So, my new show, Pushing Daisies, airs tonight at 8pm. Guys, it's an amazing show... and nothing like it has ever been on tv... and I'm not just saying that... check out these reviews!!! You can google them if you want links!
Please watch!!!
Review 1
I'll be the first to admit when I saw the first batch of promos for Daisies , I had zero intention of watching it. The premise sounded like a bad joke, not too dissimiliar from what I thought when I heard the same network were developing inane Geico commercials into a sitcom. (Really. That's horrible.)
Cynicism aside, I got the opportunity to view the pilot about a month ago, and on a whim, I did. By the end of the 43 minutes, I was hooked for life. A well-written and expertly delivered script, visual effects that are candy for the eyes, and a solid A-grade cast make this show one to stop time for. Lee Pace is enchanting as Ned, and Anna Friel is (ironically) lively and perky as the once-dead Chuck.
The most pleasant surprise in the pilot is the way the show deals with death. From the preliminary promos, it seems that Ned's interaction with the dead is selfish- motivated by the rewards offered for the solving of a murder, he brings someone back to life, asks who killed them, and sends them back to the beyond. All in a minute. While the scenario is true, the pilot episode makes it clear that this is the starting point for Ned, not the destination he has in mind. In subsequent episodes, I think Chuck's presence will change Ned's expectations and alter the way he deals with the people his power allows him to touch.
In a sea of procedurals, whether dealing with crime, medicine, or the sex lives of impossibly pretty people, Pushing Daisies is a gem among stones. A creative team of genuises, a great cast, and gifted writers propel this show to the top of this season's new-show pile.
Review 2
Every once in a while a pilot comes along that completely shocks and surprises you with its dazzling beauty, pitch perfect cast, and its casual ability to create a whole world that you never want to leave.
I'm talking, gentle readers, about Pushing Daisies, which ABC recently ordered to series for the fall season. From the fertile mind of Bryan Fuller (Wonderfalls, Heroes), it's unlike anything you've ever seen on television, a Burtonesque vision of mortality, morality, and, er, pies that sucks you in from the very opening scene and never lets go.
Directed by Barry Sonnenfeld (The Addams Family), Pushing Daisies has a super-saturated color palette that jars sharply (and intentionally) with its life-and-death theme: Lee Pace (Wonderfalls) plays Ned, a lonely pie maker who, as a child, discovers that he has the ability to bring dead things back to life, a gift he uses to full effect, when his beloved dog Dibney is hit by a truck in the pilot's beautiful and brutal opening. But this new gift has a few caveats: he can bring something back to life but if he ever touches them again, they die instantly and can't be resurrected again; additionally, if he keeps them alive for more than a minute, someone else in proximity will die. Think of it as the law of conservation: if someone lives, someone else has to die.
Just that happens when his mother suffers a fatal aneurysm whilst baking a pie one afternoon. As she falls to the floor, Ned revives her and she pops back to life as though she had been taking a nap. But when Ned keeps her alive, the father of his beloved girl-next-door Chuck (a.k.a. Charlotte) drops dead watering the lawn. As if that weren't enough psychic trauma, Ned's mother kisses him goodnight and then she too kicks the proverbial bucket. What is a resurrecting lad to do?
It's a concept with a few inherent problems for Ned. For one, he can't ever touch Dibney again (he pets his beloved pooch with a hand on a stick) and it's made him reluctant to share any human contact with anyone, especially wanton waitress Olive (Kristin Chenoweth). But Ned doesn't have any qualms entering some morally grey areas to exploit his gift with his business partner, an ex-cop named Emerson (Chi McBride). Their business model? They follow the news for any suspicious deaths, with reward money attached, then animate the corpse to learn who killed them, pocket the cash, and go on their merry way.
It's a plan that's helped pay for Ned's true passion: baking pies (not too Freudian, huh?) at his own little slice of heaven, The Pie Hole. And everything would have been fine if the latest murder victim hadn't been his loved-and-lost Charlotte "Chuck" Charles, now an adult (Our Mutual Friend's Anna Friel) who has gotten herself murdered on a cruise. Ned and Emerson head back to Ned's daisy-laden childhood home of Coeur d' Coeur to revive Charlotte but Ned finds himself in a bit of a Sleeping Beauty quandary and he can't bear to let Charlotte die again, especially as she never saw who her killer was.
