Pushing Daisies, "Kerplunk": Cleaning up on the way out

So, thoughts on the "Pushing Daisies" finale? Do you think that the combination of Jim Dale, stock footage and computer animation were enough to give the show proper closure under the circumstances? Click here to read the full post

Pushing Daisies, "Water & Power": Lucky Penny

Just got through Saturday's penultimate "Pushing Daisies," which was a fine spotlight on Emerson Cod, PI. Not sure whether to be gratified or increasingly confused that they cast Gina Torres as the femme fatale in an episode that also featured Christine Adams as Simone the dog obedience lady, since I spent the first five minutes of Adams' initial appearance on the show wondering if it was Gina Torres with an accent.

What did everybody else think? And can you handle watching the last episode, knowing that it's not going to give closure on much of anything? Click here to read the full post

Pushing Daisies, "Window Dressed to Kill": I'm no Superman

I'm trying to take it easy this weekend, but I'm sure many of you want to discuss last night's return of "Pushing Daisies," even if it was only for Summer Burn-Off Theatre, so fire away.

Now, I know the remaining two episodes have already aired elsewhere, and are therefore available via file-sharing programs, but we're going to follow the same rules here that we do for a show like "Doctor Who" -- if it hasn't aired yet here in America, we're not going to talk about it. Confine all comments to this episode and the ones before it, please. Click here to read the full post

Pushing Daisies, "The Norwegians": Skubbe Do, where are you?

Spoilers for Wednesday night's "Pushing Daisies" -- which may or may not be the last episode to ever air on ABC -- coming up just as soon as I take a DNA swab...

Oh, twee little show, how I'll miss you.

It's still unclear whether ABC's going to run the remaining three episodes (maybe on a Saturday night in January?), just put them on their website, or make people wait for the DVD, but in a way, "The Norwegians" feels like as appropriate an ending point as any for the series' network run. It gave us yet another wacky world with the detectives from the land of Norwegia (including Orlando Jones, and I like that his blackness was never commented on, in the same way that nobody ever asked about Emerson Cod having a white mom), had Olive officially folded into the new Scooby gang as much as is possible without telling her about Ned's powers, finally showed us George Hamilton as Ned's dad (which is the kind of thing I like better as an image than I think I would if I had to watch Hamilton acting in several episodes), and featured possibly Jim Dale's best moment ever when he declared "Oh hell no!!!" at the sight of Olive in a Norwegian uniform.

With the series essentially at an end, I'm still trying to figure out what it is about "Pushing Daisies" that made me love it when I was ambivalent at best about Bryan Fuller's previous two shows. I know that I get paid to explain these differences, but I'm stumped, other than the possibility that the sheer sarcastic genius of Chi McBride (who got to talk 'bout Shaft here) effectively counter-balanced certain aspects that I found too annoying on "Wonderfalls" and "Dead Like Me." For those of you with a greater love for the Fuller ouevre, how would you characterize the differences between "Daisies" and the earlier shows? Click here to read the full post

Pushing Daisies, "Comfort Food" & "The Legend of Merle McQuoddy": Cake or death?

So I'm finally caught up on "Pushing Daisies" and can pre-empt all the "No 'Pushing Daisies' review?" questions at least until next week, which could well be the final episode to air. (Cue the sighs.) Spoilers for the last two episodes coming up just as soon as I shut the a cappella up...

Because it took me so long to finish watching "Comfort Food" (this is a show my wife and I like to watch together, so we have to coordinate), I was able to essentially watch it and "The Legend of Merle McQuoddy" as a double-feature, and it proved enlightening. Both episodes split our four main characters up, the first time pairing Chuck with Emerson and Ned with Olive, the second time giving our lovebirds one story and the sidekicks the other, and I found that the "Comfort Food" recipe of providing equal parts sweet and salty to each story worked much better.

Lee Pace and Anna Friel are beyond adorable together (witness their various kisses through plastic last night), and in some ways Chi McBride and Kristin Chenoweth are even funnier together than separate ("Oh, hell no!" in stereo), but I really preferred the balance of the previous show.

That said, there were a lot of strong elements to both hours.

