You Don't Need a Mortician to Know Where This Joke is Heading
Pushing Daisies - Season One (2007)
rating: 2 out of 5 cravats
on DVD from Netflix
Although the premise is tailor-made for a modern day fairy tale, the truth is that the week-to-week "mysteries" add nothing to the protagonist's first sad revelaton: two people who love one another more than anything can never touch. They can be close - share bedrooms and meals - but it becomes a kind of mockery over time. Instead, the would-be lovers concentrate on distractions. He bakes pies and she changes her cute spring dresses, her hair more unruly with each passing hour.
Yes, it's a home run pilot, but that's why Pushing Daisies would have made a better movie than a TV show. Frankly, Ned's "gift" is a gimmick once you get past his love for Chuck. The man who can bring back the dead joins a detective to help close the book on unsolved murders, but each new episode, more contrived than the last, can barely muster enough Amélie-wattage preciousness to distract anyone from Ned and Chuck's core emotional issue for forty-five minutes. There are aunts, of course - always eccentric aunts in stories like these - and flashbacks, and one or two unintentional lies, but it's a candy shop. Too sweet.
rating: 2 out of 5 cravats
on DVD from Netflix
Although the premise is tailor-made for a modern day fairy tale, the truth is that the week-to-week "mysteries" add nothing to the protagonist's first sad revelaton: two people who love one another more than anything can never touch. They can be close - share bedrooms and meals - but it becomes a kind of mockery over time. Instead, the would-be lovers concentrate on distractions. He bakes pies and she changes her cute spring dresses, her hair more unruly with each passing hour.
Yes, it's a home run pilot, but that's why Pushing Daisies would have made a better movie than a TV show. Frankly, Ned's "gift" is a gimmick once you get past his love for Chuck. The man who can bring back the dead joins a detective to help close the book on unsolved murders, but each new episode, more contrived than the last, can barely muster enough Amélie-wattage preciousness to distract anyone from Ned and Chuck's core emotional issue for forty-five minutes. There are aunts, of course - always eccentric aunts in stories like these - and flashbacks, and one or two unintentional lies, but it's a candy shop. Too sweet.
posted by NPK at 4:09 PM
<< Home