Tag Archives: Chuck

December 4, 2008 · 12:17 am

Pushing Daisies – “Comfort Food”

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“Comfort Food”

December 3rd, 2008

When I was watching this week’s special Monday episode of Privileged, it struck me that what I like about the show is how comfortable it feels: its storylines were rote, but the execution was such that it all felt like part of a longstanding relationship despite the show only being ten episodes old. And, I got the same feeling watching tonight’s aptly titled “Comfort Food,” the eighth episode of Pushing Daisies’ second season.

It will also be one of the last: ABC only has plans to air two more episodes, a rather frustrating reality when I consider that this is a show that is not complacent in its comfort. The episode’s central mystery, a charming and cameo-filled zany cook-off scenario, was in line with the series’ tradition, but it also featured a chance for Ned and Olive to interact on an individual level. Meanwhile, Chuck’s storyline took her character in a whole new direction, while giving her and Emerson a chance to interact in a new way as well.

What we got was, as a result, was an episode that reminds us what we will lose when Pushing Daisies leaves our television: an enormously pretty, extremely entertaining, and wonderfully whimsical world. And even if it’s not redesigning the world, I don’t want to lose my weekly visit to this world.

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November 27, 2008 · 2:10 am

Pushing Daisies – “Robbing Hood”

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“Robbing Hood”

November 26th, 2008

I was one of the few who, really, wasn’t jumping up and down over last week’s episode of Pushing Daisies. While the episode was, no question, a strong investigation into Ned’s character and the show’s central questions, it all felt a bit heavy to me. And while I’m not saying that the show shouldn’t be allowed to enter into that territory, when I’m up to my neck in deadlines part of me would rather an episode of Pushing Daisies that feels more indulgent than self-indulgent, if that makes any sense.

This week, by comparison, falls on the other side of the spectrum; some, and quite justifiably, are likely to find that the story of a Robin Hood-dunnit seems inconsequential compared to last week’s episode, and that it felt especially marginalized when there was quite a large amount of development in relation to the arrival of Dwight Dixon (especially in terms of fallout from his discovery of Chuck’s empty grave in last week’s episode).

For me, however, I thought that it was what Pushing Daisies is: a crime procedural glossed up with charm out the wazoo and a sureness of character which allows them to balance recurring storylines with a deft hand that most standard procedures aren’t capable of. So, while this episode certainly felt more forced than last week’s, that it still charmed the pants off me is perhaps the greater accomplishment. And I won’t tell a lie: when I’m scrambling to write my 20-page research paper on Performance in the transition from Aestheticism to Decadence in 19th Century Literature, I much preferred this lighter concoction than I did last week’s overload.

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November 19, 2008 · 10:30 pm

Pushing Daisies – “Oh Oh Oh…It’s Magic”

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“Oh Oh Oh…It’s Magic”

November 19th, 2008

With production on the thirteenth episode of its second season completed last week, Pushing Daisies has officially completed all episodes ordered by ABC. This is an alarming fact that hasn’t been lost on fans of the series, and they’re (justifiably) hoping that tonight’s episode brings a solid ratings bump and a chance for a third season (or, even, the order of more episodes for the Spring). As someone who is very much a fan of this series, I count myself amongst them: my fingers are crossed for tomorrow moning. Call it a cliche, but we’re hoping for a little bit of magic.

“Oh Oh Oh…It’s Magic” is actually a really interesting study for the show, and poses a question to this particular critical eye: is it the fanciful locations and atmospheric qualities that give Pushing Daisies its magical quality, or is it the characters who populate this world who have such pure and human emotions that magic spontaneously erupts when they’re on screen? While Fred Willard’s guest appearance as an illusionist (“The Great Herrmann”) and the world of magic offer some points of interest, the season has had better locations (in particular, the monastery and the circus exploded off the screen in ways that the claustrophobic stage just doesn’t).

Instead, this first episode back from a three week hiatus finds the show leaning on its characters, finding its emotion in their humour (Emerson and Olive) as well as their own tragic pasts (Ned and Chuck’s parent troubles). While there have been some who have called this one of the show’s best episodes yet, I felt somewhat more lukewarm about it. Until it kicks into gear in the third act, where the emotions finally overflow into a very exciting and meaningful conclusion, it was what Pushing Daisies always is: a show that finds magic in procedural mystery, and one that we hope continues to do so for a long time to come.

