Great news, Pushing Daisies fans:
The show has been picked up for a full season by ABC. Nine additional episodes have been ordered, bringing the total to 22.
This shouldn’t be a shock to those of us who fell in love with the series after about five minutes, but it still brings a smile to our face to finally hear it for sure.
Here’s what we can look forward to on this week’s episode of Pushing Daisies, “Pigeon.”
A plane crash into an apartment building leaves the trio with a case, while Chuck (Anna Friel) finds herself drawn to the man who appears to be the sole survivor, much to Ned’s distress.
Meanwhile, Olive takes a wounded messenger pigeon to the Aunts for help and Jayma Mays guest stars.
Check out our Pushing Daisies photo gallery, too, for pictures from this episode.
As an article in The New York Daily News point out: Pushing Daisies doesn’t just practice safe sex.
It practices no sex, lest Chuck is to go back to being six feet under. To quote from the feature:
You wonder who first got the idea to go to a network programming chief and say, “Whattya think about the idea of a prime-time drama that has no sex?”
It sure wasn’t the producers of “Dirty Sexy Money,” in which almost every character under 70 and over 12 had a steamy sex scene in the first three weeks.
It wasn’t the producers of “Private Practice,” one of whose characters was introduced while enjoying a bondage game.
It wasn’t the producers of “Friday Night Lights,” where high schoolers joke about threesomes.
No, sex sells big on prime-time TV, which is one reason it’s so fascinating to watch “Pushing Daisies” (ABC, 8 p.m. Wednesdays), whose whole premise is that the couple at the heart of the show can never even touch each other.
Click here to read the full article.
Thank you to everyone who entered this week’s Pushing Daisies Caption Contest.
We love reading entries that make us laugh almost as hard as the show does every week, but - as always - there can only be one winner.
Take a look below the photo and read how “Glinda” described the scene. Then, remember to come back and play every week. Thanks and enjoy!
Ned and Chuck practice synchronized wrapping, in honor of the aunts…
The good folks at BuddyTV recently sat down with Pushing Daisies star Kristin Chenoweth. Here are highlights from the interview:
How were you first approached for the role of Olive Snook? What were your first reactions to the pilot script?
I was approached by Barry Sonnenfeld and Bryan Fuller about the show. The role of Olive spoke to me because she’s a bit of the underdog. I rarely get to sink my teeth into those parts.
Obviously, the pilot script had to be incredible, but did you have any worries about how they would pull it off? Was it difficult to visualize the world of Pushing Daisies from what was on the page?
I knew Barry would be the star of the show. That combined with his specific style and uniqueness would make the show special. Its his vision and the writing that make the show.
It didn’t take long for audiences to get to watch you sing (the second episode). Was this a pre-requisite for your character? Or, did it happen once you were cast they knew they had a Tony winner in the role?
The singing thing was a surprise to me. Bryan felt like putting it out there right away since many people were already writing in asking when I might sing. I get a kick out of singing on a show where it could actually make sense that someone sings. It was by no means a pre-requisite for me to take the part. I usually don’t think singing on TV is a great idea but it certainly works in our world.
Read the full interview here.
While Deal or No Deal remained the most watched show at 8 p.m. last night, Pushing Daisies was the top-rated program among the coveted demographic of 18-49 year olds.
Overall, Deal or No Deal attracted 12.29 million viewers, while Pushing Daisies pulled in a healthy 9.75 million.
We’re not trying to tell people what to watch or anything - at least not too much - but maybe a review of some hilarious Pushing Daisies quotes will help you realize how much more entertaining this series is when compared to a bunch of models holding suitcases.
Or, really, anything else on television.
We were taken back to the scene of Ned’s crime in this episode. Sorry, his accidental, involuntary manslaughtering.
And, as is par for Pushing Daisies at this point, we loved every second of it. Ned and Chuck sort of kissed and even Olive saw a bit of romantic action.
Did you miss “The Fun in Funeral?” Wanna refresh your memory? Read through our recap of the hour right now, chock full of Pushing Daisies quotes and photos.
Also, don’t forget to talk about the show in our Pushing Daisies forum. Enjoy!
The clock is almost at zero on the countdown for tonight’s Pushing Daisies episode. We can’t wait.
