One of my favorite series of all time is over. After a lousy two seasons that weren’t even proper seasons. The first season got cut short as the writer’s block ended it horribly off kilter. And then the show was canceled for who knows what reason?
Pushing Daisies was a show that didn’t take itself seriously and had a ball doing it. Ned, the Pie Maker and proprietor of The Pie Hold, had the power to bring the dead back to life with a touch, and then return them to death forever with another touch. The catch? If the ‘dead’ stays alive for more than a minute, another life of approximately equal wight will die in its place. (ie: person for person, crow for pigeon, cockroach for bee)
Enter Charlotte Charles, or Chuck to her friends, Ned’s childhood friend who died at sea. Ned brought her back to find out how she died, a lucretive business he is in with Emerson Cod, (More on him later.) and found himself unable to lose her again. But now, even though they’re in love, they can’t touch lest Chuck return to the dead.
Add Emerson Cod, a PI with a love of money, a secret daughter, Olive the waitress who is in love with Ned, horses, and breaking into song to express her feelings, Chuck’s two estranged aunts, the retired Darling Mermaid Darlings, who have social phobias and an obsession with cheese, along with a wonderful supporting cast of other ridiculously colorful characters and you have a show that…well just shouldn’t have been canceled.
Spoilers past this point!
So, while I don’t blame the writers for the ending of the show, and they did their best to wrap up as many of the dangling storylines in the last three episodes as they could, so much was left with no answer. Here is where I will list the questions and/or observations I have about the show that will forever be left unaddressed.
1) Digby, the golden retriever that Ned had when a child, who was with him through thick and thin, even after being run over by a car. Though the show tells us how old Digby was when he died, I don’t remember it, still he was fully grown when Ned was 10 and is still alive in present story not even looking old. This brings up my suspicion that whoever Ned brings back to life stops aging and/or is possibly unable to die. Most of the people Ned brings back have died of some condition that made living impossible, yet they are ‘alive’ for the minute he gives them. Are they immune to the damage inflicted before they’re ‘alive-again’? They are never in pain, just sometimes shocked. I was fully expecting an episode where Chuck got shot, or otherwise should’ve been dead, but ended up no worse for the wear.
2) Sewer smelling guy (I’m horrible with names) seemed like he was going to be important. He was able to tell something was wrong by the smell of Chuck and Digby, but with the writer’s strike I think the impact he was going to have on the series was cut short. How much does he really know?
3) Ned and Olive went off a cliff and it was reviled that it was Ned’s father who saved them. The same father who stuck his child in a boarding school after his mother’s death and then went off and got another family. Does he know anything about this power? Could it be inherited? Why would he abandon his child and just get another family, who he then in turn abandoned as well.
4) Chuck tricked Ned into keeping her 10 years dead father alive. More spunky than Chuck, he tries to convince her to leave Ned and eventually leaves the main cast to be on his own. (This adds to the suspicion about the no more aging thing, as 10-year-old corpses usually don’t just…stabilize?) It was clear he loved Chuck, so there’s no way he would just disappear forever.
5) Then of course are the cliff hangers they ended with on the last episode. Chuck reveling herself as alive to her mother and aunt. (Seriously, what is that going to do for their tour to Europe?) Emerson having his ‘daughter’? find him. Olive and her new relationship with the taxidermy guy. (Of whom I would not have minded seeing more.)
Either way, RIP to a fabulous show, the like of which we will probably never see again.