"Comfort Food" offered up the most confident and proactive Ned we've had in a while (keeping him away from Chuck probably played a role in that), actually used a great guest star (Beth Grant) instead of keeping her on the margins (see Dave Koechner last night for a more typical example), and was one of the best showcases Chenoweth has had to date (and I felt that even before she turned out to be a fan of The Bangles).

"The Legend of Merle McQuoddy," meanwhile, had Ned and Chuck's dad in the awesome broom vs. mop fight (reminiscent of the spork-off from the second-ever episode of "Chuck"), Emerson giving a whole new meaning to the phrase "Tap that!" (a runner-up to "Trip over the ottoman! Dick Van Dyke that ass!" for best line of the episode), and did a good job of using Chuck's dad to point out how many ways both Ned and Chuck would be better off apart.

(Does someone who knows anything about embalming techniques -- or who just watched a lot of "Six Feet Under" -- want to offer their opinion on whether Chuck's dad would be this relatively well-preserved after all this time? Shouldn't he just be a skeleton in a decaying suit?)

Ah, whatever the flaws, I'm going to badly miss this show when it's gone, and Disney had better rush out that season two DVD set so we can see whatever episodes ABC declines to show.

What did everybody else think? Click here to read the full post

Pushing Daisies, "Robbing Hood": Open thread

Made the mistake of trying to watch this week's "Pushing Daisies" last night, after a long drive home from seeing the in-laws, just as the tryptophan was starting to kick in. In my semi-conscious state, I was aware that the episode was on, but only just. Still, I did technically watch it, and wanted to give those of you who did an opportunity to talk about it. What did you think? Click here to read the full post

Getting caught up: Fringe and Pushing Daisies

With a new episode of "Fringe" on tonight -- and don't forget, "House" is scheduled to run about 8 minutes long tonight (which means pad your recording for at least 15 minutes) -- it occurred to me that I never got around to writing about last week's episode, or about last week's "Pushing Daisies." (I was too busy talking about the latter's apparent cancellation instead.) After the jump, very brief thoughts on both, and then you have a chance to express whatever thoughts you've been holding in (or expressing in other forums), if you still remember at this point...

I wish I could have gotten to "Fringe" sooner, because that was the strongest episode they've done since the introduction of The Observer (or The Watcher, or whatever bald guy's code name is). Not coincidentally, it was an episode that was heavy on Walter -- not just for wacky non-sequiturs and mispronunciations, but one that took his mental illness seriously and gave Walter a window on how he must appear to the rest of the world. (The scene where he asked Peter if that's what it's like to have a conversation with him was perfect.) And because there was so much Walter, there was very little Olivia, to the point where I briefly forgot she was even on the show. At this point, other than J.J. Abrams' love of the (allegedly) strong heroine archetype, is there any reason to keep her around? Would the show suffer in any way if it was just about Walter and Peter, with Asteroid around to help requisition supplies and occasionally draw her weapon?

I really liked last week's "Pushing Daisies," too, and not just because it gave Kerri Kenney-Silver her first opportunity in what seems like forever to look like a woman. The magic setting fit in perfectly with this show, and seeing Ned finally throw off the shackles of his anxieties and try to be active for the sake of his half-brothers was a moment long in coming. (Of course, he's had that type of epiphany in previous episodes, only to revert to being a passive dweeb at the start of the next, so maybe this one won't take, either. But it felt like a more dramatic change.) And Emerson's line ("Where did I put that rat's ass I could give?") was one of his best barbs to date. Oh, sarcastic paisley man, I'll miss you most of all.

What did everybody else think? Click here to read the full post

You get a cancellation! And you get a cancellation! And you get a cancellation! Everybody gets a cancellation!!!

Big day for falling axes in the TV biz. The CW officially pulled the plug on its disastrous outsourced Sunday lineup, replacing "Valentine, Inc." and "Easy Money" with syndicated movies and, in a salute to peanut-lovers everywhere, "Jericho" reruns. (Now, if only they could add "Moonlight" to the mix...) ABC declined to give back nine orders to "Pushing Daisies," "Dirty Sexy Money" and "Eli Stone," effectively canceling all three once their initial run of 13 episodes is up. (Bryan Fuller is still talking about wrapping up all the "Pushing Daisies" stories in comic book form.)

