“Pushing Daisies” playfully pushes practicality

It’s been nine months, two weeks, five days and 23 hours since the last episode of “Pushing Daises” aired.

“Pushing Daisies,” which airs Wednesdays at 7 p.m. on ABC, buzzed into its second season last week after a long hiatus due to last year’s Writers Guild of America strike. The show centers on pie maker Ned’s (Lee Pace) ability to bring back the dead with a touch, although the second tap turns the living into the deceased again. After bringing his childhood love, Charlotte aka Chuck (Anna Friel), back to life in the first season, Chuck, Ned and private investigator Emerson Cod (Chi McBride) use Ned’s gift for solving crimes.

In this season’s premiere, bee-loving Chuck buzzes undercover at Betty’s Bees to solve the stinging murder of Kentucky Fitz, the best Bee Girl at the beauty-based business. Although undercover, the new job causes Chuck to seek her independence and move out of Ned’s house and on her own, which love struck Ned is unhappy about. The other end of this love triangle, Olive Snook (Kristin Chenoweth), who is in love with Ned, has a nervous breakdown under the pressure of keeping secrets and runs off to a nunnery. Meanwhile, Chuck, Ned and Emerson attempt to solve Kentucky’s murder.

This visually captivating show looks like a hi-tech Crayola wonderland, with every scene vibrantly transitioning to the next like turning the page of a colorful children’s pop-up book. The office building of Betty’s Bees is shaped like a big beehive with bright orange and yellow honeycomb-shaped doors and walls on the inside. Ned’s popular pie place, The Pie Hole, is shaped like a portly pie. The Emmy-award winning aesthetics of “Daisies” is not surprising coming from Executive Producers Dan Jinks and Bruce Cohen, who also won an Academy Award for visuals in “American Beauty” and a nomination with “Big Fish.”

Besides its lovely looks, another unique ingredient of the show comes from wordsmith and creator, Bryan Fuller. He indulges his appetite for fantasy and bending the rules on life and death yet again in “Daisies,” similar to his other shows such as “Heroes,” “Wonderfalls” and “Dead Like Me.”

This fantasy reads cleverly like a Dr. Seuss book, sprinkled with charming alliteration and quirky puns. The narrator makes statements such as, “Kentucky’s affairs were clearly a bee in Betty Bee’s bonnet.” While incognito, Chuck sympathizes with Betty Bee’s plight when she says, “That would make me stinging mad.” When asked why she stopped delivering pies, Olive replies with, “I’m really flakey.”

Pace brings loveable charm to doe-eyed Ned. He constantly has his hands in his pockets so he does not accidentally touch Chuck, but this body language along with his googly-eyed expressions also effortlessly depict his school boy crush on the girl.

However, the on-going love story between Chuck and Ned is notably lacking in this episode. It is the most appealing plot point, and it’s mistakenly buried six feet under Olive’s breakdown and the Kentucky murder mystery.

Additionally, Olive is a little over the top. Screaming in the middle of the diner and hiding out in a convent make her more of a caricature than a character.

“Daisies” is not everyone’s slice of pie. This fantastical fable, with its nursery rhyme narration and scenes suggestive of strolling in Seussville, may be too much of a stretch of practically. But that’s what fantasies are, a heaping serving of imagination, including all 43 minutes and 32 seconds of “Daisies.” This pie may be a little overdone, but it’s still got a good taste.

A preview from the season two premiere of "Pushing Daisies:"

"Unmarried” unconvincing as fresh comedy

With about half of marriages in America ending in divorce, it's no wonder so many television shows reflect this staggering statistic.

Now there’s another broken marriage to poke fun at with the new CBS sitcom "Gary Unmarried," which premieres Wednesday, Sept. 24, at 7:30 p.m. Gary, played by Jay Mohr, is a painting contractor who finds himself a bachelor again after 15 years of marriage now juggling his responsibilities as a dad and keeping a platonic relationship with his ex-wife, Allison (Paula Marshall). She barges in his house and immediately nags him about the contents of his refrigerator and who gets the kids on which weekend. He has to learn how to deal with two awkward teenagers – his son, Tom (Ryan Malgarini) who only talks to girls online and his daughter, Louise (Kathryn Newton) who hangs pictures of Al Gore and Mahatma Gandhi on her walls.

He complicates matters further when he meets Vanessa (Jaime King), a beautiful woman who hires him for a paint job, but then he ends up taking his work home with him. He is apprehensive to tell Allison about his new love interest until he learns their marriage counselor, Dr. Walter Krandall (Ed Begley, Jr.), is engaged to his ex and tries to give him love advice. Gary is trying to move from his old life into his new one as his relationships are all changing.

Mohr depicts the blue-collar everyman with ease, the jovial guy’s guy whose refrigerator is stocked with beer and little else, sees himself as the cool dad and doesn’t bother to read his therapist’s book “Rules for the Perfect Divorce.” When Allison nags him about Tom’s fear of talking to girls, Mohr delivers a simple yet explicatory response of Gary’s feelings by saying, “He should be afraid of girls. They pretend to like you and then they take all of your stuff!”

Marshall’s portrayal as a nagging ex-wife and self-righteous mom are enough to annoy more than Gary with her bossy demands and strange “juice cleanses” she gives her kids, but she’s rendering the typical role of an ex-wife who thinks she knows better. The report between Marshall and Mohr as ex-husband and wife is a series of zingers that dart back and forth so quickly that although are mostly funny almost seem too scripted and expected. When Allison gives a fleeting remark of, “Bye kids, have fun with your dad; I never did!” it seems more like a cheap shot than a clever quip.

“Gary Unmarried” is directed by comedy veteran James Burrows who worked on such sitcom sensations as “Friends,” “Will & Grace,” “Fraiser,” and “Cheers” to name a few, but “Unmarried isn’t on the level of these comedies because it’s too predictable. While the show aims to throw us into what’s going on the way Gary is thrown into his own situation, the pilot leaves little room to wonder what’s next. Everyone assumes ex-husband and wives bicker, raising children as a single parent is complicated, and reentering the world of dating after divorce is daunting and intimidating, and the show doesn’t bring anything new to the table. Ultimately, “Unmarried” is just another comedy about divorce.

For a preview of "Gary Unmarried" check out the clip below:

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Edited 9/22/08 7:41 a.m.