Freshman Series: Pushing Daisies
ByThink of those first nine episodes of “Pushing Daisies” as a “teaser season.” That’s how showrunner Bryan Fuller describes the abbreviated launch of his primetime fairy tale about an average guy blessed/cursed by his ability to bring the dead back to life.
In some ways, Fuller says, being interrupted by the writers strike was a good thing: “The break in the first season really allowed me to get out of the weeds of the show and look at where we were going with the stories. We were just going to continue telling a lot of these episodic tales, and we weren’t able to weave in as much of the serialized storyline as I wanted to in the first season.”
So whereas those first nine mini-mysteries were designed to attract new viewers, reiterating the show’s eccentric premise in every episode, season two will allow for an “epic arc” as well as plenty of shorter multi-episode intrigues.
“Learning from my days on ‘Heroes,’ I’m planning to add some cliffhangers, which we’ll get into starting with episode five. That’s when a new character comes into the world and really shakes things up, somebody who has a link to the shared histories of both Chuck and Ned,” Fuller says.
What Fuller and company did establish in the show’s short run was a vivid, impressionistic world full of eccentric characterizations. In some cases, it’s tough to decide which is more colorful: Chuck’s aunts or Ned’s workplace, the Pie Hole.
“I think one of the things that sets ‘Daisies’ apart is that there is a strong design aesthetic to the show. Your eyeballs will be happy,” Fuller says. “We have this candy-colored world, but it’s also a ’40s romantic comedy and a noir detective (story), so there are so many genres going into the soup that it came out with its own flavor.”
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