Probably, you didn't expect this at #1. But it is. Smartly described as a "forensic fairy tale" by its maker, Brian Fuller. That's a perfect label for this whimsical masterpiece, which combines the best aspects of CSI (the mystery), Wonderfalls (the whimsicality), and... uniqueness, without maintaining the bad elements of them, like CSI's taking itself too seriously and adding needless gore, and uniqueness's sometimes unintentional idiocracy, and Wonderfall's... well, there was nothing wrong with Wonderfalls. Just as there is nothing wrong with Pushing Daisies.
But all good things come to a violent end prematurely, and moreso with TV. ABC axed their perfect show because Nielsen's outdated rating system didn't favour it, and its buildup was messed with by the writers' strike. Bullcrap. This is the best show on TV since Seinfeld. The reason I can still say it's current is because there are still 3 episodes left, jammed between ratings seasons at terrible timeslots. (starting Saturday, 30 May! Hooray in a way, but also not hooray because after this all I'll have left is the collector's box set that I'll buy the day it comes out.) We're not sure yet, but it will either be replaced by a puke-inducing primetime soap opera à la Grey's Anatomy, or two puke-inducing comedies à la 2½ Men or How I Met Your Mother. Gross! This is such a good show, it will be a shame to find out what they put in its timeslot. They have Rescued Scrubs there now, which is nowhere near the originality of how it used to be because of ABC's famed stinginess and terribleness. (Is that a word?) But it won't last long. Probably half the fans think it's cancelled forever because it left NBC, and 8.00/20.00 Wednesday is a death slot.
But anyway. Pushing Daisies is a comedy-drama-romance-mystery-fantasy-other things-hybrid about Ned (Lee Pace), a skilled piemaker who has the ability to make dead things come alive by touching them. But this amazing (or terrible?) ability comes with caveats: the things he makes alive must die again within a minute, which he can do by touching them, otherwise something of equal cosmic significance (in humans' case, other people) will die in their place. (This is why he makes such good pies-- he can revive dead fruit to perfect ripeness; the fruit is replaced by flowers, cosmically.) Sounds serious, but really, it's a fun show. He finds this out when he is 12ish and his mother has a stroke and dies on the floor, and he revives her, and as a consequence, the girl next door (Anna Friel, character name Charlotte "Chuck," who he has a crush on)'s father drops dead spontaneously. But his mother dies again when they kiss goodnight. He also revives his dog. 20ish years later, his dog is still alive, and he finds out that the girl next door has been killed on a cruise ship. So he revives her, and they fall in love again, and the funeral director dies. The caveat interferes; they can never touch again. So, they both work at their restaurant, ThePie Hole, along with Olive (Kristin Chenoweth), who is chatty, happy, and hopelessly in love with Ned. Together with private investigator Emerson Cod (brilliantly played by Chi McBride), they solve mysteries on the side by reviving the victims and asking them who killed them, and splitting the reward money. Also featured are Chuck's introverted, polar-opposite, personality-disordered aunts Vivian (Ellen Greene, who plays a brilliantly innocent part, like an older version of her part in Little Shop of Horrors) and Lily (Swoosie Kurtz), who think that she is still dead. They receive mail-order pies from the Pie Hole, where Chuck bakes in antidepressants for them, as they have depression but don't take their pills. This season, we found out that Lily was actually Chuck's mother, and Vivian doesn't know this. Also, the perfectly dry narrator Jim Dale adds something to the show.
In a quip, watch it. Before it's gone forever.
UPDATE: (17 June 2009) At time of now, when you are currently reading this im jetzt, it is gone forever unless you catch reruns or the DVD release.
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