What happens next? You'll have to wait until this fall to find out, but let me just say that it's incredibly worth the wait and involves a Fuller favorite (monkeys), a murder mystery, a pair of over-the-hill synchronized swimmers, and a shady travel boutique called, well, Boutique Travel Travel Boutique. It's a mystery, a love story, a quirky comedy, and a drama about morality rolled into one and lovingly filled with a delicious cherry pie filling that's sweet but never saccharine.
Pushing Daisies, in short, is the rare television show that actually changes the way you look at television, a dazzlingly lush production that seems more at home as a big budget feature film (think Big Fish and you've approximated the look) filled with charmingly eccentric folk whom you can't wait to meet up with again. (Watch the scenes in which Ned and Chuck nearly touch hands from opposite sides of a wall--or pretend to hold hands by holding their own--and if your heart doesn't break, you're made of ice.)
The series' casting is inventive and spot on. Star Lee Pace perfectly captures the pathos of a man unable to touch anything but who channels his love into his pies (we should hook him up with Waitress' Keri Russell); it's a star turn that makes me scratch my head as I wonder why Pace isn't yet a household name. Anna Friel, whom I've adored since I first saw her in the British mini-series Our Mutual Friend, simply lights up every scene from inside herself; she's adorable but also displays a grace and maturity beyond her years, deftly juggling being the lead's object of affection with being a wry modern woman (think Nora Charles) as well as a sensitive soul. It's her Chuck, as the series' moral compass, that comes up with the thought that none of the other characters do: why not ask the deceased for any final words or thoughts? It's an altruistic spin on the crime-solving, reward-collecting business that Ned and Emerson have created. (FYI, the British actor's American accent is absolutely and astoundingly flawless.)
Meanwhile, Chi McBride brings a comedic gruffness (and moral ambiguity) to a role that's vastly different than his normal fare and it's wonderful to see him in a more comedic role for a change. Likewise, as Charlotte's reclusive maiden aunts, the former Darling Mermaid Darlings synchronized swimming duo, Swoosie Kurtz (here in a delightfully neurotic role as a one-eyed woman) and Ellen Greene (yes, Little Shop of Horror's Audrey) are endearingly out there. Additionally, Jim Dale (yes, he of the Harry Potter books-on-tape fame) exudes an enchanting blend of gravitas and humor as the story's narrator; in a development season where 95 percent of the pilots had voiceover, this is the rare bird that makes it work.
If I have one complaint, it's that I'm not in love with Kristin Chenoweth, who seems an odd choice for the vixen-like role of Pie Hole waitress (and Ned's neighbor) Olive; there's just something... off about her performance that's the sole detraction from an otherwise perfect pilot.
Ultimately, I was completely smitten with Pushing Daisies and it's set an impossibly high bar for the rest of this year's freshman drama series to meet. But if there's one thing for certain, it's that I'm already dying with anticipation to see what happens to Ned, Charlotte, and Emerson next.
Review 3
Watching a pilot is like a first date: It is important to make a good first impression. Pushing Daisies does that and primes the audience for a second date. Pushing Daisies is a fairy tail detective story told in a Tim Burton-esque way.
Pushing Daisies stars Lee Pace as Ned. Ned has a gift or a curse depending on how you look at it. He can resurrect the dead. There are, however, rules as the voice over tells us. Ned has one minute to retouch them and return them to a dead state or else someone else is taken in their place. Should a minute pass and Ned retouch them, they will still be returned to a dead state. So, one touch alive, second touch dead, got it?
Ned uses his gift to solve murders and collect the rewards. So he touches the victim, asks them who killed them, then retouches and collects the reward. Easy, right? Well, things get a bit more complicated when Ned learns that his childhood crush has been murdered.
The obvious ensues. Ned chooses to leave Chuck (yes, that's a girl's name) alive. Ned is now doubly cursed - he cannot touch Chuck a second time, not even a hug, or else she dies again. That's what helps make Pushing Daisies unique, the way it plays with themes of unrequited love intertwined with the darkness of death. It may not sound like a good mix, but Pushing Daisies intertwines the two splendidly.
The entire episode is narrated by Jim Dale, who does a fantastic job of it too. Dale's voice is ideally suited for this. The narration actually makes the show a pleasure to listen to.
