Saturday, December 21, 2013

Pushing Daisies Season 1: Disk 1:

Episode 1: Pie-lette
For those of you who know who Jim Dale is, you will completely understand what I am about to say. When I heard the dulcet tones of Mr. Dale as the narrator, this show could have been about anything or anyone in any style and I would have watched it and enjoyed it just to hear him. If you don't know who Jim Dale is, he narrates audiobooks, as well as television shows it seems. I highly recommend you listen to him narrating The Night Circus by Erin Morgenstern and the Harry Potter series by J. K. Rowling.
But, it turns out this show is totally sweet and has a bedtime story quality about it. It's not cluttered with things you don't need to know for the story to make sense. The premise is very interesting and one that I've seen, how shall we say it, borrowed for other programs. In the other shows I could tell it was being lifted from somewhere and now I know. I like the sparseness of the story and the quirkiness of the characters. We'll see if that can last.

Episode 2: Dummy
I've noticed that this show is often about cleavage. Or as Chuck says, her "upper body". It reminds me of how young boys view the world, kind of fixated on breasts but not knowing why or their importance just wanting to look.
For two people who can't touch each other, Ned and Chuck lead an awfully close life. Kissing through body bags and saran wrap is very romcom, which I suppose this show is. This episode is also about hideous looking cars that run on distilled dandylioin juice. And corpses used as crash test dummies. And boobs. Yet it somehow remained almost innocent.
Digby, Ned's dog was the first creature that Ned reanimated and the first one that he left alive permanently. That happened more than 19 years before the present day in which the show takes place. Digby looks the same as he did 19 years earlier. Does this mean that Chuck will not age either? Does this mean that they are immortal? And what about the frogs and insects that we see Ned reanimating when he was a boy? Are they still hopping or flying around?

Episode 3: The Fun in Funeral
The secret is out and Chuck now knows how Ned's power works, meaning that she knows someone had to die for her to be alive again. The pair have to confront and talk to the man that died for Chuck to be brought back. Chuck insist that Ned has to apologize and that she has to thank him for her gift.
Olive, after talking with Chuck's aunts, realizes who Chuck is and presumably just takes it as a matter of course that Chuck is indeed the murdered tourist who has been all over the news. Because that is the most obvious answer.
This show really has a YA feel about it. If Ned and Chuck were only teen-agers it would definitely be YA. That label works for me. I just hope they keep this tone going for the whole show.

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