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November 10, 2008 · 10:18 pm

Gossip Girl – “Bonfire of the Vanity”

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“Bonfire of the Vanity”

November 10th, 2009

Gossip Girl is not one for subtlety, nor one for taking their time to get into storylines. Last week, Serena was just discovering that Aaron could be a potential mate of sorts: this week, he’s leading her on romantic trips around the city and making her his muse. Just at the beginning of the season, Jenny Humphrey was a naive young girl looking for her big break, and now she’s an angst-ridden, eyeshadow wearing and hoodie sporting punk.

It feels like these two characters, in particular, are jumping around from story point to story point: Serena has gone from post-Dan sadness to new Dan closeness to post-Dan sadness to anti-Blair bitchiness to suddenly friendly towards Blair to now hunting after Aaron. Jenny, meanwhile, went from unhappy intern to unhappy student to home-schooled young assistant to unappreciated designer to unappreciative rebel to guerilla runaway fashionista to homeless, dressless child (And in between she made out with Nate – Ew.)

And we’re not too far into this the show’s second season, and there’s a long way to go: right now, what Gossip Girl is doing right is those storylines that feel natural, and don’t count those two girls amongst them. In fact, only really Chuck and Blair have maintained something approximating consistency, and the result is the episode’s only positive development. And while I’m glad the show is finding its footing in the ratings, there are points where the guilty pleasure needs to show a bit more pleasure.

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October 30, 2008 · 8:34 am

Facing the Fate of ‘Pushing Daisies’

Facing the Fate of ‘Pushing Daisies’

October 30th, 2008

Last night may have been Pushing Daisies’ last stand. After weeks of dwindling ratings, dangerous for a show that ended its strike-shortened first season already down considerably from its original premiere, ABC made a decision (their hand forced by Obama’s decision not to buy airtime on the network) to air the season’s fifth episode up against the aforementioned Obama infomercial. On network television, your options are simple: Obama or Ned, Olive, Chuck and Emerson; the American Dream vs. a dream-like television series unlike anything else out there.

But until about 12pm EDT today, we won’t know for sure whether or not this matchup will kill or revive the struggling series; and while I’d like to say that there’s great potential for growth, at the same time numerous qualities lay doubt on such a strategy. At the same time, I think that calls for the show’s immediate cancellation seem premature by half: the show has been a success in at least some qualities thus far this season, and the show’s quality remaining high does count for something.

Whether it will be enough to govern the fate of the show, however, remains to be seen: in the meantime, let’s weight the upsides and downsides of the show’s current position.

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October 29, 2008 · 9:41 pm

Pushing Daisies – “Dim Sum Lose Some”

“Dim Sum Lose Some”

October 29th, 2008

If there is a new mantra on Pushing Daisies, it seems quite simple: leave no character behind.

Excluding the Aunts, who have been absent for quite some time now likely in an effort to save money and focus the show on other issues, we’re seeing a lot more interaction between our four main characters. Ever since Olive’s last stand at the monastery, especially, the four have been intertwined into the mysteries in a way that the first season only really accomplished once, in “Bitches.” Perhaps it is no coincidence, then, that Simone, one of the four wives of the polygamist dog breeder returns in this episode to a similar dynamic, and a similarly strong episode.

Although the episode deals a bit with Ned’s past, and Emerson gets almost all of the great one-liners, it really is a group effort: when the episode evolves into an almost “Chuck”-like espionage scenario at the Dim Sum restaurant, the entire cast comes together in a comic scenario that just clicks. I wouldn’t contend that this is amongst the show’s best episodes, but it’s a definite sign that the creative resurgence that began the season is still going strong.

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October 8, 2008 · 9:45 pm

Pushing Daisies – “Circus Circus”

“Circus Circus”

October 8th, 2008

In the prologue to the second episode of Pushing Daisies’ second season, Ned learns a lesson that may be all too self-prophetic for Bryan Fuller’s charming show: that “new beginnings only lead to painful ends.” Considering last week’s alarmingly low ratings numbers, joining Chuck and Terminator: Sarah Connor Chronicles on the lists of shows bouncing back creatively if not in terms of viewership after the writers’ strike cut their seasons short, Pushing Daisies might well be headed for an end that will certainly be painful considering how much I love this show.