On the good news side, ABC finally announced a premiere date and timeslot for "Scrubs," which will air Tuesdays at 9:30 (and will double up at 9 its first two weeks), along with other midseason changes that will have "Private Practice" moving to the post-"Grey's Anatomy" timeslot and "Life on Mars" (which got a pick-up for four more episodes) airing after "Lost" on Wednesdays at 10.

Still need to get to this week's "Pushing Daisies." Ah, well. I figured it'd be canceled three episodes in. Instead, it was a surprise success at first before the ratings started to drop and then the strike effectively killed it. It's kind of a miracle we got 22 episodes of such a weird show on a major broadcast network. Click here to read the full post

Pushing Daisies, "Dim Sum Lose Sum": Watch some, miss some

A couple of weeks ago, the great Roger Ebert got in some hot water for reviewing a movie he had (admittedly) stopped watching after the first eight minutes. Ebert later explained his reasoning, and eventually realized that he had screwed up.

I bring up Eight-Minute-Gate because while I was physically present for all 42 minutes or so of last night's "Pushing Daisies," I was mentally present for maybe a third of it, if that. Having just watched the Obamathon, and then the Phillies winning the World Series in the city I lived in for four years, I got a little too sucked into online discussion of both those events (plus a debate with several fellow Penn alums over whether Pat's, Geno's or Jim's has the best cheesesteaks) and realized I was missing large chunks of the episode in question. It looked pretty, as far as I can tell, and the weird card game seemed amusing (though it has a ways to go to beat the thing Barney was playing in the "Atlantic City" episode of "How I Met Your Mother"), but any actual opinions I tried to express about this one would just be guesswork.

So in the interests of full transparency, I'm going to admit defeat and turn this one into a "Pushing Daisies" open thread. Since I have no thoughts, what did everybody else think? Click here to read the full post

Pushing Daisies, "Frescorts": Big Gumshoe

Brief spoilers for last night's "Pushing Daisies" coming up just as soon as I get my taxidermy license...

There were so many things to enjoy in "Frescorts" -- the sound of Jim Dale saying "badass," the bond between Emerson and his awesome mama (played by the great Debra Mooney from "Everwood"), inflating a dead woman's collapsed lung with a bicycle pump, all the duvet double-entendres ("Selfishly, I want to duvet you all night long") -- that I didn't even mind that this was one of the more forgettable mysteries they've done to date.

In general, the actual plot of a "Pushing Daisies" seems to be the very last thing on the writers' minds -- hence wrapping most of them up with Dale's "The facts were these..." monologues -- but there's generally some kind of visually-intoxicating element to compensate for the thin plots. The idea of platonic prostitutes was a clever one, though, and that compensated for the fact that, outside of the expression on Ned's face when he wrapped his arms around the hug-testing machine, there wasn't anything particularly memorable to look at.

Ratings were, once again, lousy. Sigh... Enjoy it while you can, folks.

What did everybody else think? Click here to read the full post

Pushing Daisies, "Bad Habit": You'll have to have them all pulled out after the Savoy truffle

Very brief spoilers for Wednesday night's "Pushing Daisies" coming up just as soon as I find out if Chi McBride and Tom Bosley were separated at birth...

I'm kind of glad I didn't have time to watch this episode when it was included in the review screener ABC sent out, because it was quite a bit weaker than the first two. (In particular, the circus one was one of my favorite "Pushing Daisies" to date, and I'm sorry that time constraints prevented me from giving it its due on the blog last week.)

Olive in a nun's habit was a funny sight gag that didn't really work over the course of three episodes. While I accept that the cheap-looking green screen is a part of the show's charm, this week there was so much of it that it got distracting. And I'm still not clear on how everyone figured out that Pigby was responsible for killing Sister LaRue.

But I did like the scene where Olive forced Ned to pry the truth out of her, as well as Chuck's reaction to the news and Ned's realization that he needs to let go of some of the hurt from his father. Even when the show doesn't bring the funny as much as usual, it's still sweet. Something to be said for that.

