Pilot first-impression: Pushing Daisies

With Nyanko out of the country for a while and me being the sad sad blogger than I am, there hasn't been much traffic here recently. However, thanks to Adia, I was able to get my hands on a few of the pilots for the upcoming Fall season. These were all briefly talked about in my earlier previews, but a full pilot theoretically should give more information.

Pushing Daisies is a quirky romantic comedy with a disturbing premise but hilarious execution and tone. It definitely has the Wonderfalls feel to it, as would be expected since this is also a Bryan Fuller creation. The premise is made pretty clear right at the beginning, and the pilot is an entertaining self-contained episode that sets up the rest of the series. Basically, our hero Ned discovers at an early age that he can bring dead things back to life by touching them. However, there are limitations and side-effects to this. If the person he brings back to life stays alive for more than a minute, then someone else in the vicinity will die. Also, if Ned ever touches the person he brought back again, they will also die for good.

He teams up with a private investigator (McBride) later on in life and they go around collecting bounties by finding dead people, asking them who killed them, and then letting them die again before the minute is up. One of the most hilarious things about this show is how all the dead people who get brought back to life are just cool with it. They don't go around trying to figure out HOW it happened, they're just like "hey, what's up." That is pretty much the tone for the show, and I love it. The two leads are pretty cute together and the show does a good job of mixing the feel-good warm fuzzies with the weird and disturbing. Anyway, this is on my must-watch list for next season and it should be on yours too.

Oh, the image above shows the cast in Ned's place of work, he makes pies for a living at a place called "The Pie Hole."