'Pushing Daisies': Still dandy, no lyin'
Oct 11, 2007, 05:04 PM | by Leah Greenblatt
Categories: Mini TV Watch
Guess who lived to die another day? Last week, I bemoaned the fact that new, unique shows like this one never get a chance when up against brain-melting populist fare like So You Think You're Smarter Than a Ficus Plant or what have you. Then, lo! Not only did Daisies blossom in the ratings, but EW readers flooded our comments board with love for the "pielette."
This week, we answer (or attempt to) the question of whether the show can not only survive its strenuously cute premise but thrive. Like before, it begins with another narrated flashback set in a Tim Burton-esque world of saturated colors and Seuss-ical dream-sequence set design, as our nine-year-old (and 88 days, 3 hours, blah blah blah minutes — enough with that one, Mr. Narrator) Ned, now tragically de-mothered, is dropped off at boarding school by his (literally) disappearing dad, who promises untruthfully to return for him. Cut to mopey Ned, a pariah to his peers, wreaking his emotional revenge by bringing back to life a classroom full of dissection frogs (Did anyone else think of that similar scene in ET: The Extra-Terrestrial? Young Ned, phone home!). As the happy little amphibians jumped and ribbitted their way to sweet freedom, no doubt you too were wondering whether the show would stay consistent: don't once-dead, now-revived things that live more than a minute require the death of a nearby creature, à la Ned's mom and Chuck's dad? Thankfully, the writers comply, dropping a nearby bunch of hapless birds.
Anyway, on to the next: Ned and Chuck (Lee Pace and Anna Friel, pictured), ensconced in separate, Leave It to Beaver beds and then at the breakfast table, quip, flirt, and pontificate — anything but touching — while Olive, our poor, beleaguered pie waitress and unrequited admirer of Ned, spies from a precarious perch on her windowsill. Meanwhile, Ned's partner in resuscitation, Det. Emerson Cod, awaits Ned's return from the la-la land of his childhood crush, and is none too pleased to see Chuck, dressed like a slightly deranged Hitchcock heroine, show up for the pair's next undead interrogation. This week's victim? A curly-headed research scientist, now roadkill, whose one-minute awakening is hijacked by Chuck's sunny questions; all they manage to learn is that he very much loved a girl named Janine, and was killed by a crash test dummy. Unhelpful.
But one must deal with the overly chatty hand one is dealt, so Chuck, Ned, and Emerson visit the murderee's workplace, a futuristic car company with a superstar product: a vehicle that runs on dandelion fuel (really, apparently, just an excuse for the show's costume designers to whip up some sublimely silly dandelion-topped promo outfits for its car-show girls). Janine, in full fluffer-head regalia, denies knowledge of her deceased love, but is easily swayed by free pie, and the three musketeers soon also find that the crash-test-dummy room is full of crash-test-deadies—that is, deceased folks who gave their bodies up for car research. So whither, then, the real dummies?
It seems we'll have to wait, and watch Olive get Grease-y back at the pie shop, singing "Hopelessly Devoted" to Ned's faithful mutt and an oblivious floor cleaner named Manuel; it's all devoted, of course, to Ned — and to remind us, apparently, that Kristin Chenoweth is a Tony-winning star. Okay, back to the goods: a Cliff's Notes version of Janine and Bernard's blossoming love affair, culminating in a hot and sweaty session inside the Dandy Lion SX (SX, get it??), and Janine's leading Ned, Chuck and the Detective to a secret spot — though not before her own SX blows itself to dandelion dust, landing her in traction. Turns out that secret spot is a mass burial site for dummies, who, unlike the dead, actually have recording software inside them that tells of automobile trials gone wrong. Think you're getting the picture? Our trio does, and heads back to Dandy Lion headquarters, only to be greeted by maniacal president Mark Chase, promptly tazed (how topical!), sealed inside person-sized sandwich bags, and shunted into an SX — which, it turns out, at a speed of 70 mph, with the seat warmers on low and the radio on, turns into a flaming vehicle of death. Poor, innocent Bernard had to die at Chase's hand because he knew his dirty floral secret, but our resourceful detective Emerson, he of the secretly self-knit gun cozies and sweater vests, uses a needle of the trade to free them all (though only after granting Chuck and Ned the chance to share one, prophylactic kiss), and send the deranged Mr. Chase to the Big House.
If there's one quibble we have, it's that the murder "mysteries" on this show won't exactly leave the Law & Order or CSI crews shaking in their primetime boots; then again, perhaps that's not the point. What we do get, at show's end, is a special car for Chuck and Ned, equipped with a clear passenger-side panel, not unlike a giant Sizzler sneeze-guard, to allow Chuck to ride shotgun without the danger of accidentally bumping up against Ned and re-dying. And, of course, an attached rubber glove for hand-holding — though neither of the two acknowledge its romantic purpose.
Now tell us, dear readers, did that moment make you squeal with delight? Or gag? I'm more preoccupied with the anxiety of all the other times they stand in close proximity, waiting for a passerby or light breeze to bump them into one another and send Chuck — and the show's whole hook — back to an early grave. Also, what happened to the pursuit of Chuck's killer? Will it be drawn out over the season? Will we continue to care? I'm still nursing a major lady-crush on Friel, but I do need to see a little more than this hermetically sealed world. Do you agree?
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