Pushing Daisies has reinvented the detective drama of old and done a fantastic job of it. Its stylized camera work helps give the show a fantastic rhythm and reminds the viewer that this TV show is in a world all its own. It's an odd world, but a fun one that the viewer will enjoy week after week.
Review 4
"Please don't attack the window treatments."
That's the line I keep remembering from ABC's already acclaimed "Pushing Daisies." Its deft delivery illustrates the many ways in which this fable's idiosyncratic universe is exquisitely rendered in tonight's pilot episode, quaintly titled "Pielette." (Keep reading.)
By the time that line cinches the show's singular flair, star Lee Pace as sweet but melancholy young piemaker Ned has already established his special talent for keeping his fruit fresh - he's inexplicably gifted with the ability to revive the dead with one touch. Or kill them again with two. This gets explained in a childhood-flashback prologue, with the help of an elegant British narration by Jim Dale (who reads the "Harry Potter" audio books). This sheds light on not only the death of Ned's mother, and his literally hands-off relationship with his beloved dog, but also his devotion to the girl next door named Chuck.
Ned's object of affection returns, years later, to his adult life in the form of lovely/plucky actress Anna Friel, whom he first encounters laid out in her coffin. Well. We can tell where this is going. And it proceeds there in oddly logical, endearingly lyrical fashion - all storybook Technicolor, yet Humphrey Bogart noir; skipping along like a child's game making up its own arcane rules; introducing an imposing private detective (Chi McBride) out to make money off Ned's gift, but also Chuck's two eccentric recluse aunts (Swoosie Kurtz and Ellen Greene), who, the narrator tells us, "shared matching personality disorders and a love for fine cheese."
Outre, you might say; yet dry as fine champagne - or, fans of "Wonderfalls" might recall, as dry as Pace's deadpan turn playing the overeducated brother in that off-the-wall Fox cult fave about a Niagara Falls souvenir clerk sent on life-fixing missions by inexplicably talkative animal statues.
The same sly mind, Bryan Fuller - most recently seen writing for "Dead Like Me" and "Heroes" - is behind "Pushing Daisies." Fuller's tone is amplified in the pilot by wildly visual director Barry Sonnenfeld, who knows how to nail such tube quirkfests as Patrick Warburton's live-action Fox rendering of "The Tick," not to mention weird megamovies such as "The Addams Family" and "Men in Black."
Chuck wants to find out who killed her, and the detective wants to collect the reward on such crimes, and Ned wants what he can't have, which is to hold Chuck in his arms forever, or even once. Pace endearingly aches his way through that. A Juilliard grad who's won acclaim Off-Broadway, the actor may be best known for playing the preoperative male-to-female transsexual whose military male lover is murdered for their affection in Showtime's award-winning docudrama "Soldier's Girl." Pace wasn't so much male or female in that movie, but instead a clearly defined individual person, to be taken on the character's own terms.
And so Pace unfussily embodies Ned, who, despite his gift, is not given to grand gesture or elaborate expression. As he, Chuck and detective Emerson go about solving what seems destined to be The Case of the Week, Ned pines quietly and savors every second he shouldn't be spending with his should-be-dead first crush.
Which brings us to the window treatments. After Ned has revived Chuck and brought her to his abode, she gets to wondering what's up with her "murder" and this not-being-dead-anymore deal. Friel confronts Pace as he's sleeping on the couch, situating herself on the floor to get eye-to-eye with her rescuer's bleary face.
That has Pace playing the entire scene barely awake, lying on his side with his face smushed into a pillow. Friel details what she understands to be the dead/not dead rules and grills Pace about the reward money. "I'll be so mad if you're lying, you'll have me scratching the drapes," she warns, leading to his aforementioned defense of the window treatments. Such a simple expository scene shouldn't be so revelatory or charming.
But it is. The actors convey infinite canniness through physical stillness and quietly emotive voices, though Pace can nicely put his body into play when need be. On top of the stars' subtlety and Fuller's verbal wit, Sonnenfeld's pilot direction ladles layers of flashy frosting - theatrical camera angles, emphatic zooms, intensified color and those heavyhanded moments when the narration can't quite straddle the sap line.
