Pushing Daisies Fodder

Pushing Daisies: Pie-Lette

Welcome to your first Pushing Daisies episode review AND a brief introduction to the blog and your humble blogger. Ordinarily it won't take a week to get a review, but this week was special. What you'll be seeing from me in the future will be a short review/recap from me sometime on the Thursday after an episode airs. This will occasionally be followed some time in the next week by a longer, more detailed review. However, your humble blogger is almost as big a theatre nerd as she is a TV nerd, so if she has a lot of rehearsing to do, she may not get a chance to write more. Especially if the rehearsing causes her to also need to catch up on her day job.

I am your humble blogger, Gina. I last blogged on Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip. I will try very hard not to let my bitterness about that show's cancellation seep in here. I briefly got into Six Feet Under, but I haven't seen a lot of the series, so please forgive me if I wax philosophic about similarities or differences between the two shows that don't actually exist. I'm going to try to keep that to a minimum. I'm also into The Daily Show with Jon Stewart, The Colbert Report, The Simpsons, The Kids in the Hall, Monty Python, Futurama, The Venture Bros., Robot Chicken, Harvey Birdman, Attorney at Law, Arrested Development, and Mystery Science Theatre 3000. I occasionally reference these things, so if I say something COMPLETELY random in a recap, it's probably a reference to one of the above shows/groups. I'll try to keep my random non sequiturs to a minimum, though, too.

Here's my short and dirty on the pilot, Pie-lette (Cute name, of course):

The show has some very classy British narration provided by Jim Dale. Not only has Mr. Dale won Tonys (one for being in Candide, one of my favorite musical scores), but he's also been the voice of the Harry Potter audio books. Perhaps that's why his voice matches so well with the fantasy and whimsy of this program.

The narration and some of the stylishness of the program made me feel a little like this show owes a bit of a debt to Desperate Housewives, and perhaps it does, but it definitely has its own voice, too. This seems like a good time to mention also that the show is produced by Barry Sonnenfeld, and this episode was also directed by Sonnenfeld, producer of Lemony Snicket's a Series of Unfortunate Events and The Tick (live action) and director of Men in Black (among other things). So this begins to explain a lot of the quirkiness of this show. It's also written by Bryan Fuller, whose past credits include, among other things, Dead Like Me, some episodes of Heroes and, most notably, Wonderfalls. Ah, that explains a lot. Hopefully ABC will take more interest in this show than Fox took in Wonderfalls. That show is definitely pretty high on the list of brilliant-but-canceled shows along with Arrested Development and Freaks and Geeks.

The show opens with what turns out to be a flashback. After his dog is flattened before his eyes (he's Tasty Milkshake (link contains explicit language)!), our young hero, Ned, touches the dog and revives him. Better yet, the dog isn't flat. Huzzah!

Ned is friends with a neighbor girl named Chuck. There is an adorable Claymation (well, Play-Doh-mation) sequence involving the kids destroying a Play-Doh town.

Ned's mother dies, so Ned touches her and brings her back. Sadly, it turns out that if he doesn't take some sort of action within one minute, there's a Consequence. In this case, Chuck's dad snuffs it in exchange for Ned's mom.
Sadly again, it turns out that he only gets two touches. When Ned's mom kisses him goodnight, she dies again, and this time there's no bringing her back. Drag.

Ned's mom's and Chuck's dad's funerals are happening near each other, so the two kids kiss for the first and last time.

Chuck is raised by her aunts, who are synchronized swimmers with synchronized personality disorders (besides the disorder of being synchronized swimmers. "No, you're not angry at her...you're just pointing at her: 'Hey, you! I know you! I know you!"). Ned, however, is sent to boarding school, never to return to his hometown of Coeur d' Coeurs again (As an aside, I don't speak more than a few words of French, but shouldn't that be Coeur DE Coeurs? Right, nitpicking. Never mind). He avoids attachments ever after that. And becomes obsessed with pie (His mom was baking a pie when she died the first time).

Cut to the present: Ned makes pie for a living at a place called the Pie Hole. Very nice.

Holy cow, that's Kristin Chenoweth (Who also has a Tony award, though not for Candide). Holy cows, that's also Chi McBride! Chi has no Tonys at all!

Chi plays Emerson Cod, who discovered Ned's secret. He has Ned help him by reviving murder victims, asking who killed them, putting them back down, and then collecting the reward. In the course of them negotiating all this, we find that Ned is opposed to terms like living dead. And Emerson is opposed to the racial profiling of dogs.

Ned and Emerson use Ned's talent/gift to clear the name of Cantaloupe, a dog suspected of killing its owner. Turns out the guy was killed by the Rottweiler belonging to his secretary and her tremendous rack. As long as we're opposed to dog breed profiling, I'm a little disappointed in their choice to have the murder weapon be a Rott. Yes, they can be dangerous if they're mistreated, and yes, they were originally bred for fighting. But if you raise them right, they're no more dangerous than other dogs. How about a German Shepherd. Or a Saint Bernard? Okay, maybe that's too Stephen King, but at least we haven't heard about evil Saint Bernards in 24 years.

