Forgotten Television: Pushing Daisies

Ned (Lee Pace), a piemaker and owner of the restaurant, the Pie Hole, has the ability to bring anything dead back to life, but there are rules to this power. His first touch is life giving, but the second touch kills.   He can only bring them back for one minute, after a minute, something else nearby will die. He discovered this power as a child, the day his mother died, and he touched her and brought her back to life, but not knowing of the stipulations, this caused the father of his childhood crush, Charlotte “Chuck Charles (Anna Friel) to die.  And then, later that night, his mother kissed his forehead and immediately died again. As an adult, Ned and Chuck have not seen each other since they were kids.  When Chuck gets murdered, Ned uses his powers to bring her back to life, this of course means someone else died.  Besides running the restaurant, Ned also helps Emerson Cod (Chi McBride), a private detective, by using his powers to resurrect murder victims for 1 minute to ask them questions to help solve their murders.

Episode nine, the last episode of the first season, although not specifically Christmas oriented, does take place around the holiday season, with several dead bodies showing up being placed in snowmen at the home of a terminally ill boy, who needs a heart transplant.  The dead men were all insurance agents who refused his request for the lifesaving operation. This is also the episode where the audience learns who Chuck’s real mother is.

Not really a “Forgotten Television” show as the series has quite a fan base.  The first season has nine episodes and while the second season has a total of 13, the last few episodes were not shown during the original run. Created by Bryan Fuller and premiering on October 3, 2007, the show was critically acclaimed and was nominated for 57 total awards, winning 18 of them, including 7 Primetime Emmy Awards.  In 2013, it was on TV Guides list of shows that were “Cancelled Too Soon” and in 2015, it was voted first in Esquire’s “TV Reboot Tournament” that asked people to vote for a television series they would most like to see revived. What made this show so beloved and cherished? A combination of a lot of things, the cast is amazing, the dialogue is fast paced and witty with heavy use of metaphor and double entendre, the production design is eccentric and colorful, the music is whimsical, and it all pulls together to create what is touted as a “forensic fairy tale”.  The show’s quirky design, wonderful music and loveable characters were easy to relate to and kept the show interesting and entertaining.

Lee Pace is amazing as the loveable Pie Maker, with a gift that is both wonderful and heartbreaking. There is humor mixed with tenderness and a bit of sadness within him.  Anna Friel matches the quirkiness and is more upbeat and optimistic.  Rounding out the trio is Chi McBride, who is the realist and while exploiting Ned’s powers he also cares about his comrades while harboring his own secrets about his past. Although the show is primarily episodic, the character story arcs run throughout the whole series.