Pushing Daisies

How do I even begin to describe such a visual and lyrical masterpiece as Pushing Daisies? My fiance bought the first season for me on DVD almost a year ago, and I finally finished the whole season in between several other projects.

This series sheds such a happy and comical light on a very tragic and morbid situation. The main protagonist, Ned, discovers at a young age that he can bring dead things back to life with a single touch. He also discovers that if he did not touch them again to make them dead within 60 seconds, someone else comparable to the dead thing would take its place. He finds this out by touching his dead mother, and then finding out that his best friend's father died in her place.

The friend was a girl named Chuck, and they were childhood sweethearts. The two never saw each other again. Ned goes off to boarding school and then becomes a pie maker. He eventually uses his powers to team up with a private detective to solve murders. One of the murders is of Chuck, his childhood sweetheart. He leaves her alive for more than a minute, and the funeral home owner croaks. Chuck then joins their crime-fighting team, but can never touch Ned again or else she will die.

The rest of the series is slightly formulaic. They run into new murders and different plots each episode, but the core team stays the same. Ned's pie shop is called The Pie Hole, and is kept running by an Olive Snook, played by the wonderful Kristin Chenoweth. Olive has unrequited feelings for Ned, and makes for a lot of quirky interactions throughout the series. The characters that are not, however, formulaic, are Chuck's two aunts. She grew up with them after her father died, and they used to be synchronized swimmers in a travelling show. It sounds kind of quirky and Tim Burton, but I am pretty sure that this show came out before Coraline did. The aunts are played by Swoosie Kurtz (John Locke's Mother) and Ellen Greene (Sylar's Mother). Besides their Heroes and LOST affiliations, I love Ellen Greene because of her musical origins in Little Shop of Horrors. her eccentricities are played out well in this character, and she gets several opportunities to sing. There is even a part where her and Chenoweth sing a song together. A moment I never even dreamed of seeing in my lifetime.


Besides this hauntingly stellar cast, the story for each episode is beautiful. It is narrated in a very fairy-tale manner that makes you smile and feel all warm inside. The interactions between each and every character are true and difficult. To be with someone and not touch them for fear of their death. To love someone but not have their love in return. The highly saturated colors of this beautiful set do the storyline a great justice, and I am sad to have heard that it has been cancelled.