The name of the hour is “The Fun in Funeral.” And, knowing this show, it probably can have fun anywhere, including a typically sad event such as that.
As usual, we’ll post a recap of the episode after it airs, full of new Pushing Daisies quotes and pictures. For now, head over to our forum and discuss your favorite characters, story lines and everything else related to the show.
In the latest issue of TV Guide, we’re taken behind the scenes of Pushing Daisies.
Here are a handful of secrets about our new favorite show that make us look forward to tonight’s episode even more…
1. Pushing Daisies bloomed out of a never-realized storyline for Showtime’s Dead Like Me. The protagonist of creator Bryan Fuller’s previous death-centric series, Grim Reaper George, “was going to find out she wasn’t able to collect some souls because somebody was coming along and bringing people back to life [with a] touch,” he reveals.
So when he left Dead to do the short-lived Fox series Wonderfalls, Fuller tucked the idea in his back pocket until last year, when he was charged with coming up with a new show for Warner Bros. To flesh out the tone, he found himself drawing inspiration from one of his favorite films, 2001’s whimsical Amélie.
“Really sad things happen in it,” Fuller explains. “But you never get bogged down in the sadness. Like Daisies, it’s really about human kindnesses.”
2. From its hyperactive color palette to its fantastical sets and props, Pushing Daisies looks like nothing else on TV. And that’s exactly how production designer Michael Wylie wanted it: “My goal was a storybook come to life. I wanted everything to look almost like an illustration.” He achieved it by concentrating on “conflicting patterns in different colors,” particularly reds and oranges, but per director Barry Sonnenfeld, virtually no blues.
One of his proudest creations is the “vaguely Parisian” Pie Hole — built, naturally, in the shape of a pastry — where Ned works. There, no detail is too small. Its mouthwatering tarts “are all real,” Wylie reports. “There’s a chef that comes in and [makes] new pies every time we shoot there.”
3. Fuller had Lee Pace in mind to play the gifted/cursed Ned when he sat down to write the pilot. He’d cast the 28-year-old Oklahoma native on Wonderfalls and felt confident he could “bring the material to life in a way that didn’t feel like the written words were so written.” There was just one problem:
“I wasn’t looking at TV,” remembers the then-film-focused actor, who appeared in The Good Shepherd with Matt Damon. “His agents shut the door in our faces,” Fuller says bluntly. Ultimately, Pace’s manager interceded. “The more I thought about it,” Pace says, “I couldn’t see this going wrong.” So far, he’s been right.
Here’s an inside look at Lee Pace, along with other aspects of the series, courtesy of The Associated Press:
Relaxing on the set of Pushing Daisies, Lee Pace taps the air teasingly with his forefinger. It’s how Pace’s character, Ned, makes others live or die with a single stroke on the darkly whimsical ABC drama.
It’s also how Pace keeps British actress Anna Friel, his lively co-star, in line during long production hours. Friel plays Ned’s longtime love, Charlotte “Chuck” Charles.
“When Anna acts up on set, I just touch her like this,” Pace said, pointing a magic finger.
The finger-tap is a joke on Ned and Chuck’s deadly dilemma. In the show’s pilot, Ned resurrected Chuck after she was murdered. Now they live together. If Ned touches Chuck once more — directly, skin-on-skin — she’s back in a casket, pronto.
“Just sitting together in a car, it’s life or death stakes for them,” Pace said of the seemingly doomed (or at least physically frustrated) couple. “Every day when we block scenes, I think, `Now how should we hold our bodies?’”
In fact, the physical intimacy of Ned and Chuck is carefully chaperoned on the Warner Bros. lot in Burbank, especially by executive producer Barry Sonnenfeld, who also directs the series.
“Barry’s always going, `Ooops! Don’t you dare touch Anna,’” Friel said. “It’s hard, trying to fit together into a tight two-shot.”
But, is the show trying to be political?
If Pushing Daisies carries a message about sexual abstinence, “that was never the intention, but you can certainly read it in,” creator Bryan Fuller said. “I suppose the show is really about the dangers of any kind of intimacy, not just physical intimacy.
Pace agrees, saying the series is far deeper than anything sexual.
“Ned’s real gift is the understanding of the value of life and death,” the actor said. “He’s not careless with his powers. But after he brought Chuck back to life everything is different for him. It’s like his life is happening for the first time.”
