Ned has an incredible ability — he can reanimate dead things. However, the gift is bittersweet because if he happens to touch the reanimate once again, it goes back to being dead… forever. Worse still, if he reanimates something for longer than a minute, it stays alive, but something else nearby dies. Lonely and afraid of his power, Ned finds comfort in baking pies — after all he can take dead fruit and freshen it up, right? — and opens his own restaurant. It isn’t long after that a Private Investigator learns about Ned’s surreal ability and convinces Ned to work with him to solve murder mysteries, and subsequently share the cash reward. All is well and good until Ned is confronted with the corpse of his long-lost childhood love, and first kiss. Unable to bring himself to put her back to rest, he keeps her alive, and thus sets into motion the most complicated and perilous relationship that’s ever been. Together, they’ll have to work to keep her reanimation quiet — lest Ned’s secret gets out — and solve a slew of murders along the way.
The second and final season of ABC’s Pushing Daisies is every bit as good as the first and then some. Where the first season was nearly sliced in half due to the writers strike — and a bit too formulaic for my taste — the second got more screen time (13 episodes instead of 9) to explore the characters and their respective pasts, presents and futures. Also, since much of the narrative staging and groundwork was laid in the first season, the second needed only to focus on tying up loose ends and bringing the show to a satisfactory and complete close — which could not have been an easy task.
While many people were angered, distressed, depressed and downright confused when Pushing Daisies was canceled, I honestly don’t think the show needed or even warranted another season. I don’t mean to sound callous, I just happen to think that the show would have been stretched thin if it had gone on much longer. If anything, I think that the show would have benefited greatly from an even longer episode order, perhaps to the tune of twenty episodes or more for the second season. The reason being is that this season — while exceptional, and better than the first — is far from complete as it is now. The front half is perfectly paced and deep — prior to cancellation — and the second half is a bit haphazard, rushed and incomplete.
Again, to the credit of the creative team behind the show, it was an impossible task to tie off every narrative thread within the available time frame, and I think they did the absolute best they could given the circumstances. Still though, I was left wanting more. Some surprise characters — which I’ll refrain from mentioning — appear, never to be mentioned again, and the ultimate resolution/conclusion comes and goes without much ado, but barring all of these minor complaints I still couldn’t help but feel like the show ended on a perfect note even if there were more than a few plot holes that need filling in.
And as far as filling is concerned, there’s been talk about a Pushing Daisies comic that’s primed to satisfy the appetites of fans everywhere, and give the concept a fresh and boundless canvas to weave its morbidly delectable story. With any luck, the comic might actually attract a slew of new fans while also providing ample closure to the myriad of storylines floating around within the Pushing Daisies universe.
In the end, it’s terribly sad to lose such an inventive, original and entertaining show while other inferior, mindless crap pollutes the airwaves, but I also feel that it was the right choice, just not the right time. If only the show had been gifted with a couple more episodes, perhaps there wouldn’t be a need for a comic, or a movie or some other narrative extension, maybe the story could have been fully fleshed out and absolute. But there’s no sense in worrying about things we can’t change. The second season of Pushing Daisies might be missing a few ingredients, but its every bit as enjoyable and entertaining as I had hoped it might be and I’m extremely grateful — as all Pushing Daisies fans should be — that it was finished at all.
No comments:
Post a Comment