; rather, they talk in a weird, creative way. Fuller’s writing perfectly captures that. In addition to dialogue, the show’s plot devices, such as a woman being murdered over Tahitian Plaster Monkey smuggling and a dog being dramatically spared execution, are absurd, and only more absurd for the earnestness with which they’re played, as though these things happened every day. Given how absurd we know real life to be, however, we know that they do. By making the absurd seem mundane, Fuller is able to remind us of the absurdity of reality. Jim Dale’s omniscient narration is a device that took me some time to get used to, as at first it seemed a little too Disneyesque and tended to distract from any sense of realism that the show had. Once I’d accepted the Narrator as an intrinsic part of the show’s universe, I came to enjoy it, as Dale’s narration has a real whimsical, Fairy Tale style to it that adds to the show’s charm. Coming into the show, I didn’t know all that much about the cast, save for Chi McBride, whose formidable presence kept Boston Public anchored despite that show’s descent into ridiculous melodrama and lack of continuity. He’s great here as the staunch, hard-boiled Emerson, who’s always just one dogged step behind Ned. Lee Pace has great chemistry with both Chenoweth and Friel; there’s something very sweet about all three performances, although Pace manages to lace Ned’s character with an underlying dark detachment. Chenoweth has an adorable cluelessness, but is also able to make the audience take her attraction to Ned seriously; she truly cares for and is attracted to him and thus threatened by Chuck, and as noted the actors’ size difference lends additional sweet humour. Anna Friel does a good job with a character who is attractive, sweet, and generally loveable, and yet sheltered and awkward due to her upbringing with her aunts as well as traumatized by her murder. Kurtz and Greene round out the main cast as Chuck’s aunts, who are a lot of darkly humourous fun (“I was tempted to bake anti-depressants into their meals” says Chuck), and while being broadly comical characters do show a true concern and love for Chuck. It takes great acting and writing to create two such ridiculous characters and then imbue them with believably human love and grief, to the point where we can’t wait to see if they eventually find out that Chuck still survives, but as I think I’ve established by now, those are things this show has in droves.
In fact, my only concern is that this show might be too good; network TV is not always a genre that rewards the sort of quirky creativity and thoughtfulness that Pushing Daisies displays. A prime example of this would be Fuller’s aforementioned Wonderfalls, a great show that was never given a real shot by the network. It has become a cliché in some circles that shows like Pushing Daisies are Too Good To Last, but with ABC putting it on as the lead-in to the Grey’s Anatomy spin-off Private Practice, it hopefully will live up to its’ hype and become the hit that it deserves to be. To say that I’m looking forward to where this show and its’ characters go is an understatement. If you didn’t tune in tonight, tune in next week and thank me Thursday morning!
The 411: Fuller's done it again with the best new show of the year, the most original, quirky, and dark series I've seen in years. My weekly reviews will sound a bit like love letters if the quality of "Pie-lette" persists.