What did everybody else think? Click here to read the full post

Pushing Daisies, "Circus Circus": What sort of contraptions?

I don't have time to say much about tonight's big top-flavored "Pushing Daisies," save that I still don't understand Chuck's family tree, that Chi McBride is the man, that Rachael Harris was her usual brilliant deadpan self as the client, and that Olive's description of how the convent porridge tasted ("I could throw up in my mouth a little and not even know the difference") is immediately going into my database of pop culture quotes to be used in everyday conversation. Oh, and, like the subject line says, what sort of "contraptions" is Ned building?

What did everybody else think? Click here to read the full post

Pushing Daisies, "Bzzzzzzzzz!": Do bears bear? Do bees bee?

Spoilers for the "Pushing Daisies" season two premiere coming up just as soon as I shoot some truth buckshot out of my muzzle...

I don't know that I have a lot to add to what I had to say in this morning's column -- click through and read it, I'll wait -- and so I'm just going to bullet point some of the things that made me smile especially broadly and then open it up for you to twist your tongues around all that talk about sabotaging Betty's Bees:

• Chuck dumping the dead bees onto Ned to bring them back to life (while simultaneously solving the water bug infestation problem) looked as nifty as I'm sure they hoped it would be.

• The gag about Emerson's self-authored pop-up book, "Lil' Gum Shoe," started off as a cute call-back to his interest in both pop-up books and knitting from last year, and turned poignant at the end with the reference to his missing daughter. Nice.

• I had no idea that was Autumn Reeser (formerly The Woman Who Saved "The O.C.," soon to be one of the stars of the CW's low-budget "Valentine") under all that bee sting make-up, which, combined with the bees shooting out of her mouth, made for one of the grosser corpse effects they've ever done.

• "Ain't no bees walking around in people shapes. Kentucky was wiggity wiggity whacked!"

• Olive's scream reaching dog octaves, leading into her rant about being a sawed-off shotgun full of secrets, which in turn led to the brief "Sound of Music" spoof on the mountain top.

• "If you can't hold it, you take your ass to the men's room and cry in private at the toilet -- like a man!"

• Pigby the Pig!

• I really liked the way Lee Pace carried himself in the scene where Chuck first starts talking about moving into Olive's apartment, and not just in the moment where they suggest Chuck caught him failing to be the master of his domain. The whole business with him stuffing his hands in his pockets and swirling his feet on the floor reminded me of something Neil Patrick Harris would do (which is among the higher compliments I can pay someone on this blog).

My only real objection -- other than to suggest that a show this proudly weird probably could have saved Missi Pyle for an episode where she'd have more to do -- is that Aunt Lily's story about being Chuck's mom confuses me. So Chuck believes her mother (whom she's apparently never seen pictures of) died in childbirth; are Lily and Vivia supposed to be her sisters? Sisters to Chuck's late father? And if Vivian doesn't know Lily is Chuck's mom, why does she think that either of them are Chuck's aunts? If Vivian knew the truth, it'd make slightly more sense, but I haven't had this much trouble diagramming a family tree since Julie Cooper and Caleb Nichol got hitched on "The O.C." while Ryan and Marissa were still dating.

And before I make a third "O.C." reference, it's time for me to ask: what did everybody else think? Click here to read the full post

Sepinwall on TV: 'Pushing Daisies' season two review

In today's column, I look ahead to the new season of my other favorite re-freshman series, "Pushing Daisies." I am still pleased, and will be back tonight with an episode review. Click here to read the full post

Pushing Daisies: The fickle finger of fate

Spoilers for "Pushing Daisies" coming up just as soon as I buy some vanilla extract...

I'm not sure whether this is the last episode completed before the strike shut down production (when the strike began, the LA Times said they'd be able to complete nine episodes, and this was show nine), but if so, I'm as disappointed as I've been as my other favorites have, one by one, run out of episodes. This was another strong, confident, weird, pretty episode and I may need to borrow some mood enhancers to replace the giddy feeling it often provides me.

