Pushing Daisies: Gone from TV, But Arriving on DVD

The facts were these:

Pushing Daisies premiered on ABC in October 2007. I instantly hailed it as the best new series of the year, viewers embraced it, and all was well. Then, a month later, came the writers' strike, and the series never recovered. Once ABC burned through the programs already filmed, the network held off showing new episodes until the fall of 2008, by which time the series had lost its momentum.

But now, on DVD, comes the complete 13-episode second season of Pushing Daisies, to remind us, all over again, what a bold, brilliant, beautiful series it was...

Created by Bryan Fuller, and telling of a piemaker with the ability to raise the dead, it's the kind of show that comes around only about once a decade -- a show with such a distinctive look and tone, with everything from its visual flair and its musical soundtrack to its heightened dialogue and outrageous plots, that it stands apart from everything around it. Twin Peaks was like that. So were Due South and Northern Exposure.

And Pushing Daisies: The Complete Second Season, released this week by Warner Home Video, displays in almost every frame why this ABC series was The One That Got Away. More than that, it was The One Just Hitting Its Full Stride -- or, to put it another way, The One That Deserved a Few More Years.

The Extras in this DVD set, which you can buy by clicking HERE (or the Blu-Ray by clicking HERE, show how much care went into this series. The sets. The scored music. The computer-generated effects. The acting and scripts. The absurdly imaginative murders and crime scenes.

And the 13 shows... what a baker's dozen (how appropriate) of tasty treats. Guest stars are served up without fanfare, each bringing his or her peculiarly tasty flavors: Fred Willard, Richard Benjamin, George Segal, Wendie Malick, David Arquette and Stephen Root. There are nasty Norwegians and sinister synchronized swimmers, buzzing beekeepers and ghoulish graverobbers.

And the regular cast: Jim Dale Lee Pace and Anna Friel (pictured) star as Ned and Chuck. Ned can revive the dead with a single touch, and revives Chuck, his former childhood sweetheart -- but can't touch her again, or she'll die forever. Chi McBride is Emerson, the private eye who uses Ned's gifts to solve crimes; Kristin Chenoweth (pictured at top) is Olive, who has an unrequited love for Ned and works in his pie shop; and Swoosie Kurtz and Ellen Greene play Chuck's eccentric aunts -- one of whom actually is her mother.

Jim Dale narrates Pushing Daisies in true storybook style, and always, at some point, advances the narrative by saying, "The facts were these..." The visuals will make you laugh -- but so will the verbals. When Emerson (pictured) is invited to the circus, for example, he pats the pockets of his jacket and says, "Where did I put that rat's ass I could give?" Still makes me laugh.

What makes me sad, though, is that ABC canceled this series before Fuller and company got to mount their planned musical episode (imagine that, with Broadway musical vets Chenoweth and Greene already on board) -- and before what surely, given Ned's powers and their desire to finally kiss, would have been one of the best, most poetic series finales in history.

DVD, though, gives us a chance to fully appreciate Pushing Daisies -- which, in the end (and especally AT the end), is more than ABC ever did.