anna friel

(S01E08) "Am I your boyfriend?" - Ned
"Yes." - Chuck

It was announced about two months ago that Molly Shannon would guest star on ABC's Pushing Daisies and the day, err... evening, has come. I've read a lot of comments from fans saying that they were somewhat scared after hearing she would guest star mostly because they thought her acting wasn't good enough for the show. In retrospect, her acting wasn't that great but it wasn't that bad either since Daisies is over the top at times.

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(S01E07) "The mere smell of it made him feel, if only for an hour, exactly like he wanted to feel: safe and warm and loved, which is why he became the pie maker." - Narrator

ABC lost a good and fun opportunity to offer Pushing Daisies viewers a chance to get up close and really personal with the show and maybe attract new people who would have been interested in a scratch 'n' sniff event! Yes, it would have been pretty much a copy of what NBC did last year with My Name Is Earl, but having a scratch 'n' sniff card to use throughout this olfactory episode would have been just as magical as the episode itself! Okay, maybe the smell of the sock and the sewer would have been terrible but it would have been interesting to smell Ned, Emerson, and "honey and death" (aka Chuck). Okay, maybe that would have been a bad idea. Let's move on to the episode instead.
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(S01E06) Up until now, we've only seen Emerson as a gruff P.I. whose role was to throw a sprinkle of cynicism on the decidedly sprightly environment around the Pie Hole. But you knew that eventually we were going to either find out more about his past or see him get involved with one of the people he was investigating. Tonight we got the latter. And his dalliance did a nice job of throwing some needed darkness into what was an overly-sweet episode.
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(S01E05) "Tell Ned I love... his pies." - Olive

This Halloween-themed Pushing Daisies episode has been one of my favorites so far this season. We learned more about Ned's past and we discovered who Olive used to be while being entertained by a magical and mysterious storyline that was reminiscent of stories and movies such as Sleepy Hollow.

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(S01E04) Since my co-reviewer Izzy lives in Canada, she gets to see episodes of certain shows before we get to here in the States. One of those shows is Pushing Daisies, which airs on Tuesdays up there. After she saw "Pigeon" last night, she wrote me asking if this was the first episode that was shot after the now-infamous budget cuts were made. I thought last week's episode was the first under those restrictions, but I can see why Izzy might have thought that this one was made on the cheap.

To me, though, the less visual doohickeys there are in a Pushing Daisies, the better. A little bit of snazziness goes a long way with this show, and it leaves more room to actually tell the story. And this week's story was pretty good.
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(S01E03) "You killed someone for me?" - Chuck

After watching last week's episode, I was as worried as Joel was/is about Pushing Daisies's future. With such a stellar pilot, it was a given that the subsequent episodes wouldn't be as great but that second episode was a letdown. Narration aside (I'll get to this later on), this week's episode reassured me that PD can survive in its current format.

(S01E02) OK, I am now ever so slightly worried about Pushing Daisies.

Oh, don't get me wrong: there was plenty to like about the second episode of the most praised new show of the season. But there were two things that got me and every person concerned about this show's long-term future: a) Would the show get too cute (or twee, if closet Brit Anna Friel was discussing it. Alan Sepinwall was the first critic to use the term for the show, and I think it fits perfectly) for its own good, and b) would Barry Sonnenfeld's rumored budget overruns sink the show in its later episodes?

After watching "Dummy," my answers right now are a) it might if it's not careful, and b) it's starting to look that way.