"Pushing Daisies" commits cardinal sin
Does the hottest new show have a fatal flaw?
Anyone who’s worked in show business knows that one of the cardinal sins is to allow the audience to be distracted. There’s a time and place for stunning visuals and subtle innuendos, but when the focus needs to be on the main characters, the director and actors must make sure they don’t unintentionally create a diversion.
How might this happen?
Consider a live show featuring a character in a wheel chair, motoring around the stage. The actor in the chair is comfortable navigating around the set pieces and steering in different directions, confident he won’t plunge into the orchestra pit below. But the audience isn’t as relaxed. They see him speeding around, and they worry for his safety. At that point, they’re distracted, no longer invested in the scene.
I once saw a young actor in drama school get blasted for an innocent mistake. His performance was brilliant, but at one point in the scene, he tossed a pair of sunglasses on the floor. Subconsciously, he knew exactly where the glasses were, and it never crossed his mind that he might accidentally step on them. But the audience didn’t know that. We were watching him walk around the stage, waiting for the inevitable crunch. Of course, it never happened, but the audience was distracted, negating all the fine acting he had done earlier.
Now consider Pushing Daisies, possibly the hottest new show on TV. It has such a wild premise, I’m not even going to attempt to explain it completely. In short, the main character cannot touch the female lead or she will die. And both characters are well aware of the situation.
Simple enough, right?
Except that, defying all logic (as TV shows are known to do), the two characters are in close proximity
all the time. You’d think the girl would stay as far away from her potential killer as possible, right? Of course, then there wouldn’t be much of a show.
Okay fine, we can get past the idiotic nature of this critical setup. The problem is, we are constantly distracted. We know damn well the characters won’t actually touch, because the female lead would die and the show would be over, but
we’re still watching for it. Instead of listening to the sometimes-witty dialogue or following the clever plot or admiring the solid acting or falling in love with the characters, we are nervously wondering if… maybe… this... time… they… might… actually… Phew! Scene over. She’s still alive.
What does this mean for the long-term potential of the show? Probably nothing. I can only guess the audience will eventually become comfortable and less distracted as the show becomes more familiar. In the second episode, the characters began to discover ways they could touch without really touching, you know, like kissing through saran-wrap. That will help ease the distraction.
The only reason it works to begin with is because the show is intentionally distracting on many levels. The sets are vibrant and distorted, like something out of Dr. Seuss. There’s even a narrator who could just as easily be doing How the Grinch Stole Christmas. This show was never intended to be about the characters and their relationships, it was meant to show off its quirky premise, impressive production value, and corny dialogue.
On that level, it succeeds, and it’s no wonder it has been hailed as the best new show of the season, especially considering the disappointments that are Journeyman, Bionic Woman and Chuck (all of which have already been banned from my TiVo).
But Pushing Daisies’ demise will likely be its insistence on pushing its characters behind one distraction after another.