"Pushing Daisies" stakes out a brave, broad swath of storytelling territory, and a potentially fertile one. But one episode is all ABC provided critics for review. Where tone and style are as crucial as in this peculiar tale, a snazzy pilot doesn't necessarily promise a series success.
PUSHING DAISIES. The magically rendered tale of a gifted man who can revive his dead love, but then never touch her again. They'll have to sublimate their attraction into solving murders together. Delightfully unique mystery/romance/storybook pilot premieres Wednesday at 8 on ABC/7.
Review 5
Grade: A
At last we have an answer to the age old question: what would it be like if Roald Dahl wrote CSI?
Enter Pushing Daisies, the new ABC curiosity that goes where no television show has dared go before; or rather, this territory has remained uncharted due less to a lack of daring and more because it probably just never occurred to anyone to mix children's fairy tales with violent murder mysteries. Nobody, it seems, except Bryan Fuller.
Fuller, who previously masterminded the cult hit Wonderfalls before it vanished off the face of the Earth after just four episodes, is joined by Addams Family director Barry Sonnenfeld; together they have put together one of the strangest, quirkiest shows in memory. Of course, that almost certainly dooms it to swift cancellation, but hey, you gotta take the good with the bad.
But forgive me. I haven't yet described Pushing Daisies, have I? How rude. Well, then, picture this, if you can: Ned is a boy who discovers he has the strange ability to bring the dead to life with a single touch. Unfortunately, a second touch then renders them dead again, permanently. Which sounds bad, but not as bad as the alternative: if Ned doesn't re-kill them within 60 seconds, some random, luckless soul in the vicinity will have to fill the void by dropping dead instead.
Now, fast forward 20 years and we have the show: Ned is an introverted recluse obsessed with pies, who plies his pie making craft from within a pie-shaped shop called The Pie Hole. He only uses his power for good - that is, for the good of his wallet, as he and his business partner, detective Emerson Cod, cash in on rewards by animating the dead just long enough to get them to spill the beans about their murderer's identity. Then it's touch, zap, dead, bling and Bob's yer uncle, back to the Pie Hole.
Add to this curious mix Technicolor sets, semi-immortal dogs and a world populated with the sort of oversized caricatures worthy of Veruca Salt and Agatha Trunchbull, with every adult a bag of nervous twitches and crazy eye patches. All of this presented to you with the help of a creaky, creepy narrator who seemingly just crawled out of a '70s claymation Christmas special.
In total, then, for anyone who remembers being a kid with fondness, and doesn't mind a little dark humor mixed in with their darker humor, Pushing Daisies is a revelation, the kind where you briefly close your eyes and inhale slightly while smiling. The innocent insouciance of Ned's childhood crush Chuck amid the ghoulish goings-on and Ned's own charming, cringing attempts to remain normal in an absurdly abnormal life speak to the heart of what Dahl's best works revealed to be true: that though the world is bent and dark and filled with wrong, you can, by remaining true to the purity of childhood ideals, turn it into your own fairy tale.
Review 6
Review: "Pushing Daisies" Blooms, But Is It A Hothouse Flower?
It's the strangest show of the new season. Also the sweetest. One of the most talked-about. And certainly the most original. The "forensic fairytale" called "Pushing Daisies" debuts tonight on ABC. There's no question that it's different. The question is whether America will tune in week after week. You should at least give it a try. This kind of daring - by the creators and by ABC - deserves to be rewarded. I promise you this: You've never seen anything like it.
OK, smart guy, but what's it about? Ned is a young boy with a special gift: He can bring the dead back to life with just a touch. It works on a fly, his dog, his mom. He also learns that when he touches them a second time, they're dead again, this time forever. D'oh! Among the unforeseen consequences of Ned's unexplained gift is that he is separated from the little girl he loves, whose name is Chuck.
As an adult, Ned (Lee Pace) runs the local pie shop. He's a bit of a loner, understandably wary of forming attachments. Then a private detective named Emerson Cod (Chi McBride) learns of his gift and convinces Ned to join him in a seemingly simple scheme - Ned will revive murder victims just long enough for them to name their killers, and then he and the detective will split the reward money.
Ned's life gets even more complicated when one of the victims he revives turns out to be Chuck (Anna Friel), now a lovely young woman. He can't bring himself to touch her a second time, so pretty soon they're falling in love again - but a single kiss and she'll be dead forever. While they're working that out, she's going to hang around and help Ned and Cod solve crimes.
