DVD Review: ‘Pushing Daisies: The Complete Second Season’ is Romantic, Beautiful TV

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CHICAGO – The minute I saw “Pushing Daisies,” one of the very first notes I took while watching the pilot was “this is never going to last”. It was great, but it was also too quirky, strange, romantic, and hard to put into a definable box, making it unlikely to find an audience. Now that the second-and-final season of “Pushing Daisies” is on DVD, we can look back and see the beauty of the brief time we had with this great show and wonder what might have been.

DVD Rating: 4.0/5.0

The same reasons that “Pushing Daisies” couldn’t find an audience are why it will be a beloved cult hit, a show held high on the “brilliant-but-canceled” lists of the future.

First, TV audiences don’t like to be told what to watch. They like to discover their favorite shows on their own. And there was such unanimous praise for “Daisies” before it even aired that I think viewers had impossible expectations. The show was an immediate victim of its own praise.

Pushing Daisies: The Complete Second Season was released on DVD and Blu-Ray on July 21st, 2009.”
Photo credit: Warner Brothers Home Video

There’s also a low chance of a show that’s as hard to pin down as “Pushing Daisies” finding a huge audience. Is it a comedy? A drama? A romantic fable about a guy who can bring people back from the dead? I truly wish more viewers had found “Pushing Daisies,” but I’m not surprised that it didn’t connect.

The writer’s strike didn’t help. When the strike hit, ABC chose to shelf a few new shows until the Fall instead of bringing them back for a few episodes post-strike. This was a disastrous strategy, as there were no new episodes of shows like “Daisies,” a series just starting to build a following with only 9 aired episodes, for nearly a year. By the time “Pushing Daisies” came back in October of 2008, it was dead in the water, earning half the viewers of season one. Only ten episodes aired with the final three burned off this summer.

Pushing Daisies: The Complete Second Season was released on DVD and Blu-Ray on July 21st, 2009.” Photo credit: Warner Brothers Home Video

The great thing about modern television is that “Pushing Daisies” will come back from the dead on DVD. This is the kind of show that fans will lend to other fans and the cult of “Daisies” will undeniably build. Just as more people claim to watch “Arrested Development,” “Wonderfalls,” and “Firefly” than ever did in their broadcast airings, “Pushing Daisies” will live on. TV this good doesn’t die.

If you’re unfamiliar, start with season one and come back for season two after you burn your way through that excellent release. Lee Pace plays Ned the Pie Maker, a man with a witching finger for waking the dead. He touches them once and they wake up, but if he doesn’t touch them again and put them back to eternal sleep within a minute that someone else will die. Oh, and if that happens, he can never touch the “undead” again or they will, of course, die again.

That’s what happened with Chuck (Anna Friel), the love of his life from childhood and a girl who Ned must admire from afar because if he touches her again, he’ll lose her forever. Ned uses his powers with private investigator Emerson Cod (Chi McBride) to solve crimes in the pursuit of reward money. Yeah, it’s ANOTHER show about a magical pie-maker who seeks justice with his private dick partner and gorgeous undead girlfriend. No matter what you think of “Pushing Daisies,” no one can say it wasn’t original.

And the originality of “Pushing Daisies” extended to every element of the production. Film-caliber art direction, beautiful scores, and writing that was some of the best on television. “Daisies” was consistently clever. And it didn’t hurt that it featured two of the best female performances on TV in the charming Friel and the fantastic Kristen Chenoweth, nominated for an Emmy for Best Supporting Actress for both seasons.

The season two DVD of “Pushing Daisies” presents the 13 episodes in a matted widescreen presentation that’s merely so-so. We were hoping to cover the release on Blu-Ray, but copies weren’t available. If we were you, someone interested in buying season two of a visually sumptuous show like “Pushing Daisies,” do it in HD.

Special features on “Pushing Daisies: The Complete Second Season” include “The Master Pie Maker: Inside the Mind of Creator Bryan Fuller,” “From Over to Table: Crafting a Script Idea into Reality,” “Secret Sweet Ingredients: Spotlight on Composer Jim Dooley’s Work,” and “Add a Little Magic: Executing Some Giant-Sized Visual Effects”.

By BRIAN TALLERICO Content Director HollywoodChicago.com brian@hollywoodchicago.com