What this seems to say is that the audience is looking for something original, which Daisies certainly is. ABC recently renewed the series for a full season, which most people did not expect after seeing the pilot - and before seeing the pilot's ratings. And while Pushing Daisies does manage genuine charm and humor quite often, there are other times when it pushes over the edge into unnecessary gimmickry and noisy affectation. There's nothing quite as off putting as someone who desperately needs to be liked (you can see Steve Carrell's example of this every week on The Office). The trouble with Pushing Daisies is that it so desperately wants to enchant you, to make you smile and flutter all at once from its combination of cute and quirky. This isn't charming as much as it is distracting. The eye patch, the depression, the synchronized swimming and the cheese fridge…it's several steps too many towards making the characters as oddball as necessary. While Ellen Green and Swoozie Kurtz are both talented actresses, they're mired down beneath pounds of whimsy in these roles. Olive's story leads to a nice revelation that she's not as mean self serving as it seemed. It also leads to one of the better lines, where Chuck explains "it was a thoughtful gesture, given the context." It's also a great moment where she imagines that she's holding Ned's hand - right about the time that Ned catches her holding someone else's. Ned's inability to catch Chuck leads to a clever moment. The issue of not being able to touch becomes a problem, but as Chuck sees it, not an insurmountable one. The best part of the episode is the maturing relationship between Chuck and Ned. In all of this, there's a story - and it's a pretty good one. There's the one-winged pigeon, the man in the trunk, the narcoleptic lady, the one-armed white collar criminal, the crazy aunts (again), windmills and pies and enough saturated color for a dozen Joel Schumacher (or Barry Sonnenfeld) films. Once again, the episode is chock full of eccentricities.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |