Pushing Daisies is an American comedy drama television series created by Bryan Fuller that aired on ABC from October 3, 2007, to June 13, 2009. The series stars Lee Pace as Ned, a pie-maker with the ability to bring dead things back to life with his touch, an ability that comes with stipulations. Together with his formerly deceased childhood crush Chuck (Anna Friel), co-worker Olive Snook (Kristin Chenoweth), and private investigator Emerson Cod (Chi McBride), Ned uses his abilities to solve murder cases. The cast also includes Ellen Greene, Swoosie Kurtz and Field Cate, with Jim Dale acting as narrator.
Touted as a "forensic fairy tale", the series is known for its unusual visual style, eccentric production design, quirky characters, fast-paced dialogue and grotesque situations. The series often uses wordplay, metaphor and double entendre, while Jim Dale's narration is very similar to that of a fairy tale.
The series received critical acclaim, with praises going towards the cast, direction, writing, tone, and set design, and won numerous awards. The series received 17 Primetime Emmy Award nominations, with seven wins, including Outstanding Directing for a Comedy Series for Barry Sonnenfeld and Outstanding Supporting Actress in a Comedy Series for Kristin Chenoweth. TV Guide included the series in their 2013 list of 60 shows that were "Cancelled Too Soon".Roush, Matt (June 3, 2013). "Cancelled Too Soon" TV Guide. pp. 20 and 21 In 2015, Pushing Daisies was voted first in Esquires "TV Reboot Tournament" that asked fans to vote for the show they would most like to see return to television.
Plot Pushing Daisies centers on the life of Ned, a pie-maker gifted with the ability to reanimate the dead by touching them. If something is revived for more than one minute, a similar "life value" in the vicinity drops dead as a form of balance. If he touches the revived person or thing a second time, they die permanently.
As a child, he brings back his mother when she dies of an aneurysm. This causes the death of the father of his neighbor and childhood sweetheart, Charlotte "Chuck" Charles. That night, Ned's mother falls dead permanently when she kisses him goodnight. Chuck's agoraphobic aunts, Vivian and Lily, move in to care for her and Ned is sent by his father to a boarding school, separating the children.
Ned becomes a pie-maker and opens a restaurant called The Pie Hole. He is aided by waitress Olive Snook, who pines for him. The restaurant is failing financially when private investigator Emerson Cod accidentally discovers Ned's powers and offers a proposal: Ned will temporarily bring murder victims back to life, allowing Emerson to inquire about the circumstances of their death, quickly solve the case, and split the reward money with him.
The scheme succeeds without issue until they learn that Chuck, whom Ned has not seen since childhood, was murdered. Ned revives her, but he cannot bring himself to let her die permanently. Ned and Chuck fall in love again, and although they can never touch each other, she moves into his home. Chuck joins Ned and Emerson in investigating deaths for reward money, beginning with her own murder.
Over the course of the series, Emerson searches for his missing daughter who was taken away by her mother, a con woman. After meeting a publisher of pop-up books, he is inspired to create and publish his own pop-up book, hoping that his daughter will read the book and find her way back to him. Chuck struggles to keep the secret of her revival from Vivian and Lily, and Vivian and Lily slowly accept the death of their niece. It is discovered that Chuck is Lily's daughter from an infidelity with Chuck's father while he was engaged to Vivian. Ned revives Chuck's father to ask him questions, and Chuck tricks Ned into thinking he touched her father a second time so that she can keep her father in her life. Chuck's father and Ned have an antagonistic relationship, and Chuck's father asks her to travel the world with him. When she tells him she would rather remain in town, he leaves alone.
The epilogue reveals that Emerson's daughter returns to him, Chuck is able to let her mother Lily and aunt Vivian know she is alive, and Olive has fallen in love with Randy Mann, a taxidermist friend of the group, and opens The Intrepid Cow, a restaurant dedicated to macaroni and cheese.
Cast and characters
Main Lee Pace as Ned, also known as "The Piemaker", the owner of the Pie Hole restaurant who has the power to bring dead people back to life. Anna Friel as Charlotte "Chuck" Charles, Ned's childhood sweetheart, murdered, but brought back to life by Ned. Chi McBride as Emerson Cod, a private investigator and Ned's business partner. Kristin Chenoweth as Olive Snook, the Pie Hole waitress who is obsessed and hopelessly in love with Ned. Ellen Greene as Vivian Charles, Chuck's agoraphobic aunt. Swoosie Kurtz as Lily Charles and Vivian's sister and Chuck's agoraphobic birth mother, whom Chuck and Vivian thought (until the finale) was simply Chuck's other aunt. Jim Dale as the narrator of the series. Field Cate as Young Ned (season 2; recurring season 1), who appears in flashbacks.
Recurring Sy Richardson as the Coroner, the man in charge of the morgue where most of the murder victims' bodies are stored. Sammi Hanratty as Young Chuck, who appears in flashbacks. Stephen Root as Dwight Dixon, a mysterious man connected to both Ned's father and Chuck's father. David Arquette as Randy Mann, a taxidermist and client of the Pie Hole who is in love with Olive. Nicholas Khayyat as Eugene Mulchandani, Ned's childhood friend who appears in flashbacks. Diana Scarwid as Mother Superior, in charge of the monastery where Olive spends the first episodes of season two. Leyna Nguyen as a newscaster for Channel 9. Christine Adams as Simone Hundin, originally a murder suspect in season one, who becomes Emerson Cod's love interest. Jon Eric Price (season one) and George Hamilton (season two) as Ned's father Raúl Esparza as Alfredo Aldarisio, a traveling homeopathic antidepressant salesman. Josh Randall as Charles Charles, Chuck's father. The character was portrayed by several extras in season one. Paul Reubens as Oscar Vibenius, a murder suspect with an incredible sense of smell. Brad Grunberg as Lawrence and Louis Schatz, the man in charge of Chuck's funeral and his twin brother. Alex Miller and Graham Miller as Maurice and Ralston, Ned's twin half-brothers. Marc Raducci and Diana Costa as Olive's parents in flashbacks.
