Oh Jiminy Jehoshaphat! I went out on a limb for you people. A tree limb, jutting from a cliff with my limbs dangling over certain death. So don’t leave me dangling with Dwight’s disappearance.

In a break from format, tonight’s episode of Pushing Daisies eschewed the MoW and was all the stronger for it. Tying up loose threads, before dropping some new ones, tonight was all about Charles’s disappearance and Dwight’s death.

Vivian, as innocent and naive as ever, asks Emerson for help tracking down her missing paramour, Dwight Dixon. But Emerson already knows where Dwight can be found, six feet underground where he left him. But treating Vivian roughly to convince her she’s been abandoned doesn’t work: she hires The Norwegians.

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A pie is simple it’s limited. Just a bit of pastry and filling. Cake is complex, layered with treasures waiting to be discovered. Which one do you choose?

Pushing Daisies is just bold enough that I believed there was a small chance Chuck would leave with her father tonight. Not forever necessarily, but at this late date it might as well be. I honestly did not know whether Chuck would choose cake or pie, so when she told Ned her spoon landed right where she was, I was glad. But I didn’t buy that her father was going to be happy about it. He’s chosen too, and his spoon is taking him, and Ned’s car, elsewhere.

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Young Ned’s lesson tonight is one we could all stand to learn: “even a forkful of immediate gratification can lead to a world of grave consequences.” Young Ned learned while opening the oven at the Longborough School for Boys and letting the aroma of pie waft through the night. It was a lesson Chuck could have used before opening her father’s grave and letting a very different aroma waft on the night breeze.

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Ned: I’m out of counter space, so I’m stress baking in my head.
Chuck: Feels like you’re stress baking me.
Ned: I’m channeling fear into anger.
Emerson: Anger leads to hate.
Chuck: Hate leads to stress baking the people you love.

Watching tonight with one eye and a heavy heart was probably not the best way to appreciate another fine outing from Bryan Fuller et al. I barely caught the key party exchange and had to skip back to enjoy Ned’s innocence and Chuck’s teasing tone. I only barely noticed the Yoda bit. And I couldn’t tell you what color schemes the costumers and set dressers went with if you held a gigantic musket to my head.

But I did still smile. It’s hard not to smile while watching this show. Which is pretty remarkable considering my mood today and how directly it is related to this canceled gem.

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There have been quite a few very well suited guest stars on Pushing Daisies - Molly Shannon, Patrick Fabian, the brilliant Paul Reubens - but none fit quite so well as Fred Willard. Now, I’m a sucker for Willard, always have been. He’s got a real warmth to go with the absurd-oblivious air he affects, and it never fails to make me like his characters. That’s true again here, as he plays Herman Gunt - The Great Herrmann - as a softie who can’t help but take Maurice and Ralston under his wing when their father bails on them during a Sunday matinee.

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Betty begs for the chance to give the final approval for Mode magazine’s latest edition while Daniel is away at a business retreat, sans cell phone. This particular issue sports a flashy tornado with a supermodel imposed over it and the title ‘Eye of the Storm’. Satisfied the issue is ready to go and after having given final approval to ship the magazines out, Betty takes a break and is horrified to see a major news alert about a once in a decade twister destroying parts of Tibsley, Kansas and leaving many dead. Read the rest of this entry »

Slice of SciFi is reporting that Bryan Fuller has presented his plans for the second half of the season to ABC execs and is waiting for the pickup. But if the network passes, he plans to complete the story arcs in comics.

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Barack Obama secured the votes of every fan of Pushing Daisies the moment he declined ABC’s offer of airtime for the Obama Half-Hour Flower Power Variety Hoe Down. Although I don’t know if the twenty or thirty of us still watching this marvelous little exercise in quirkiness are enough for him to be picking china patterns just yet. Speaking of china patterns…

One of the small pleasures of this show is seeing how the vivid palettes are manifested in costume and set decisions. I normally wouldn’t gush about a cowboy shirt or an earth tone sweater, but look in the image above how Ned’s shirt ties in the red lacquered finishes of the restaurant, Chuck’s dress, and even the fan in her hair. Note how the two-tone sweater Emerson’s wearing picks up the beige and goldleaf accents on the walls behind them and the pattern on Chuck’s dress. Think back to earlier in the episode when Chuck wore a bright red coat.

Every detail is carefully considered, right down to the Chai Emerson’s wearing with around his neck.

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Sorry he was unable to write a review for the previous episode, the Blog Maker made a silent vow never to miss one again.

Yeah, really. Sorry ’bout that. For the tens of you who come by, here’s my drive-by of last week: at first it seems incredibly bold to dispense with all the Lily-is-your-mother NUNsense in the third episode of season two, until you realize it was probably slated to go down late in the strike-shortened season one. But it’s out there and it’s now time for Olive and Chuck to figure out their friendship.

Which, I might add, is a lot easier when you’re not stuck in a locker with someone who uses freesia hair detangler.

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A few months back I watched the pre-air for ABC’s first attempt at translating Life on Mars to our shores. It was a rough experience, mildly ameliorated by the participation of Colm Meany and the lovely Rachelle Lefevre. My feeling at the time was that Jason O’Mara - another in the long line of British Empire expats clogging up our airwaves - was a black hole from which not even the charisma of those around him could escape. My first thought was that he was too focused on his ‘R’s to worry about acting, but Ireland’s mostly rhotic. Some other complexity of the Amercan accent, then.

Seriously. He was bad. It didn’t help that I was comparing him to John Simm who brought a lot of intelligence and wit to to his original version of the character. It helped him even less that Meany played Gene Hunt much quieter and calmer than Philip Glenister and still blew O’Mara off the screen.

So when LoM was retooled I figured for sure O’Mara was going to get tossed aside for an American who could really sink his teeth into the character and stand up alongside a great character actor like–

Oh. Everyone and everything else was tossed? Meany, Lefevre, David E. Kelley? Gone. The LA setting? Gone. But Jason O’Mara and his leather jacket stayed.

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