Curl up in your comfiest blanket and prop yourself with a stack of soft pillows. Close your eyes, put a smile on your face, and let yourself drift back to that time in childhood when storybooks carried you gently off to dreamland.
Are you there yet?
Open your eyes, but don’t move. Just watch “Pushing Daisies.”
ABC’s peculiar new television series "Pushing Daisies" is both a magical and mysterious show to watch--an ineffable, playful hour-long something that reaches deep into your heart and soul and past and shows you how it’s possible to be at once the delighted child, the love-struck adolescent, and the confused, quirky adult struggling to be good and ethical and responsible, yet who is tantalized and tempted by the enchantingly forbidden, beguiled by the aroma of a just-made apple-pie-with-gouda-crust sitting on someone else’s windowsill to cool.
If only we could take just a tiny slice....
"Pushing Daisies" protagonist Ned is this trinity of persons--the wide-eyed child, the infatuated teenaged boy, and the tormented, delighted, and delightful man. Charlotte (nick-named Chuck), his childhood sweetheart, is that delicious pie in the window that he longs to steal away. Ned and Chuck are adults in love faced with impossible restrictions for expressing their innocent, yet powerful wave of emotion (if Ned touches Chuck, she’ll die. Literally), so impossible that their romantic negotiations become the stuff of candy-coated fairytale love topped off with an eccentric, sweet-natured humor.
The standard path for building romantic tension between two lead characters in a television series is as follows: (1) discovery of interest (which often can last a season or more), (2) the realization of romantic desire, but often for a painfully short episode or two, at which point (3) something shows up to derail the relationship, until (4) the series rinses and repeats this formula.
But "Pushing Daisies" laughs at this method (though the show enlists a brilliantly cast Kristin Chenoweth as Olive Snook in the role of "romantic complication"). The show’s very essence is its childlike, innocent open-book approach to emotion. It wears its heart on its sleeve from moment one. Ned and Chuck are lovers at first sight, from the moment they shared a sweet, kiss as children, only to part for many years and then lay eyes on each other again as adults and find that their love is just as pure and alive (so to speak) as if they’d never lost each other in life or in death (at least in the case of Chuck). Their affection abides without so much as a kiss or even a touch--at least not without gloves. Which makes the spontaneity of Chuck planting passionate kisses on a surprised Ned between the safe coating of plastic wrap (so she doesn’t die) all the sweeter and more hilarious.
Love grows from mere knowledge of each other’s existence, from stilted, on and off again whispers and glances, from batting eyelashes and shiny childhood memories. What a strange play between the innocent and the erotic!
If deep down you are a romantic at heart, yet you like your romance doled out with the sensibility and slightly dark touch of an indie film (emphasis on the slightly when it comes to the dark) and the stylized finesse and musicality of a movie like “Down With Love” (go out and rent it if you haven’t already seen it), then “Pushing Daisies” is a television MUST this season.
How the series plays out this odd, intensely romantic set of circumstances will be interesting to watch. It has me wondering: What it is it exactly that appeals about this highly-stylized, odd-ball storybook tale? What does it say about what we as adults long for with all its quirky romantic moments, temptations, and eccentricities?
A bizarrely romantic take on abstinence, if you ask me.
Add to Del.icio.us
Add to Technorati
Add to Digg
Add to Newsvine
Add to Facebook
Add to StumbleUpon
Subscribe
When I heard about Pushing Daisies, it sounded very unique an fun, which is my kind of show. I like something refreshingly different and unusual. Since I also watch Heroes, Lost, Journeyman, Torchwood...the whole fantasy and Sci Fi aspect doesn't bother me a bit. My wife, however thinks the show is pretty stupid. So, that tells me that the show will probably never be a huge hit because it will not appeal to a lot of people. The first thing that struck me about the show when I watched the first episode was the brilliant colors! I have never seen such a colorful show! It was like when I saw Oz in color for the first time, (Having watched The Wizard of Oz on a black and white TV for years)and suddenly going from the dull black and white to the glorious colors of Munchkinland. Yeah...I'm just a big kid. I still watch those kid shows after all these years. So far...this show has been fun and entertaining and even cracks me up at times. The characters are over the top and fun to watch. I find the whole premise of the show very clever and I hope it keeps up the good work and stays for a long time.
You left out one of the ost significant characters, the narrator - voiced by the great Jim Dale. He is interpreter, explicator and even conscience of all the characters. Without him the show would have quickly dissoled into another quirky Dramedy. The erotic element is played out beautifully by the Charles sisters and Chenoworth. The wonderful sense of anticipation within the erotic sensibility is played out in Chuck and Ned's close-but-never-touching relationship.
This series has everything from Harry Potter's voice, to the Elmore Leonard's sense of character, the gorryness of the CSI's, and the curent fascination with food, especially pies (as in the underappreciated film, "Waitress"). The actors are all greater beacuse of their parts, even Chenoworth.
I vote this the best of the new series on all of TV. For that reason, and that I am not sure they can keep up the energy and oddity, I expect it will not make more than 2 seasons. But then, "My Name is Earl" has lasted and endures, so there is hope.
Post a Comment
By submitting these comments, I agree to the beliefnet.com terms of service, rules of conduct and privacy policy (the "agreements"). I understand and agree that any content I post is licensed to beliefnet.com and may be used by beliefnet.com in accordance with the agreements.