Maybe this isn’t the best time to be doing a television review. The picketers are still outside New York skyscrapers holding up blank signs for the writer’s strike (Joke provided by Wait Wait). Don’t want to get up your excitement when television as we know it is on the precipice of doom! I’ll go for it anyways….
While the last show I reviewed was a show I find personally enjoyable (Reaper), Pushing Daisies I believe is legitimately universally the awesome.
Television has gone the way of the movies in terms of style. They have taken things like Die Hard With Super Vengeance 5 and made a television show called 24, resulting in non-ending attacks on Los Angeles. Pushing Daisies does the same thing, but with brighter stylish movies like Big Fish & Amelie. They use saturated fantastical sets, cutesy scenes, and the joy of having an omniscient narrator (which in fact is probably the most likely part of the show to annoy you, but I think it’s a great change of pace for television). But if this all sounds too cotton candy clouds & smiles for you, don’t worry, the plot tends to revolve around murder, corpses, and death. This all creates a wonderful dichotomy which reminds me of Burton’s style. It’s not surprise since the show was a brain child of Bryan Fuller, also known as the guy who created Dead Like Me, another ‘lite’ death show.
You may be wondering why there’s so much death in a show like this? Well the plot is this: Boy finds out he has a “superpower”. His superpower is the godlike ability to bring people back to life. Yet he can only bring them to life for one minute, or the powers that be will take another life instead. If he ever touches the person/animal/microbe again it will die…forever. He then gets into a pseudo scheme with a detective to go around touching murder victims to find out who killed them, solving the crime, and collecting the reward. This is all played out by Lee Pace, who plays it all with all the charms that an introvert can have.
The love interest is the adorable Anna Friel, who is his childhood love who he brings back to life and…doesn’t restore her to death. So they go on the whole show falling in love with each other, without ever having the ability to take their relationship to the next level. That part is great, instead of the stereotypical “will they or won’t they” “on again, off again” relationships on television…it’s like this ongoing crush that can’t be breeched. Like the fluttering in your stomach in grade school. And each episode they find another way to express that…without touching.
The show also has the best dialog that I have seen in a show in quite a long time. It’s all very quick and witty, making it a joy to listen to. The kind of dialog that makes you feel flattered that you’re not being baby talked by television. You add the atmosphere, with the dialog, with the situations, and it’s delightfully surreal.
The casting is wonderful, and I’ve heard that this Kristin Chenoweth person has some fans. She even throws in some notes to bring this show hedging even further into the alternate movie universe of the musical.
Put this all together and I’m sure you can find one reason to start tuning in. You can even start catching up with most of the episodes through the ABC site: http://dynamic.abc.go.com/streaming/landing
Enjoy.
