Pushing Daisies (TV Series) (Blu-ray)

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If you had the power to bring back the dead, would you use it? What if this gift came with a catch or two? Well, that's the premise for the ABC network's magical murder mystery "Pushing Daisies" which premiered on prime time television around this time last year.

To be honest, I never actually tuned in to the original broadcast, but when season one came in the mail for review I was able to see firsthand why the series was nominated for twelve Emmys (winning three) as well as three Golden Globes. Simply put, "Pushing Daisies" is an entirely different entity from anything currently on television today, and it looks spectacular on Blu-ray.

Created by Bryan Fuller ("Wonderfalls" and "Dead Like Me"), the series centers on a pie maker named Ned (Lee Pace), who owns a specialty shop called "The Pie Hole." When Ned was nine years, twenty-seven weeks, six days, and three minutes old--(a little gag from the series)--he discovered that he possessed a gift like no one else. You see, Ned can touch the dead, and bring them back to life.

But of course, Ned's power also came with a couple of hiccups that he learned through trial and error. For starters, one touch meant life, but another touch at any time would reverse the process permanently. Secondly, if Ned didn't retouch whatever or whoever he brought back to life and return them to their natural state of deadness within a minute, another nearby living being of equal life value would randomly croak in its place. We get to see all of this unfold through a bizarre series of flashbacks with Field Cate starring as young Ned.

Years later, a private investigator named Emerson Cod (Chi McBride) uncovered Ned's secret and forged an ingenious business scheme with the pie maker. The arrangement involves bringing murder victims back to life just long enough to ask for clues on who murdered them, solve the crime, and then collect the reward! How ´bout them apples? All this pie and pie ingredient talk is making me hungry.

But one day, Ned is mortified when he learns that his childhood sweetheart, Charlotte "Chuck" Charles (Anna Friel), was murdered while taking a vacation on a cruise. Ned does his trick like usual to find out more details on what happened, except when the time comes to put Chuck back to rest, Ned is unable to muster up the strength to do it. As such, the funeral director drops dead instead. Now with Chuck in his life, Ned has found his soul mate. The only problem is, he can't physically touch her--unless she wants to become a corpse.

That's a pretty big set up for a series, but so far it's working quite nicely. I really like the whole "forensic fairy-tale" angle, plus the show is fluffed up with a sort of Tim Burton-esque flair to purposely set this kind of mood. Peculiar characters, bizarre storylines, and stylistic settings fuel the show and create a fictitious and magical world. The downside is that by design, the series probably appeals to a much smaller audience, as I'm sure the artistic vision isn't everyone's cup of tea.

The supporting characters are also strong and complicate matters even further. There's Olive Snook (Kristin Chenoweth), a waitress at "The Pile Hole" who hopelessly has the hots for Ned and is jealous of Chuck. Plus we can't forget Chuck's eccentric aunts--Vivian (Ellen Greene) and Lily (Swoosie Kurtz)--a down and out synchronized swimming duo known as "The Darling Mermaid Darlings" who believe Chuck is still deceased. These three characters contribute a fair amount of the humor, too.

Although the cleverness of the writing is one of the series' strongest elements, at times I still thought that the show suffers from being too wordy. It was almost as if the writers squeezed in an extra page or two for their script, so the cast had to adapt by virtually becoming motor mouths. This means viewers have to make a conscience effort to try and keep their ears open or they might be left out in the cold. For instance, sometimes when my brain was still in the middle of processing one joke, we were already halfway into the next one, which didn't really leave much room to actually savor the humor. I guess on the plus side, this helps make the series worthy of repeat viewings since you're highly likely to catch something you missed the first time around.

Like most of the scripted shows in early 2008, "Pushing Daisies" was held hostage by the Writers Guild of America strike and therefore only churned out nine episodes for its initial season:

1) "Pie-lette" (41:38). In the pilot, Ned's childhood sweetheart "Chuck" is murdered while vacationing on a cruise ship. After bringing her back to life to find answers and solve the crime, Ned makes a personal decision that will change his life forever...

2) "Dummy" (41:45). Just when dandelion-fueled vehicles are on the brink of becoming the smash hit of the future, one of the manufacturer employees is murdered and the killer is... a crash test dummy?

3) "The Fun in the Funeral" (42:31). Let us hang our heads and pray. Emerson stirs up trouble when his new case brings Ned back to the funeral parlor where he made the trade of a lifetime.

4) "Pigeon" (41:49). After a crop duster crashes into an apartment complex, a mystery unfolds involving death, broken appendages, and windmills. Lots and lots of windmills.

5) "Girth" (43:02). The ghostly apparition of a trampled jockey has seemingly returned from the grave on a vengeful mission to stomp out the souls of his former competition--which happens to include Olive.