This Would Be So Much Easier If I Could Also Promise Pie
The facts are these: TV networks are strange and illogical beasts.
With a heaping helping of network promotion, ABC’s Pushing Daisies became a modest but surprising hit last season. Creator Bryan Fuller — remember him? The guy who almost singlehandedly made Heroes not suck? — gave the tale of a lonely piemaker with a resurrecting touch, and the girl of his dreams he brought back from the grave, a bizarre blend of heart-tugging romance, screwball comedy, and twisted, pitch-black humor.
Then the writer’s strike, uh, struck, after just nine (mostly very good) episodes of Daisies had been produced. When the strike finally ended, most shows hustled back into production to crank out a few more episodes before the end of the season, just to remind viewers what they’d been missing. But ABC looked at Daisies’ nine episodes and said, “Nah, we’re good. Come back next fall.”
And when it did, after ten months of zero on-air reruns and little to no promotion, half of its viewership failed to return with it. ABC presumably thought very hard, and then devised a solution: Run even less advertising. Surely, that would bring the numbers up!
It did not.
The ratings remained stubbornly stuck, wavering between “low” and “even lower,” and occasionally dipping toward “Veronica Mars, and you know how that turned out.” And yet, when all seemed darkest, an unlikely savior appeared: Barack Obama. The Wednesday before the election, our intrepid President-elect managed to secure infomercial time on every network besides ABC. Thus, 1 million viewers who were either presumably full up on Hope and Change, or hellbent on voting for Sen. Sad Old Man and Gov. Seriously, Have You Listened to Her Speak?, gave Daisies a shot.
ABC’s brilliant response to this upsurge in the ratings? Pre-empt the show for two weeks running, first for a Dancing With the Stars results show cruelly displaced by a certain inconveniently scheduled Presidential election, and then for the CMA Awards. Surely, the best way to build momentum for a show gaining in the ratings is to keep it off the air for as long as possible.
So here we are. The thirteenth and final episode (to date) of Daisies’ second season is in the can. In an entirely different sense, so are the show’s chances for survival. But there’s one last glimmer of hope — the easiest save-this-show campaign ever. No letter-writing, e-mailing, petition-signing, phone-calling, or ridiculous item-vaguely-associated-with-the-show-sending-in-ing required.
You just have to watch Pushing Daisies when it returns next week.
If you’ve given the show a chance and drifted away, why not come back and give it a fresh shot? This season features fewer vaguely uncomfortable musical interludes, a vastly improved actually-funny-to-just-annoyingly-clever ratio for the dialogue, and a subtly creepy, propulsive energy to the storytelling that the feather-light first season hadn’t quite reached.
If you’ve never seen the show, set your TiVo. It’s still unequaled by anything else on television, with its beautifully stylized world, its off-kilter sense of humor, and a great big swooning sense of romance that has absolutely nothing to do with which preternaturally attractive doctor is sleeping with which other preternaturally attractive doctor this week.
I love Pushing Daisies unreservedly. There’s nothing calculated about it, nothing focus-grouped. No cunningly placed sops to ensnare a particular demographic. No cheap storytelling stunts to pull in sweeps-week ratings. It’s big, bold, and daring, and it proudly wears its heart on its sleeve. We need more TV shows that take chances like this one, that give us something besides the same set of cops or lawyers or doctors week in and week out.
Wednesday, Nov. 19, is my birthday. If you’ve ever enjoyed anything I’ve written for the site, you can give me the gift of more Pushing Daisies. Tune in that night at 8 p.m. ET on ABC. Tell your friends. At best, you might discover your new favorite TV series. At worst, you’ll only have surrendered another hour of your life. There are worse fates than that.
Like, say, watching Knight Rider.
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