Amiss to Push some Daisies

As I approached my 10am class this morning cancelled notices coalesced in my sleep-blurred vision. My body hit the wall in a last ditch effort to keep from collapsing. I used my head to force myself off the cold brick wall and roll back to a stand. A classmate swore and asked if anyone wanted to go for a beer. Alas society's laws against such a thing.

So I find myself in the student centre, listening to Dub Side of the Moon, and without the book I so crucially need to be reading at the moment. Might as well get off another entry though, the only other thing I could do is school work.

When I was home last so long ago (sorry mom) my mother showed me a television show called Pushing Daisies. I wasn't a big fan, perhaps because my mother was so adamant that I would love it (sorry mom). Even so, the quirkiness lingered in my subconscious. I'm not too sure what triggered the renewed interest but it may have had something to do with having nothing else to watch due to this damned writers strike. I ended up downloading the entire season thus far. My mother turned out to be on to something after all, though I still hate every brand of CSI under The Who (again, sorry).

These are the facts: Ned (the pie maker) has the unique ability to bring dead people back to life. However if he touches them again they re-die, and more severe, if he doesn't re-die them in a minute someone else will die to take their dead-place. Logically he ends up partnering with a PI and waking up murder victims to find out who killed them to collect rewards. When he finds his childhood crush (Chuck) dead and brings her back to life to ask after her murderer, he can't bring himself to kiss and thus kill her. It's very romantic, except they can't ever touch or cause Chuck to let loose her mortal coil, again. Elaborate at first, yes, but essentially it feels like a cross between Desperate Housewives and Dead like Me.

As you can guess the show is pretty damn quirky. It exists in a world not real, but perhaps a world so influenced by mystery novels and unapologeticly sappy romances that things like love at first glance and murder by scratch-n-sniff are perfectly common place. I say this but the wonderful thing about Pushing Daisies is it's ability to acknowledge itself. The PI, Emmerson, is usually there to make a sarcastic comment about how odd the murder is, or how lame Ned and Chuck's conversation is (indeed hanging the lantern I'll admit). Besides the quirky world, the dialogue is some of the most clever on TV. I wouldn't toss this around lightly, and later I'll put my comments in perspective, but the stuff they say on this show is often so clever I get mad that the Office is what it is currently.

In the end I'm surprised. There were all these comedies I was looking forward to this season and have been relatively disappointed by all of them (fyi BNL now provides the theme for the lame duck Big Bang!) and along comes this show I paid no heed to at first and yet proves to be the best new comedy of the season, perhaps even the best show on TV period. Chuck is mediocre, Office faltering, and SVU, well, child abuse and rape can only be funny for so long.

So if you haven't already, watch some Pushing Daisies. It'll make you believe in love again, or at least necrophilia.