“Pushing Daisies” — The Fun in Funeral
“We’re fairly adorable… is this a problem?
Pushing Daisies, now three weeks into its run (and past the two-episode Barry Sonnenfeld “is it just a fluke” stage), and while it’s certainly a fun show to watch, it is getting dangerously close to being too cutesy for its own good. But, is “cutesy” really a problem? More after the jump…
The cynical critic in me finds all of this fairy-tale, orchestra swelling, cartoon romance to be a bit much too take, but the human side finds this stuff more or less endearing (helped greatly by the fact that the cast is pitch perfect). The thing is, there is no other show like this on television, so why should it be punished for appealing deep down to the hopeless romantic? The thing is, Pushing Daisies is an 8:00 show and in the world of network television timeslot really does mean everything. Eight o’clock is family hour and Pushing Daisies is, for the most part, a family friendly show — aside from the exceptionally large number of corpses in a given episode. If I had children of a certain age (which would be one of the great travesties of modern time) I would feel completely comfortable sitting down and watching Pushing Daisies with them every Wednesday. The series gooey center of schmaltz, quirk and over-the-top art direction play perfectly against all of the cartoon violence (at one point in this week’s episode a playful sword fight ended up hacking the foot off a dead body).
Still, there gets to be a point where even a precocious tween looks up from the screen and says, “Oh come on already!” This week, more than any other, the preciousness of this show began to run a tad deep. The first two episodes did a better job of walking the line by making sure the mystery of the week was placed high enough into the foreground to be, at the very least, a distraction for our star-crossed lovers. Also, I felt the art-direction (and again maybe this is Sonnenfeld’s work) tended to lean more toward the creepy than the cute, giving the series its requisite pop, but without drowning in it.
I like the show. It’s fun to watch as you’re never really sure how the story is going to unfold. However, this might make it one of the most fragile new series of the fall. I fear any week it could suddenly and violently start spinning completely out of control. Here’s to hoping that doesn’t happen.
October 25th, 2007 at 9:56 am
[...] This week’s episode continued to push network television to new visual heights — specifically in the scenes at the windmill farm, which looked absolutely gorgeous. Like I said last week, the show certainly treads a fine line between cute and nauseating preciousness, but I’m not sure how much this really matters anymore. Tonally, the series is pretty locked in and one would have to assume the audience has either said I like this or I don’t by this point (and given the show’s recent full season order, it appears that most have said yes). [...]