Not all my favorite pop-culture obsessions served as catalysts for introspection and helped me figure out and define myself. Some, like the television series Pushing Daisies, I simply fell in love with.
The show follows the adventures of Ned, the Pie Maker, who possesses a secret and magical ability: he can bring dead things back to life momentarily just by touching them. When he touches the reanimated person or animal again, they are dead forever. Of course, Ned's unique power also proves to be a curse, and because a natural balance exists between life and death, anything he brings back to life can only be alive again for one minute. Any longer than that and another nearby living creature dies. Intriguing, right? It only gets better from there. Emerson Cod, a private detective, discovers Ned's secret and blackmails Ned to help solve murder mysteries around town. It's the perfect premise. Ned can bring the victim back to life, ask her or him who the murderer was, and then send the person back to the land of the dead. No harm, no foul. BUT then Ned's childhood sweetheart, Charlotte 'Chuck' Charles, turns up dead. When confronted with having to make Chuck dead again, Ned could not bring himself to do it--even though keeping her alive meant the two star-crossed lovers could never touch. Chuck's discovery of her untimely death and subsequent un-death, her eccentrically agoraphobic synchronized swimming star aunts, and the always pining-for-Ned character of Olive Snook eventually lead to the unraveling of a larger, over-arching narrative spanning the two short seasons of Pushing Daisies. In a word, brilliant. Filled with quirky characters, over-the-top murder mysteries, and engaging storylines, not to mention Jim Dale's perfect narration, Pushing Daisies remains one of the most whimsically original and beautifully designed shows I've ever seen. I'm not bitter that the writer's strike interrupted the show's first season in 2007 and seemingly jettisoned its momentum, ultimately leading to the show's cancellation midway through season two in 2009. No, not bitter. Not. One. Bit.
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I am a self-proclaimed pop culture geek and list enthusiast who is celebrating the big four-zero by counting down the most important, influential, and favorite music, movies, television shows, books, and video games of my life so far. Categories
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