Done poorly, or on CBS, this is "Ghost Whisperer." But "Pushing Daisies" is the creation of Bryan Fuller, who was behind the short-lived "Wonderfalls" and also wrote part of the first season of "Heroes." And his script has been realized by director Barry Sonnenfeld, who did "Men in Black" and "Lemony Snicket" and "The Addams Family." Together they've come up with a look that is bright and quirky, with oversaturated colors, digital backgrounds, and bizarro sets. It's a dream world, wholesome and cartoony and somehow unsettling all at the same time.
By the end of the first hour, it's clear that we are a very long way from "Ghost Whisperer."
I haven't even brought up Chuck's aunts, "a synchronized swimming duo with matching personality disorder," played by Swoosie Kurtz (with an eye patch) and Ellen Greene. And then there's Kristen Chenoweth as Olive Snook, the Piehole waitress with an unrequited crush on Ned. Did I mention the Claymation sequence?
The whole story is narrated by Jim Dale, whose voice reminds me of Boris Karloff telling us about the Whos of Whoville. He makes me wonder when mommy's bringing me my hot chocolate. On the other hand, there are some touches that wouldn't be out of place on "The Sopranos" - one guy dies on the toilet, and another by shotgun.
People often say "Pushing Daisies" is "Tim Burton-esque," which pisses off Sonnenfeld mightily - he'd prefer "Sonnenfeld-esque." But Burton is the only other person who has attempted this mix of the sweet and the macabre, with such a distinct visual style. And it is a tricky mix - with wonky names like Emerson Cod and Olive Snook and all that magical realism, alongside a weekly murder mystery. Both Sonnenfeld and Fuller promise to stick with the show, instead of handing it off to lesser lights after the pilot, as often happens. They will need to, because it will take only very slight miscalculations for "Pushing Daisies" to veer off into insufferable cuteness or terminal, "Twin Peaks-ian" incoherence. I'm not quite sure who the ideal viewer is in the first place.
I hesitated to mention "Twin Peaks." That's the classic example of a daring, different show that was a critical favorite, started strong, then went into a horrible creative death spiral that drove many viewers right back into the arms of, well, whatever was like "Ghost Whisperer" back then. "Touched By An Angel," maybe. I hope you give "Pushing Daisies" a shot, and I hope it justifies whatever faith you put in it.
My show airs tonight...!!! Some reviews and a plea!!!
Moderators: Roguelet, hpkingjr, WaveMaster
My show airs tonight...!!! Some reviews and a plea!!!
Don't be so humble - you are not that great.
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Rokeby Forever
- Darley line
- Posts: 6684
- Joined: Thu Dec 21, 2006 4:52 pm
- Location: Reno, NV
It's on against the Cubs game. Grrr!!!!!
Good luck, Maven!
Good luck, Maven!
What synthetics are to California racing:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-gb0mxcpPOU
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-gb0mxcpPOU
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Tucumcari
- Chef de Race: Brilliant
- Posts: 3754
- Joined: Fri Mar 18, 2005 11:51 am
- Location: Here and there
Lucy wrote:No DVR here, but the Sox were leading comfortably enough for me to switch over.
The show was delightful, Maven....and I'm not a big TV watcher. Good luck with it!
LOL... Now that's funny....
It sucks that you all are hours ahead of us in the west... I did DVR it just in case sleep beckons... which it usually does
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Rokeby Forever
- Darley line
- Posts: 6684
- Joined: Thu Dec 21, 2006 4:52 pm
- Location: Reno, NV
OW!!! My ribs hurt!!!! HAHAHAHAHAHAA!!!!!!!!
Last edited by Rokeby Forever on Wed Oct 03, 2007 6:36 pm, edited 1 time in total.
Is she an actor or writer 
larrygene wrote:Maven, please excuse my ignorance but what is your connection to PD? And sorry I didn't catch the premier.
Larrygene
I'm one of the owners of the creative agency that is in charge of the special effects and set design of the show.
Other than the writers, the show rests on our shoulders. It's our first real big forway into a legitimate television series. Because of the premise of the show, it was a huge gamble but I think it will pay off.
Don't be so humble - you are not that great.