 "Photo: Courtesy Photo")
Picture Tim Burton's stagecraft meets Willy Wonka's color and you have the scene that sets Pushing Daisies, the new ABC series that premiered Oct. 3. With a soft voice-over narration by Jim Dale, we get a comforting start to a show that revolves around death. Showing a different side, Pushing Daisies incorporates an amusing way of bringing back the dead. In the series opener, Ned (Lee Pace) has a 'power' that showcases his talent of bringing people back to life by only touching them. The catch is that after 10 seconds if he doesn't touch them again, someone in close proximity dies instead, while the original person gets to stay alive. Yet, if the original person is touched again, they die also. This happens to his mother within the first 10 minutes of the show. She has a brain spasm of some sort, he touches her, brings her back and figures out he has this so-called 'power.' Yet, she soon kisses him to sleep, so in turn, touching him and she dies… again. Sounding a little complicated? It is… yet in a kooky kind of way, it works.
Many years later, Ned soon finds his childhood love, Chuck (Anna Friel), who happened to be murdered by an unknown killer. By using his power and through Ned's newfound detective work with Emerson Cod (Chi McBride), he brings her back to life…permanently, in turn for the funeral director's life. Basically the plot of Pushing Daisies revolves around Ned and Chuck's not-being-able-to-touch love relationship and Ned's detective work with Cod.
With a quirky cast of characters, Pushing Daisies fills the room with not only color in the scenery, but in it's acting as well with newbies, Pace and Friel. Pushing Daisies was written specifically for Pace, and both Pace and Friel, who are known for their stage work, both bring a calming, lovable sense to their characters. How long they will be able to keep their non-touch relationship in tact, we shall see. Chuck could fade easily into the backlight of the story line or she could rise to the occasion and work with it. It's all in how Friel decides to embark on it.
Side characters include Olive Snook (Kristin Chenoweth), the lone waitress at Ned's place of work "The Pie Hole," where because the fruit can never go bad (Ned can bring it back to life-remember) Ned holds a very successful business. Chenoweth fits in perfectly as her characters are always so kooky, but still lovable. She is so bubbly and petite, she makes any plot shine brighter. McBride plays Ned's sidekick in crime… grabbing Ned for his power to use for his own greed on unsolved "reward-ing" cases. Now, I normally love McBride in any role he attempts, but this isn't his best. He doesn't fit the offbeat plot of the show. He is just kind of there…not doing a whole lot but complaining about Ned and Chuck.
It's a colorful, deathly weird life that Ned lives, but it seems to be working. For how long, we shall find out. If ABC can hold the story line for more than a couple weeks, I think that Daisies won't die away as quickly as many other Fall premiers surely will (coughcough "Cavemen"). Hopefully it can last longer than 10 seconds before it dies off though.
Check out Pushing Daisies every Wednesday at 8p.m. on ABC.
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