Guest
Production Development The series was greenlit and given a 13-episode order by ABC on May 11, 2007. On October 23, 2007, the show received a full season order. However, scripts for nine episodes were completed before the start of the 2007–2008 Writers Guild of America strike. Bryan Fuller reportedly made last-minute changes to the ninth episode to allow it to serve as a season finale, adjusting the episode to be a cliffhanger.
Because of the Writers Guild strike, the show completed just nine episodes of a 22-episode season. Instead of attempting to complete the first season, the writers planned to begin work on the second season with production resuming around March to June 2008. Although ABC picked Pushing Daisies up for the 2008–09 television season, when ratings quickly declined ABC opted not to order additional episodes beyond the second season's initial thirteen. By November 20, 2008, creator Bryan Fuller had confirmed that Pushing Daisies had been cancelled by ABC and expressed the possibility of wrapping up lingering plotlines in a comic book or movie sequel.
The last scheduled episode was broadcast in the United States on December 17, 2008, leaving three episodes unaired, although those episodes were screened at the 2009 Paley Fest. ABC was negotiating at one time to forfeit broadcast rights to the shows and make the unaired episodes available exclusively online, but announced on April 3, 2009 the final three episodes would be broadcast on ABC Saturdays at 10:00 pm beginning May 30. According to Chenoweth, these episodes do not provide a narrative conclusion to the series.
The final three episodes aired on ABC on successive Saturdays at 10:00 pm from Saturday, May 30, 2009 to June 13, 2009, having aired elsewhere around the world. In India, the last episode aired on February 27, 2009 as a world premiere. In Germany, the television network ProSieben showed the last three episodes of Pushing Daisies on March 4, 2009 ("Window Dressed to Kill") and March 11, 2009 ("Water and Power", "Kerplunk"). The final three episodes were also broadcast on ITV1 in the UK before their US debut.
The original concept of Pushing Daisies was rooted from Dead Like Me. The show's creator, Bryan Fuller, intended for Pushing Daisies to be a spinoff of Dead Like Me.
Visual design Production designer Michael Wylie told TV Guide that "My goal was a storybook come to life. I wanted everything to look almost like an illustration." He achieved this by "concentrating on conflicting patterns in different colors, particularly reds and oranges, but per director Barry Sonnenfeld, virtually no blues." Cinematographer Michael Weaver told Variety that he and the producers decided the visuals should "feel somewhere between Amélie and a Tim Burton film — something big, bright and bigger than life."
The distinctive storybook-esque style is continued within the overall design of the visual aspects. Circular background shapes, circular windows, and framing shots within circles was a theme seen consistently throughout the series. Symmetry is a common theme used in the visual style, and characters are often framed in windows, doors, or background props. A heavy use of patterns within a location was often used, where a similar pattern would be used in almost the entire location—the wallpaper, window blinds, bedsheets, pillows, furniture, and even clothing, such as Olive's apartment. The series would often use top-down perspectives and over-head shots would showcase its overall visual style. Regardless of the fact that the show focuses on murder investigations, the morgue is painted in candy-cane stripes and many outfits worn by the characters are vibrantly colored, bright, and cheery (for example, Olive's work uniforms alternate between bright orange and lime-green pinstriped dresses, and Emerson is often seen wearing shades of purple). Only Ned consistently wears black.
CGI is prominent in the series, with much use of blue screen technology (the shop window, similar set pieces and outdoor scenery outside often cast a blue halo tinge) and 3D set-extensions (streets, grass and landscape, the pie shop façade). The use of matte painting backdrops are used to complete the look.
Automobiles are often mint-condition vintage vehicles, though some newer vehicles were used (such as a mid-1990s Chevrolet Lumina APV minivan, a Hummer, or a 2006 Toyota Prius). Emerson drives a mid-1960s Lincoln Continental with suicide doors in new condition. Ned is seen driving an old, like-new Mercedes-Benz W108. Other characters drive decades-old vehicles as well. 1959 Cadillac Miller-Meteor cars in ambulance and hearse configurations figure frequently. Old-fashioned trolley cars can be seen in several shots panning in to the Pie Hole.
Quirkiness Critics noted the Pushing Daisies distinctive visual style. A NYTimes critic describes it as a "candy-colored, computer-generated bucolic scenery" and another describes a "Technicolor world that seems to exist at right angles to our own" and note "bizarre dialogue" and the use of alliterative and near-duplicate names of both characters (such as Deedee Duffield, Billy Balsam, the Darling Mermaid Darlings, Charles Charles, Charlotte "Chuck" Charles, John Joseph Jacobs, etc.) and locations (Boutique Travel Travel Boutique, Über Life Life Insurance, Coeur d'Coeurs, etc.). Some narration is done in the poetic style of Dr. Seuss.
Music