What: It's so easy to get sucked into the candy-colored production design, right? And Kristin Chenoweth's chirpy voice. And Anna Friel's amazing wardrobe. And Lee Pace's general aura of dreaminess. And Chi McBride's sardonic eye rolls. And the mere presence of Swoosie Kurtz and Ellen Greene in all their glory. And Jim Dooley's bright, fresh, sweeping music.
It's no wonder you sometimes have to squint a bit before you remember that Pushing Daisies is really quite a dark show. The female lead is, after all, routinely referred to as "Dead Girl." The most frequently recurring character is "Coroner." People die by stabbing, suffocation, trampling, poison, explosions, hit-and-runs, and drowning. The show floats on a constant threat of death, bobbing along on Bryan Fuller's delicious, chewy, ripe dialogue. And pies.
Comparable to: It is recognizably part of Bryan Fuller's universe, in which the dead stick around (Dead Like Me) and the living snark-talk their way through situations they're trying to ignore (Wonderfalls).
Representative quote: "I hate to be a bad host, but I'm sort of exhausted from chasing your coffin."
Representative use of narrator Jim Dale:
Narrator: At that moment, the Pie Maker felt a mixture of happiness and trepidation.
Ned: Why is it always a mixture?
You might not like it if: You can't get through the candy coating to the bite underneath. Or: maybe you get squeamish about, for example, a sequence in which a frozen body ("corpsicle") gets dropped and breaks into a lot of meat pieces on the sidewalk.
How to get it: Buy it, borrow it, stream it on Amazon. (Buy it. Maybe if you re-watch it enough you'll finally catch every word of the speedy dialogue.)
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