Pushing Daisies

Pushing Daisies is the story of a pie maker who has a unique ability from birth of being able to bring the dead to life. He can only do this for 1 minute, any longer and something of equal size, within a short area of him must die and take its place. The example of this given in the show is at the start when his mother dies and the pie maker brings her back to life only to have the neighbours Dad take her place in death. However after bring someone back to life, in this case his mother, he can have no physical contact with them in any way or else they return to being dead. Using his ability to talk to the dead for a minute with no consequences, with the help of a friend a private detective they go about asking murder victims who killed them in order to claim a cash reward for doing so.

The story line tells of how the pie maker brings his childhood sweetheart back from the dead at the beginning to find out who murdered her. However he is unable to touch her again and send her back to the grave as he realises how much he loves her.
He decides to let her live and break his sacred rule of going over the minute but as a consequence the pie maker he can no longer touch her or her him, as she will return to death immediately if they do. The two fall madly in love but can never touch. Each week there is a different murder that the pie maker, his girlfriend and the private detective solve by bring the dead back to life for a brief moment and asking them who killed them or what clues they remember.

The show is so French in many ways. First off the set itself looks like a Parisian world, with roof tops and French balconies. The quirky aspects of each character and the slightly dark subtext in a jovial way remind us of a Jean-Pierre Jeunet (director of “Amelie” and “Delicatessen”) films. Even certain scenes have been heavily influenced by Michel Gondry (director of “Science of Sleep” and “Eternal Sunshine Spotless Mind”) with the use of stop motion and clay animation.

Firstly what I like about the show is the fact it is one of the most atheistic show I’ve ever seen. Films always have religious aspect to it even if it is devoid of religion, as this makes a statement about religion in itself. Pushing Daisies, brushes over the matter of religion so casually that this show would and could never be made at any other time period other than now. The Spanish inquisisan would have tortured its makers good, not out of its anti religious sentiments but out of its total casual portrayal of a world with no God. Even when characters are brought back from the dead, it is more like taking someone out of a coma, with no memories of heaven, hell, just the moments before their death.

The negative things about the show are numerous. The jokes are poor and some of the characters such as the pie maker are too boring and nice to have a main role, in my opinion. The story line relies on the “will they won’t they” aspect I’ve touched on in my other blogs, in order to draw the audience in. The show however fails on many levels as with each episode you question half way through why you are watching it. The repetitive story lines of solving cases each week that seems identical to previous ones gets annoying.
The reason it gets a better mark despite all of my criticism is that it’s an American knock off of a French film, a poor one to be fair but unique enough and quirky enough that it fit into the category of a show you could watch with your girlfriend happily. It gets a 3 out of 5.

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