The fourth Pushing Daisies episode saw ratings dropped a bit, but there was a good excuse for the fall: many viewers were tuned in to FOX to watch Game One of the World Series.

In the end, the show finished a respectable second behind baseball, as 9.45 million viewers tuned in, good for a 3.0/ 8 among adults 18-49 at 8 p.m.

Don’t worry: there’s no way the World Series will still be going on next Wednesday night. The Red Sox will be wrapping it up shortly.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Continue reading this article …

The creator of Pushing Daisies grew up in Clarkston, Washington in the 1970s and ’80s.

And thanks to his show’s success, Bryan Fuller was recently featured in the Lewiston Tribune. Here’s an excerpt from the article:

Fuller marinated his young brain on a diet of Stephen King, “Star Trek” and “The Twilight Zone.” TV was a passage to another world but he never imagined he would one day be on the other side of the screen, orchestrating his own fantasies from his own office at Warner Bros. studios.

The 38-year-old is the writer and producer of one of the seasons most critically acclaimed new series, the supernatural fairy tale “Pushing Daisies,” which airs at 8 p.m. Wednesdays on ABC.

“Every day is kind of crazy,” says Fuller about life as an L.A. writer and producer. “Once the scripts are written it’s a matter of producing them. There’s a lot of meticulous detail that goes into this show. … It’s sort of alchemy to get the tone.”

Fuller, who was also a writer and producer for “Wonderfalls” and “Heroes,” describes his newest show as a hybrid fantasy, murder mystery and love story. Every detail of the show goes through him, from the props and sets to visual effects and music. That’s one of the rewarding things about writing for TV, he says, as opposed to film, where the writers job ends with the words.

“It’s very intensive. I’m often working anywhere from 15 to 20 hour days, and that includes the weekends.”

Click here to read the full article.

Ratings for the second episode of Pushing Daisies dropped a bit from its opening week.

Between 8-9 p.m., Deal or No Deal came in first in total viewers with 12.49 million. The game show placed second among adults 18-49 (3.1 rating/9 share).

Meanwhile, the reverse held true for Pushing Daisies - it came in second in total viewrs with 10.07 million; and first in the coveted 18-49 demographic with a 3.6 rating/11 share.

Compared to its debut, Pushing Daisies dipped by 2.96 million viewers and by 16 percent among adults 18-49.

How did you feel about the episode? Let us know right now on our Pushing Daisies forum.

ABC is replaying the series premiere of Pushing Daisies tonight at 8 p.m.

Even if you watched on Wednesday night, this is your chance to relive the fun. And if you missed it earlier this week, tune in and see what all the fuss is about.

Otherwise, you’ll never understand what’s going on in this Pushing Daisies picture…

After the episode, remember to interact with fellow fans in our FORUMS. Thank you.

Here is great news, Pushing Daisies fans:

Ratings for last night’s premiere episode are in - and they’re huge!

Pushing Daisies premiered to 12.83 million total viewers, dominating in the key demographics. It easily outdistanced the second place show, Deal or No Deal, which attracted 11 millions fans.

If these numbers hold up, looks like we have a major hit on our hands. Go talk about it now on our Pushing Daisies forum.

Wake up, Chuck! Your show is a hit!

You don’t need to twist our arm, USA Today. We’ll be tuned in to ABC tonight at 8 for sure.

But the newspaper - unimpressed with the lot of new shows - just published an article imploring everyone to watch Pushing Daisies. Here are excerpts from it:

If ever a season needed a push, this is it.

Few of the new offerings have stirred up much excitement, and with good reason — most are unexciting. Happily, that’s about to change. Tonight, a fall too short on joy gets an enchanting lift: Pushing Daisies.

Created by Bryan Fuller and directed by Barry Sonnenfeld, Pushing Daisies blends mystery, comedy and candy-colored visual delights into a fantasy exploration of modern isolation — a fairy tale for our times. The premise may seem unwieldy:

A man brings the dead back to life with his first touch and returns them to death with his second. But tonight’s wildly inventive pilot swiftly lays the groundwork, laced with just enough dark humor to stop the whimsy from turning cloying or precious.

The man with the magic is Ned (Lee Pace), a gentle loner whose power has left him wary of human contact. He runs a pie shop with the help of a devoted waitress (Kristin Chenoweth, pictured), while solving mysteries with his private investigator partner (Chi McBride).

Any cop would envy Ned’s method: He reanimates the victims, asks about the crime, and then sends them off to their reward.

Click here to read the full article.