As much as any show this season, Pushing Daisies exudes the sweet smell of success.
It may not be a ratings blockbuster, but this wildly endearing fantasy is a consistent time slot winner, a huge achievement for a show many feared would be a quick cult flop. What's better, it has lived up to the enormous creative promise of its pilot, producing clever, shimmering, lovely episodes that have expanded our knowledge of and affection for the characters.
That string continues tonight with a gently comic exploration of our desire to feel safe, warm and loved — and the sometimes dangerous steps we'll take to achieve that goal. Like, for example, insulating ourselves from real life, the road chosen by the author of a scratch-and-sniff version of The Secret (Christopher Sieber). Now it seems someone wants to kill him, and the top suspect is a rival olfactory expert — amusingly played by a laid-back Paul Reubens.
There are new relationship issues for Ned and Chuck — Lee Pace and Anna Friel, as terrific a TV couple as you could wish for — and a welcome moment of uplift for the aunts. Plus, we get to see another side of Emerson and the invaluable Chi McBride, who provides just enough nasty skepticism to keep the show from becoming cloying.
Daisies is an intense pleasure, and intensity isn't for everyone. But in a world where pessimism seems the order of the day, Daisies is one tiny bastion of optimism — and that would seem to be a garden worth cultivating.
Wake up and smell the flowers. (4/4 stars)
A hands-off attitude lifts Daisies duo..
by Bill Keveney
It could be fall's most touching TV romance, except it can't be. In ABC's fantastical Pushing Daisies (tonight, 8 ET/PT), a touch from Ned (Lee Pace, Soldier's Girl) brings first love Chuck (Anna Friel, The Jury) back to life, but a second touch will send her to the great beyond permanently. Oklahoma native Pace, 28, and Friel, 31, who hails from England, talk to USA TODAY about the first-year critical hit and time-slot winner (10.7 million viewers).
Q: From your banter, you seem to
get along great. Could you engage in this romantic pairing if you didn't?
Pace: I don't know if you could get the specific thing that Chuck and
Ned have if you didn't like each other as much as we do.
Friel: I'd be surprised. I've seen really great love stories and then
heard through the grapevine that they actually despised each other. I don't
think I could do that, if you're working 16-17 hours a day, five days a
week. … I see more of Lee than I do my daughter (2-year-old Gracie), my
partner (actor David Thewlis) and my family.
Q: What do you think of the central
conceit — one touch, life; second touch, death?
Pace: It's sensible for Chuck to move as far away from Ned as
possible. They shouldn't be in the same room together. But they can't live
without each other.
Q: To avoid contact, pie-maker Ned
and Chuck have touched through beekeeper suits, plastic casings, rubber
gloves and kitchen wrap. How does it feel to kiss through plastic?
Friel: It's so hot. I highly recommend it. One of the most sexual
experiences of my life (she says, laughing). The same with the plastic sacks
in the car. That was thicker. Each time we do it, the plastic is getting
thinner and thinner. We started with industrial strength and now it's going
to super fine.
Q: Do you ever accidentally touch
while shooting scenes?
Friel: We've done that about three times. I have to admit I'm far
worse than Lee is. … I'm entirely a tactile person. As soon as I get to
work, I like to give people a big hug. So, for me, it's really frustrating.
I sometimes don't notice and touch Lee and he says, "Anna, you're dead."
Yeah, that's not good.
Q: Can Ned and Chuck go on not
touching indefinitely?
Friel: I always wondered how (the writers) were going to do that. The
more I thought about it, I would think of my grandparents. They didn't kiss
and didn't touch for a whole two years before they got together. I think
it's a throwback to special romance. There's also the old Cary Grant and
Hepburn movies. You watch the entire movie and then at the end of it,
there's a kind of tiny peck. We hold onto those elements.
Q: Could your characters ever have
sex, other than in a dream or fantasy sequence?
Friel: Unless they invent a giant body condom, I don't think they're
going to anytime soon.
Pace: There is something kind of sexy, that they can't touch. There
are very grown-up moments of "Oh, boy, it'd be nice to …"
Q: Will there be strains on the
relationship?
Friel: We promise not to frustrate you, the audience. We will never,
ever play the same note. We do hit rocky patches. There's a whole story line
about that.
Pace: They're complicated adults. You've got Ned, who's very
contained and has a real hard time with any type of connection with people.
Then you've got Chuck, who's full of life and gets this second chance, and
she doesn't want to waste it. There's kind of a conflicting point of view
there.
Q: Will the attraction of Pie Hole
waitress Olive (Kristin Chenoweth) to Ned complicate life?
Pace: Olive is a real troublemaker. She definitely throws a wrench
into it. That conflict heats up.
Q: How does world-weary private eye
Emerson Cod (Chi McBride) affect Chuck and Ned's romance?
Pace: He keeps it from getting too cutesy, me and Anna mooning at
each other for the entire hour.
Friel: As an actor, Chi listens very much. So he can throw something
very different into the mix.
Pace: He's got such great timing, and he's such a great leader on
set.
Friel: He calls me Anna Banana or Mama. I call him Big Daddy.
Q: What do you know about baking
pies?
Pace: I've learned more than I ever thought I would about pies.
Friel: He can't believe that in England we have fish pie.
Pace: They will make a pie out of anything.
Friel: You know why, though, Lee, because pies were invented for
miners. When you were a miner, it was a pastry that kept it in a casing so
the food wouldn't get dirty.
Pace: Coal pie.
Friel: Yeah, coal pie. I'll bring you some of that when I go to
England.
Pace: Pies are very hard to make. I'm still on graham-cracker crust,
filling it with whipped cream and Butterfingers. It's very hard, but it's
not as difficult as touching something back to life.
Q: Though the series has been
picked up for the full season, how does coming to an unplanned stop after
nine episodes because of the writers' strike (production of current episodes
ends Friday) affect it?
Friel: Now, it's getting very exciting. (The final episode in
production has) a lot of cliffhangers. I want to know what's going to
happen. You can't leave it there.
Pace: I'm praying the strike doesn't last that long. I hope they come
to a settlement sooner rather than later, because a lot of people are
getting hurt by this.
Q: What's coming up?
Friel: We've got Molly Shannon (Nov. 28). She opens a rival shop.
Pace: She and Mike White are brother and sister, and they open a
candy shop called Bitter Sweets across the street from The Pie Hole, and she
knocks out the "l" and the "e" on the sign that says The Pie Hole, so it
says The Pie Ho. (Tonight's episode) is one of the funniest we've done. A
woman is killed reading a scratch-and-sniff book. We're all trying to figure
out how she was killed, and we start investigating the man who invented the
book, a smelling expert.
Friel: Paul Reubens (Pee-wee Herman) is his rival, and he has such an
extreme sense of smell that he can smell something on Chuck. And he can't
quite figure out what it is.