Pushing Daisies: The Facts of the Case

This is just wild speculation right now, but Pushing Daisies could one replace Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Angel at the top of my list of favorite television shows. Of course, only nine episodes have aired so far, and there is a long way to go before that happens, but if the quality we have seen continues (and grows), I will have to rearrange my list (ok, so I have to rearrange it anway, now that I've seen the end of Six Feet Under, more of How I Met Your Mother, and have now seen Deadwood, Spaced, Mad Men, and The L Word).

But the purpose of this post is to talk about Bryan Fuller's first show that has both been picked up for a second season and remains under his control (before this, it was one or the other). Lee Pace (who played Aaron Tyler on Wonderfalls) leads as Ned, an emotionally stunted man who has never been able to get too close to anyone. He is gifted/cursed (isn't that always the way in modern fiction) with a life-giving touch; if he comes in physical contact with any dead object, whether it be person, animal, or plant, he will imbue it with new life, or, really, with its old life. But if he ever touches it again, it will revert to its dead state, and will never be alive again. And if he does not return the being to death within a minute, something of equal size will die in order to keep the scales of life and death balanced (and this doesn't give the revived object immunity from Ned's second death-giving touch). Because of this, Ned is afraid of getting too close to anyone, since the desire to return them to life could become too great. Doing so would rob someone else of their life, and he would never be able to touch his beloved again.

Unfortunately for him, such a case occurs when he runs into his childhood sweetheart one day. But I get ahead of myself; Ned has become a piemaker (following in his mother's footsteps) and cuts costs by buying dead fruit, and returning it to life. He further finances his business through his dealings with Emerson Cod, a shady, money-obsessed private eye. Emerson accidentally discovered Ned's ability and immediately figured out a way to capitalize on it; Ned brings murder victims back to life and asks who killed them. With this information, Emerson "solves" the case, collects the reward money, and splits it 50-50 with Ned. It is this arrangement that brings Ned back to his hometown to bring Charlotte "Chuck" Charles back to life. The two were sweethearts as children (sort of) but after the death of Ned's mother, Chuck's father (due to Ned bringing his mother back to life), and the second death of Ned's mother, Ned was shipped away to boarding school, never to see Chuck alive again. And Ned's greatest fear is realized when he cannot bring himself to return Chuck to her dead state. This creates one of the sweetest and saddest romances that I have ever seen; their courtship for each other must remain entirely innocent, which is both cute and heartbreaking.

Chuck becomes the third partner in the arrangement, and goes to work at Ned's establishment, known as The Pie Hole. This arrangement upsets Olive Snook, Ned's only other employee who harbors a crush on Ned that's obvious to everyone except for our main characters. Olive's outward perkiness masks her sad true self that hopelessly pines away for a man who only has eyes for a woman he can never touch.

The other two main characters are Chuck's insanely quirky aunts, Lily and Vivian. The two are former synchronized swimmers who have developed an intense case of agoraphobia. They raised Chuck after her father died, and their fear of leaving the house helped shape Chuck's love of reading, learning and beekeeping.

So far, there hasn't been a grand, overarching storyline, but there have only been nine episodes. The show got a full-season pick-up within a few weeks of the pilot airing, but due to the writers strike, the ninth episode's ending was reshot to feature a season finale ending. Sadly, a storyline involving a neighboring candymaker (played by Molly Shannon) was aborted after her first appearance towards the end of the season, since she won't be available to continue, but I am sure that Fuller and his writers have plenty of other great stories to tell about a piemaker named Ned and a girl named Chuck.

Up next: It's quirky, bizarre, deceptively innocent, and I love it...