But as the episode progresses, what is demonstrates is that new beginnings aren’t nearly as hard as Ned’s initial lesson made it out to be: that striking out on your own, or suddenly being on your own, or hoping for a new period in your life to begin, can be both exhilarating and terrifying at the same time without having to fall into either category. While it may seem like a show shouldn’t be able to create a common thread for a pie maker who can bring back the dead, an alive again childhood sweetheart, a picture-book making detective, two eccentric Aunts, and an employee who’s at a nunnery, all while also managing to construct an entertaining circus-based murder mystery, Pushing Daisies has proven its mettle.

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October 1, 2008 · 11:14 pm

Season Premiere: Pushing Daisies – “Bzzzzzzzzz!”

“Bzzzzzzzzz!”

October 1st, 2008

Sometimes a show isn’t profound, or fascinating, or deep. Sometimes, a show’s originality and charm are what elevate it to the level of being one of the most anticipated returns of the fall season, not a cliffhanger or any sort of buzzworthy (I know, I know) story element.

Pushing Daisies is one of these shows. I’ve always found it tough to blog about Pushing Daisies on any sort of extremely critical perspective: it’s a show that people either love or hate, and falling so strongly on the love side of things I can’t help but be more giddy with excitement than brimming with allegorical readings. If Pushing Daisies offers a cranky Emerson Cod, spastic Olive Snook, optimistic Chuck, awkward Ned, wacky Aunts Lily and Vivian, and more of Digby (Television’s best canine co-star) than I could ask for, I’m not going to be complaining anytime soon.

“Bzzzzzzzzz!” (With exactly nine Zs, I checked) is more of the same: not quite the revolution that Chuck’s second season premiere was for that show’s trajectory, it’s an episode that smartly places the focus on the central premise of the series while allowing the opportunity for almost all of its characters to have their various little moments. Settling in from the end of season drama that we were left with, Pushing Daisies remains what it was before: a comfy, cozy and whimsical universe to escape to for an hour each week.

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September 23, 2008 · 3:30 pm

Gossip Girl – “The Ex-Files”

“The Ex-Files”

September 22nd, 2008

My, what a difference an episode or three can make: at the beginning of the month, I spent an entire blog post drawing comparisons between Gossip Girl and The O.C. as they each handled their seasons easons, but here I am saying that Josh Schwartz finally has two leading ladies capable of dramatic range and, thus, has a far more compelling turn of events to offer viewers.

What “The Ex-Files” does is successfully turn the entire show on its ear: without losing a step, we see the re-emergence of Queen Serena, the return to a damaged Blair Waldorf, and the ever-present evil that is Chuck Bass pulling every string imaginable. Combine with a healthy dose of harsh reality for the Humphrey siblings, and inoffensive plot machinations for Nate and Vanessa, and you have an episode that feels like what Gossip Girl is supposed to be: a decidedly fanged investigation of complex social behaviours within a high school setting.

Or, if you prefer, one big season-long bitch fight.

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September 17, 2008 · 1:19 pm

Gossip Girl – “The Dark Night”

“The Dark Night”

September 15th, 2008

If Josh Schwartz lives up to his word, at least according to Maureen Ryan’s twitter from yesterday after her interview with the producer, this may be the last time that Dan and Serena make up and break up. And, if this is true, I am going to be one happy viewer.

I’m not one of those crazy internet posters on the show who has an emotional connection to these characters and their relationship, which is really the problem. Watching The O.C. recently helped point out that the show’s problem in the third season was its inability to separate its slavish attention to the central “fated love” of Ryan and Marissa from the audience’s total disinterest: long before the show itself seemed to realize that nobody thought they should be together, the show was shoving them down our throats and hinging the story’s central drama on their future.

But, Dan and Serena (And Gossip Girl) can’t listen to the crazy fans who treat this series like the girls in the episode treated Gossip Girl: these are supposed to be real people, and they can’t possibly always fall back into the same patterns and cliches. It might seem weird that Blair is the only one making sense about relationships, considering her trajectory in the episode, but if Dan and Serena don’t actually deal with their problems there are serious issues here. Ryan and Marissa went through exactly the same thing at the start of The O.C.’s second season, but it should have ended there: if Dan and Serena can do the same, Josh Schwartz might be able to hold a teen drama together by the end of its second season.

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