Nine episodes admittedly isn't a huge sample size -- this will be a lot more surprising by episode 30 (if the show makes it that far) -- but I continue to remain impressed by the sick-but-sweet imagery the show cooks up, in this case the corpse-containing snowmen, plus Aunt Lily's hallucinations. (The bees under their winter covers were also cool to look at.) Couple that with some more eccentric guest characters -- notably the perky to the point of homicide Make-A-Wish lady -- the usual Emerson and Olive one-liners and some understandable romantic angst, and you've got another winner.

I'm glad that the writers didn't use Chuck's discovery of the truth about her father's death as a wedge to split up her and Ned for a bunch of episodes -- the whole no-touching thing is as much Unresolved Sexual Tension as any show needs -- and I thought Friel did a nice job of playing the head vs. heart conflict Chuck was dealing with.

Because the heat in my house has been off all day for some minor home repairs my fingers feel as frozen as Emerson and Ned's must have last night, so I'm going to move on to bullet points and then put on a pair of gloves:

-Vis a vis Chuck's desire for Ned to bring her dad back for a minute, wouldn't the guy be a skeleton by now? How comforting would that be for her?

-This show usually calls upon the comic side of Chi McBride's vast talents (see his complains about the non-word "Ginormous"), but Emerson's confession about his daughter was a potent reminder of what a great dramatic actor he can be. If forced to choose, I'd pick Funny Chi, but the man's a true double-threat.

-Has Chuck's mom even been mentioned before? Does she believe her mom died in childbirth or something? And which is worse: Chuck's mom making her think she's her aunt, or Chuck making her aunt/mom think she's dead?

-God, I love morgue attendant guy. One scene per episode, a couple of lines at most, and he's always funny.

-I didn't mention Paul Reubens when he first appeared, but I hope he comes back now and then to (literally) sniff around Chuck. I like how he's chosen to dial down his own innate weirdness, since the character as written is so weird that a more understated performance actually accentuates what's on the page.

What did everybody else think? Click here to read the full post

Pushing Daisies: Sticky situations

So my cable's back up, and thanks to those strike-inducing network websites, I've had a chance to catch up on some of last night's TV, which I'll be working my way through blogging in between viewing the Thursday NBC shows and Cowboys-Packers.

Spoilers for "Pushing Daisies" coming up just as soon as I dust myself for prints...

As someone who watches almost every episode of the shows I like, I'm more sensitive to over-use of formula than some (see my weekly complaints about "Reaper," though I still haven't gotten to see that one), and therefore more excited whenever a show deliberately gets away from that formula.

"Pushing Daisies" hasn't been too married to its formula, but this week's episode still seemed like a deliberate attempt to go off-template -- and a funny one, at that. What seemed like our Murder of the Week (complete with Jim Dale's "The facts were these...") was solved 10 minutes in, apparently never to be dealt with again (only for the Real Doll-loving killer to pop up again in prison), then the episode seemed to shift into a bunch of wacky hijinks between the Pie Ho's and Molly Shannon (ala the "Bar Wars" episodes of "Cheers"), and then we got a second, more important Murder of the Week -- and yet one that, in the end, was solved almost entirely via Jim Dale montage. And just when it seemed as if Ned had decided to put off telling Chuck about her dad so we could have one of those predictable "Why didn't you tell me the truth!" break-up moments around May sweeps, he just blurted out the news at episode's end. Never a dull moment in this one.

It helped to have so many funny bits -- none funnier than Emerson's "I mean, it's a broad generalization, but my guess is an attractive man who makes pies for a living shouldn't even spend a short amount of time in prison," but also including Olive baking a gun-pie, Chuck and Olive as cat burglars (complete with cleavage window for Olive), and another bit of formula undercutting, when Jim Dale said, "Then he considered how being locked in a prison was actually much worse than some silly metaphor about truth."

Don't know how many episodes remain from pre-strike production, but we're probably not going to see any of them till January, which makes Ned's confession a mid-season cliffhanger of sorts.