We find out that Kristin Chenoweth's character, Olive, has a thing for Ned, which is being frustrated by the fact that he still won't get close to anyone. She's taking care of his dog, Digby, while he was solving the murder. In fact, this is the dog from the opening of the show. He's still not flat. However, he is starved for attention because Ned can't touch him again (He pets him with a mannequin hand on a stick). They have an awkward conversation about touching and being touched, and poor tiny Kristin has to stand on her coffee table to be eye-to-eye with Ned.

While Olive is getting Digby's leash, Ned sees an item on the news about a woman's body being pulled from the ocean and becomes obsessed with her. This is not helped when Ned discovers that the body belongs to Chuck. Emerson wants them to rush back to Coeur d' Coeurs to ask Chuck who killed her.

The two of them talk while riding the bus back home. Neither of them looks at the other. The writing in this show is just crisp throughout. I've already admitted I really like Aaron Sorkin, so in my totally biased way, I'm really pleased to say that I can see a certain amount of similarity between Fuller's writing and Sorkin's in terms of its crispness, humor, the rhythm, and the snap. Again, it's definitely Fuller's voice, but there's a lot here to like and a lot to remind me of something I very much like. Of course, Sorkin isn't everyone's cup of tea, but that's all right because, as I said before, Fuller has his own voice here, too.

The funeral director lets Emerson and Ned in to see Chuck for a bribe. Chuck beats on Ned the minute she wakes up. She doesn't know who killed her. Ned and Chuck both reveal that they were each other's first kiss, and Chuck says he was also her last. Which is too bad, because she's adorable.

Ned doesn't touch Chuck, so instead, the horrible funeral director dies ignominiously on the can. Ned tries to sneak a not-dead Chuck out after telling Emerson to take off. Emerson knows Ned is up to something, but he goes anyway.

Ned discovers that Chuck's coffin, where he was hiding her, has been stuck in the hearse in the 30 seconds he spent talking to Emerson. Well, that's going to be a pisser. However, judging by the fact that the dog is still around, it looks like maybe she wouldn't die underground. She'd just probably be really, really uncomfortable.

Chuck reflects on her life with the two aunts (one of whom is played by Swoosie Kurtz. She also has Tonys!) who had social phobias and couldn't leave the house. Chuck, meanwhile sold honey for the homeless (though not TO the homeless, because that's not really all that helpful). Being a homebody was all right for Chuck, until she decides she has to get out and goes on a cruise. On which she gets killed.

Ned sets the gravediggers' truck on fire, which is a HECK of a diversion, so he can retrieve Chuck.

Somehow Chuck gets out of the hole wearing a nice dress and shoes that are probably cut in back to fit onto her dead little feet without Ned touching or helping her, and he brings her back to his pie hole. It isn't until then that she seems unsettled about the no-touching (no touching!) policy. She explains to him in terrific detail about why hugs are great.

Ned says she can't see her shut-in aunts again and then takes Chuck up to meet Digby and sleep on the couch. Chuck offers to kiss Ned if it wouldn't kill her.

Chuck watches the news about her death/funeral (well, it is a small town), on which she is referred to as a "lonely tourist." It turns out that the travel agency through which she booked her cruise is offering cash money to solve her murder. Chuck confronts Ned, wanting to know if she was only brought back because of the reward. He assures her he doesn't want her reward. From different rooms, the two of them "touch" each other through the adjoining wall.

Chuck leaves Ned's apartment against his advice and runs into Olive.

Back at the Pie Hole, Emerson asks how the funeral went. He's worried Ned is going after Chuck's entire reward and cutting him out of the deal.

Olive brings Chuck to the shop. Chuck is now in on the deal and wants the three of them to split the reward (Olive is getting shafted in the deal). She would take 40% of the reward since she died for it, and the guys would get 30% each.

Emerson says Ned having brought Chuck back is stupid, but he's not above profiting off Ned's stupidity. Ned reveals that he feels guilty that he killed Chuck's dad.

Chuck explains that her cruise was a deal with the devil, who in this case was Deedee Duffield, who managed the travel agency. She gave Chuck the trip for free if Chuck would smuggle back plaster monkeys from Tahiti. These monkeys, oddly enough, look like they would be perfectly at home in the gift shop in Wonderfalls. Chuck says to ask Deedee about the monkeys, but apparently Chuck's killer got to Deedee first. Ned revives Deedee. Deedee thought Chuck might be killed over the monkeys, and she's sort of sorry about that. Deedee touches Ned's cheek and dies before they can find out who would kill them over these monkeys. It turns out that Deedee's and Chuck's mutual killer couldn't get the monkeys from Chuck's cabin because she lost her room key. Which means that the cruise company sent the monkeys to Chuck's next of kin...Which would be those creepy Tony-winning aunts (well, actually, only one actually WON a Tony. The other, Ellen Greene, was nominated, but didn't win). Um, crud. This could be, ah, complicated.

