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OF all
places, the venue of the press launch last Friday night
for the hilarious new TV series Pushing Daisies,
on 2nd Avenue, was at the Libingan ng mga Bayani. We
humored fellow press friends by telling them that if
ever they bumped into someone wearing a military suit of
a bygone era while on their way to the comfort room,
rest assured they have had a “heroic encounter.” And
there’s the usual “Is Bayani Casimiro buried here?” Then
again, we learned that Pushing Daisies is
primarily a heroic story about Ned the pie maker (Golden
Globe Award-nominee Lee Pace, Wonderfalls), who
has an immensely unique gift of bringing back dead
people, plants and animals to life for one minute.
As an
accomplice to private investigator Emerson Cod (Chi
MacBride of The Nine), Ned uses his special power
to solve murder cases by giving the procedure “witness
interrogation” a bizarre twist—the principal witness
being the dead victim himself/herself.
THE cast of
Pushing Daisies
But
there’s a glitch in this gift.
Ned
needs to know everything he needs to know for one minute
or else, his witness-victim will live longer but as a
price, someone who’s physically near them will die. If
Ned touches the witness-victim again, or vice versa, the
witness-victim will die for good. There are no second
chances. Even if Ned touches the witness-victim for a
second or third time, he-she will stay very, very dead.
It
sounds like something under the horror-crime-suspense
thriller genre with a comic twist, but one day Ned’s
witness-victim happens to be his former childhood
sweetheart, Charlotte “Chuck” Charles (Anna Friel of
Goal!), who is murdered in a mysterious way on a
cruise ship. He brings her back to life and eventually
keeps her in his own apartment.
With the
curse that comes with his gift, Ned can’t touch the love
of his life. They can’t kiss, get drunk and sleep
together, giving the term “unrequited love” another
bizarre twist. In fact, Ned lets Chuck sleep in his
bedroom while he parks himself on the couch in the
living room.
“It’s
funny. It’s got a really funny, lighthearted feeling
about it. It is not as much about death like a lot of
the shows you’re thinking about. It is more a show about
life and about people feeling life, having life for the
first time. Chuck is brought back to life, and Ned is
brought back to life in a way. It is more about that,”
said Lee Pace in an interview for a US publication.
In real
life, Pace confessed he doesn’t know how to bake pie and
only likes apple pie. For the role, he was forced to
learn how to bake all kinds of pie.
On our
way out of Libingan ng mga Bayani, one of our press
friends asked why Pace’s character needed to be a pie
maker. We told him that Pace can’t be a butcher, or else
he’ll give the term “double-dead” another bizarre twist.
In Pushing Daisies, Ned is shown touching
strawberries with rotten parts that magically become
fresh. Ned can’t touch them again before being served,
or else....
At any
rate, the first episode—which airs on Tuesday, May 6, at
8 pm, with a repeat on Sunday, May 11, at
9 pm) —is about
the boy Ned discovering his gift. His dog is hit by a
speeding truck. He touches the dog and it runs away like
nothing happens. As Ned and his dog pass by a
tree—exactly when the one-minute “deadline” lapses—a
squirrel falls from one of its branches and literally
drops dead.
At home,
Ned confirms his gift when suddenly his mother has a
fatal heart attack. He touches her and she’s back baking
a pie. After one minute, a neighbor watering the plants
in the garden succumbs to heart failure.
Like
Superboy becoming the Man of Steel, Ned the reluctant
hero learns to deal with his gift as he grows older.
The idea
of “bringing the dead back to life and death again” has
been described as one of the most original story
concepts on television these days by New York and Time
magazines. Since premiering in the
US
late last year, Pushing Daisies has won Best New Series
and Best Television Comedy from the Family TV and
Satellite Awards, respectively.
The
creator is Bryan Fuller, the same genius behind
Heroes and Wonderfalls. It is coproduced by
Barry Sonnenfeld, who is widely admired for his visuals
in Men in Black and The Addams Family.
Because
Pushing Daisies has elements of both comedy and
fantasy, Lee Pace was asked in another US interview
which he liked the better. His response: “Comedy is
really fun, yes. I really like it. The movies I’ve done
were always really dark and one thing I like about doing
comedy is that it’s fun, like, your life is more fun.
You laugh a lot when you’re at work and you’re in a
better mood when you get home.”
Around
these parts, being at home on a Tuesday or Sunday night
will surely get a dark comic twist via Pushing
Daisies.
**2nd Avenue is available on RJTV UHF Channel 29,
SkyCable Channel 19, Global Destiny Channel 31, Dream
Satellite Channel 36 and Planet Cable Channel 20. |