What did everybody else think? Click here to read the full post

Pushing Daisies: He who smelt it, dealt it

Okay, so I know I said I was taking Thanksgiving off, but my daughter woke me up earlier than expected and last night's "Pushing Daisies" was so ridiculous and wonderful that I feel compelled to say something about it sooner rather than later, so some very brief thoughts coming up just as soon as I jump in a pool...

The silliness. My word, the silliness. I just want to list some of the many marvelously silly things in this episode:

• "Follow the yellow thick hose"
• "Jews for cheeses"
• An odor expert named "Le Nez" (French for "The Nose")
• The pop-up bookstore as parody of ultra-serious comic book stores ("Pop-ups aren't just for kids anymore")
• Emerson reading Knit Wit magazine and then obsessing over pop-up books
• Ned's bearskin rug story
• Olive, when she wasn't busy falling out of her dress even more than usual, threatening to cut a bitch
• The perfectly befuddled look on Lee Pace's face during the first decontamination scene
• Did I mention the "Jews for Cheeses" t-shirt? From the Hebrew Feta Fest?
• All the retro touches, like Emerson offering up a Klondike-5 phone number, or the aunts' wooden "slide" viewers

And yet, the moment when Aunt Vivan began singing "Morning Has Broken" was so sincere and beautiful without taking away from all the goofiness of the rest of the episode.

Pure, stupid pleasure that hour was. Again, happy Thanksgiving everybody. Click here to read the full post

Pushing Daisies: How much is that doggie with the widows?

Brief spoilers for "Pushing Daisies" coming up just as soon as I pick up a flea and tick collar...

Oh, my sweet lord, the twee-ness! Too much twee-ness!

I really like "Pushing Daisies" overall, and even enjoyed a number of things in this episod -- Emerson's dissertation on Gangsta Love, the freaky "Chuck suit" sex dream, the gang finally figuring out an efficient way to get answers from a corpse and it still getting too complicated -- but good lord was this one precious. When we got to the sequence about all of the bizarre new breeds that Joel McHale was creating, I think I may have gone into sugar shock for a few minutes. Not even expanding Emerson's role and letting him flirt with Wife #3 (or was it 2?) was enough to overcome the cutesiness. Until now, the series has pulled off that tart but sweet balance, but this one was an illustration of how easily things can get too cute for their own good.

At the same time, I'm glad they finally had Ned and Chuck confront the limitations of their relationship -- and had Ned and Olive confront her crush on him -- even though it's not something that can really be solved anytime soon. What's interesting and occasionally frustrating about Ned is what a hangdog, passive character he is, always getting pulled along through life by other people like Emerson and Chuck. You don't usually see that in the protagonist of an ongoing series, which makes it refreshing, but I certainly hope that part of the long-range plan of the series involves Ned growing up (or manning up, if you prefer) and taking control of his own life and this weird gift/curse that he has. Lee Pace is charming, but I think the dumbsquizzled expression is going to get old after a while.

What did everybody else think? Click here to read the full post

Legless, sleepless, powerless

Kind of an odd day for me, so all of last night’s viewing gets the round-up treatment. Brief spoilers for, in order, “Pushing Daisies,” “Private Practice” and “Life” coming up just as soon as I ask my doctor whether I can get a gorilla arm transplant...

As with “Reaper,” a Halloween episode is kind of a gimme for “Pushing Daisies.” They’ve done better episodes -- usually the ones with more of Emerson snarking on everybody else -- but the show has yet to put out a bad hour. Five episodes is a small sample size, but almost every new show stumbles in some noticeable way by this point, and “Pushing Daisies” hasn’t yet.

A nice showcase for Kristen Chenoweth, whose flair for comic bitchiness wasn’t really on display in her previous TV roles, and Lee Pace got to carry more of an emotional load than usual as we dealt with the reason why Ned, like Ray Wise as the Devil, hates Halloween. (One minor complaint about that storyline: in the pilot, Chuck’s dad lived across the street from Ned, while her aunts lived elsewhere, which is why they said goodbye at their parents’ funerals.) Interesting that they had The Narrator speaking in verse this week; I find in general that he works best in the flashbacks and for exposition and get annoyed when they use him to underline the emotions that are clearly on the actors’ faces.

