Wednesday, October 10, 2007

Pushing Daisies -- Pilot

Pushing Daisies premiered on ABC a week ago, brimming with quirk and magic. Narrated by a male voice that's sort of a cross between the narrators of George of the Jungle and Amelie (I'm serious), it tells the story of Ned (Lee Pace, when he grows up), who at age 9 discovered that he could touch dead things and bring them back to life. He used this power to bring his mom back after she died in the kitchen of an aneurysm.

Then, when pretty next door neighbor Charlotte "Chuck" Charles' dad dropped dead after sixty seconds, Ned figured out the First Catch: someone in proximity will die if he resurrects anyone longer than a minute.

That night, when his mom kissed him and dropped dead again, he figured out the Second Catch: the second touch brings death back. Forever! So his mom dies, her dad dies, and Ned and Chuck have their first kisses at a funeral. Then Chuck moves away, and they never see each other again -- in this lifetime.

Fast-forward to Ned's life as the secret weapon of Chi McBride's Emerson Cod, who uses him to resurrect murder victims, figure out how they died, and collect the reward. Coincidentally, Ned sees a news story about Chuck's murder on a cruise ship.

Long story short, he can't bring himself to re-kill her (allowing the funeral director to die instead), and they set about solving Chuck's murder (giving Chuck's aunts the reward to brighten their sad old ages), and becoming a team of three with Emerson Cod. Too bad Ned can't touch Chuck a second time, 'cause they're in lurve! So they just pretend to hold hands and/or smoosh the mouths of small monkey statues together as surrogate kissers (weird, I know. Think when they move to the next level).

Anyway, I didn't get to watch the pilot till today (and I'm still behind on most shows), but I hope lots of people will be watching tonight, as I'm excited to see another episode of this. The murder-solving aspect makes me hope it will serialize nicely, but this level of quirk will be hard to maintain. And is the narrator dude going to be this talkative the whole time? Because he's not nearly as entertaining as Gossip Girl (who returns to grace us with her presence when Pushing Daisies is over -- best TV night of the week!)

In Summary: Highly recommended! A great pilot, and I have high hopes for the rest of the show.

6 comments:

Anonymous said...

Kristen, I LOVED the Pushing Daisies pilot and can't wait until tonight.

Kristen said...

Me either! Glad you liked it! :)

Media Maven said...

So episode 2 wasn't half bad, huh? I hope you got a chance to watch. I don't think this show is worth the hype its been getting, but I was entertained and certainly couldn't help but smile at Ned and Chuck's uber-cuteness. I'll be writing about it later today.

And by the way, where's my promised blogroll link, Kristen? ;)

Trish @ Love, Laughter, Insanity said...

I really liked the first show and the one last night. I LOVE quirk and glad there is something a little different on TV.

Kristen said...

media maven - Oops! Heh. I have a terrible short-term memory, and I totally thought I'd done it already. Thanks for the reminder! I haven't watched most of the one last night because my stupid antenna was acting up, but I'll stop by to read your thoughts once I do watch. (I'm being a teetotaler on spoilers this year.)

trish - Isn't it a ridiculously cute show? Quirk is fantastic when it's done right and this so is.

Anonymous said...

I can't wait anymore and would watch online pushing daisies and i am sure that i will enjoy it a lot.