Pushing Daisies deserves success.  So does Friday Night Lights.  So did Veronica Mars.  Why shows don't achieve the status that their quality should dictate is an accepted aspect of the TV landscape.  Things just work that way.  Shows are marketed wrong, they don't appeal to the right audience, they're scheduled against CSI: Scranton, etc.  Pushing Daisies hasn't even premiered and given its high-concept premise, its whimsical delivery of dark subject matter, and no-name cast, it appears possible (probable, even) that the show is primed to be this season's “Show that Everyone Loves But No One Watches”, despite the fact its the best new TV show of the season.  Is this sort of cynicism healthy?  Is it misguided?  Am I jumping the gun? 
 
Pushing Daisies follows a pie-shop owner named Ned who has the ability to bring the dead back to life, but for only a minute (lest another person in the surrounding area perish).  He uses this gift to bring murder victims back to life, finds out who killed them, and collects the reward.  That's the gist.  It is told in a lush, pastel-filled, fairy tale sort of way.  The narrator moves the action along and although death is omnipresent, it's kind of beautiful, yet retains a biting element of black comedy.  It's great and you should watch it.  Watch it, tell other people to watch it, and tell those people to tell other people to watch it.

But, that's the problem.  While ABC surely knows they have something of high quality on their hands and will do their best to market it, Pushing Daisies may just be too weird and unrelatable  for Joe and Jane America.  There's no recognizable draw in terms of the cast (unless Chi McBride has some sort of large cult following (a cult, by the way, which I would fully endorse)), and it's not like the pilot is full of pithy one-liners that the network promos can bandy about during Dancing with the Stars. 

The sad thing is, it's gotten to the point where if something new and original and quirky enters the TV landscape, failure is almost expected.  Anything seemingly outside the mainstream is set up to find a loyal cult following, something that usually occurs only amidst middling ratings. 

Is this reverse jinx working?  Frankly, this was my plan all along.  I want Pushing Daisies to succeed so badly that I felt like trumpeting its future doom would be a good way of reversing the inevitable gut-punch of a great show being prematurely executed in the merciless firing range of network television.  The futility of my gesture is apparent, but we all have to do what we can, right?


-Oscar Dahl, BuddyTV Senior Writer
(Image Courtesy of ABC)