I haven’t written about “Private Practice” lately, even though I’ve seen every episode. It’s definitely improved in a number of ways, notably in how the characters are beginning to act their age instead of squeaky-voiced teens. But I still find it to be completely inconsequential viewing. When “Grey’s Anatomy” is working – as, I have to admit, it was for most of last week’s unblogged-about episode -- the hospital setting lends an urgency to all the relationship angst going on around the cases. Here, despite attempts to create crisis storylines like the abused girl here or the blue girls a few weeks ago, everything feels too laid-back. The stakes aren’t high enough for me to get invested in whether Addison and Pete are a good match or whether Cooper will ever get the stones to ask out Violet. I know Shonda wanted to differentiate the spin-off from the original by changing the workplace setting as much as possible while still staying in medicine, but it feels like a waste of everybody’s talents, both off-camera and on. (What the hell is a world-class neo-natal surgeon doing at this place?)

“Life,” meanwhile, has grown on me quite a bit. While the things that annoyed me -- the fruit obsession, the Zen koans, Charlie marveling at modern technology -- are all still in place, Damian Lewis has such strong presence that I’ve learned to tune the quirkiness out like so much background noise. The cases still need improvement – which, as I’ve written, is a genre-wide problem at the moment – but I’m enjoying it just enough that I’ll be disappointed when the low ratings or the strike brings about cancellation.

That said, this wasn’t one of their stronger episodes, because the focus was on Reese instead of Charlie. I get that the partner has to become a more well-rounded character so it’s not just the Charlie Crews Genius Hour, but I still don’t buy Sarah Shahi in this part. I think about how often the female partners on “Criminal Intent” have to stand around and goggle at their partner’s brilliance and wish that, say, Shahi and Kathryn Erbe could swap series. Erbe would’ve killed with the AA story.

What did everybody else think? And, out of curiosity, did anybody watch the debut of Joe “Joey Mants” Mantegna on “Criminal Minds”? I watched a screener but found it as stultifying as every other episode of the show I’ve seen. Click here to read the full post

Pushing Daisies: With arm wide open

A million new shows on Wednesday nights, but the only one holding my attention enough that I have to rush to blog about it is "Pushing Daisies." (Judging by the lack of comments to my last Wednesday round-up, I'm guessing I'm not the only one.) Spoilers for the latest episode coming up just as soon as I perform transplant surgery on a bird...

This episode wasn't as good as last week's -- the twee-to-funny ratio (perhaps epitomized by the relative screen time for the aunts vs. Emerson) favored the twee a little too much -- but this weird show just slaps a smile on my face for 40+ minutes a week (no commercials for this boy), and that's enough. Hell, it was worth it for Olive and Aunt Vivian's brief duet on They Might Be Giants' "Birdhouse in Your Soul." (Hey, unemployed "Viva Laughlin" producers: this is how you show someone singing in the car without seeming embarrassed about it.)

A couple of points to note. First, Warner Bros. is really holding the line on the budget right now, as the green screen effects in several scenes (particularly the one outside the Pie Hole when Olive first found the pigeon) looked like something out of the '70s. I hadn't realized just how much of the show was CGI-driven until that moment.

Second, I'm not sure how I feel about Chuck and Ned finding so many workarounds to their no-touching problem, especially this quickly. On the one hand, it would be dumb if they didn't try things like plastic wrap and, here, the beekeeper suits. But on the other, it's quickly taking away some of the poignant quality of their relationship. Those bee suits didn't look that heavy; essentially, all Ned needs to do is wear winter-weight clothing all the time and he and Chuck can hug, dance, etc., whenever they want. I know that's not the same thing as being able to have a real kiss, or make love, or even just feel each other's skin, but I felt more moved by the situation back in the pilot when they couldn't even hold hands, you know?

One other note: Dash Mihok, who played the escaped con, was one of the castmembers in the original "Cavemen" pilot and was essentially the only thing I liked about it. So, of course, he was fired. Glad to see he's moved (even for one episode) from one of this season's worst new shows to one of its best.

What did everybody else think? Click here to read the full post