Our Three Heroes drive to the aunts' house, which looks an awful lot like a model. But a full-size one. So either it's a camera/computer trick, or just a really, really cute house. Chuck wants to look in the window of the house. Ned promises to make sure the aunts are safe and orders Emerson to hug Chuck for her. Emerson is put out by this.

Chuck's aunts, Lilly and Vivian, swam under the name of the Darling Mermaid Darlings. And Deedee managed the Boutique Travel Travel Boutique. I sense a theme here. If not for the fact that the shop isn't in Coeur d'Coeur, I'd suggest Ned change the name to the Whole Pie Pie Hole. But what do I know?

The aunts' collective careers ended when Aunt Lily lost an eye after a freak kitty litter accident, so now they're the ultimate in freaky homebodies.

The aunts talk to the guys, and there is a camera shot that shows off the guys' packages. As the show goes on, I imagine I'll be more excited about that sort of camera work, but this week it isn't doing so much for me.

Chuck sneaks back into the house because she doesn't take direction well. She swipes the monkeys out of their suitcase. Aunt Lily retrieves the suitcase just after Chuck leaves the room, but is attacked by the masked killer in the hallway. Sadly, she shut the curtains, so Chuck can't see any of this to leap valiantly to Aunt Lily's rescue. Seems like a good time for an act break to me...Apparently it seemed that way to Bryan Fuller, too, because we go to commercial.

Downstairs, Ned is trying to comfort Aunt Vivian and actually-gasp-touches her. Sadly, Aunt Vivian doesn't like being touched. No touching!

Ned goes up to help Aunt Lily and is also attacked by the murderer. Chuck leaps valiantly to his rescue, though she may have missed Lily completely. Killer asks if he didn't already kill Chuck, whereupon Aunt Lily shows up with a shotgun, announcing she can hold her breath for a long time. Of course, she only has one eye, so her depth perception is probably off, so I should think Chuck and Ned would want to get the heck out of the way of the gun. She blows Killer away (literally; he goes flying out the window. That's quite the shotgun), and there is a moment of panic before we figure out that thanks to that kitty litter accident, Lily never actually saw Chuck. Whew!

So now Chuck and Ned have saved each other from death. Chuck gives Killer one last kick before running out of sight of the rest of the family.

Cut to Olive, who watches the story of all of this on the news. Apparently the aunts are going to give a benefit synchronized swimming performance to support Honey for the Homeless. At least, I think that's what happens. I'm not just sure, as I was more distracted by the fact that Kristin Chenoweth shares a spoon with Digby the Dog on camera. Yeah, I know; dog's mouths are cleaner than humans, but even so; ew.

Back at Ye Olde Pie Hole, Chuck wants to know again if Ned really did this out of the goodness of his heart. Naw, he was being selfish; he thought his life would be better if she were in it. Awwwwwwwww! My heart goes all melty, and it looks like Chuck's does, too. Ned considers telling her that he killed her dad, but chickens out.

Chuck keeps one monkey and gives the other to Ned. Well, at least it isn't a Virgin Mary statue with drugs in it. Could be a monkey with drugs in it, though, I suppose. They kiss the monkeys together, and there is much unresolved monkey tension. They then smack the monkeys together (without smacking each other, which seems like a darn good trick), and it turns out they're monkeys with slightly smaller gold monkeys inside them.

Having collected the reward for catching Chuck's killer, Creepy Aunts Lily and Vivian finally venture back into the world.

Our Three Heroes now engage in a three-way split of rewards. When they wake up their next dead guy, Chuck actually asks about last requests. Which is nice, except there are only 60 seconds to figure out how this scuba diver found himself dead in a lobster tank, which might take the full minute. Ned decides this is sweet and holds his own hand behind his back, pretending he's holding Chuck's; she does the same.

The show closes by dissolving the morgue in which they're standing back to the daisy field from the opening shot of the episode. Very sweet.

As an aside, reportedly Adam Brody was originally offered the role of Ned. Lee Pace has a certain physical similarity to Brody, and I think Adam would have been good in the role. However, Adam could have been a little distracting, and Lee has (and this is only in my opinion here) a slightly quieter energy that I think may work better for the character/show. Admittedly, I may be biased because I haven't seen Adam play the part and I have seen Lee, but I just think it may turn out to have worked out slightly better this way. And it almost certainly has for Mr. Pace (I was going to say that Adam Brody is also too young to play the part, but it turns out he's fine; I'm just too old).

It's a very charming, stylishly smart start to what looks to be a very charming, stylishly smart show. Here's to many more fun episodes.

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Posted by on October 11, 2007 12:40 AM
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