TV-Reviewed

Pushing Daisies was one of the best new shows of last season, but sadly, it like many other shows was affected by the writer’s strike and its season was forced to be cut short. Luckily ABC decided to renew Pushing Daisies, but with the interruption of a writer’s strike, I wondered whether Pushing Daisies would still have the same magic that it had last season.

Fortunately it does. I’m happy to announce that Pushing Daisies is back with all the magic and all the elements that we loved about it last season. The episode starts us off with a great recap which was really quite fun to watch for the new people and for us that watched it last season. Having Jim Dale voice the recap just gives the show that added bit of different that other shows don’t.

The case this week involved finding the murderer of an employee that worked a company based around honey. The company itself was interesting and a place where everything is honey and the place promising extra percentages of honey in there products is one of the many outlandish ideas that only seems to work on Pushing Daisies. Nothing has changed, the procedure is still the same in which Ned brings the victim back to life to get as much out of her as she can and then touches her to make her dead, even Chuck is still annoying Emerson by trying to find out if she has any last wishes, which really is kind of a stupid question to be asking.

Anna Friel as Chuck and Lee Pace as Ned

Aside from the case of the week, Olive had her own storyline this episode which had her having trouble keeping secrets that she found out from last season. She’s in a horrible position, because she knows Chuck “faked” her death and she knows that Lily is really Chuck’s mother, but she’s unable to tell the other that she knows. Having her quit was interesting and sending her off to a nunnery was a little extreme, but it all works well within the episode and it allows Olive to really do her own thing for a while, not to mention that we got some great Olive-Ned dialogue and it almost seemed as if Ned needed her to stay.

There’s really no need to talk about how the case ended for them, because it’s safe to assume and to say that it’s solved. We usually know that the cases will be solved anyway, but how Ned, Chuck, and Emerson get there has always been the thing that works in this episode. With Chuck and Ned going through a big change in this episode, it made for some great dialogue and some interesting decisions by Ned in this episode. Ned and Chuck are one of the best relationships on TV and it doesn’t sour in this episode.

The only problem I found with this week’s episode was that it felt like this episode took place many months after last season’s finale. There’s no mention of Oscar Vibenius, which was an important story in the finale and unless I missed it, there was no mention of how Chuck got over Ned accidentally killing her dad when she was younger. It’s a good season opener, but slightly ranks a little lower due to it ignoring plots from the finale.

Everything is still the same with Pushing Daisies and that’s good to know. It’s still just as interesting as it was last season and it’s still one of the best looking shows around. I’m looking forward to the rest of the season and it should be even better to see what the writer’s can do when they’re given a full season with no writer’s strike to interrupt.

Rating: 8.0