Heavens, it's quite late. One day, I'll manage to get a blag done at a reasonable hour, and it will be a glorious day in which the sun rises in the West and everyone gets a free puppy.

This could happen if I got my shit together.

Of course, it will probably be accompanied by the sky turning black and the moon turning red, so we won't have much time to enjoy our be-puppied existence. There was a thought of blah blah reviewing a TV show, which could be groovy, I suppose, but that would assume that I have any variety in my TV viewing life. I'm sure that the assumption would be great and wonderful and all, but it would also be quite wron. Dude, I just watch Netflix of various shows and movies, and those shows aren't all that varied. Besides, there are enough bits out there of people gushing about Doctor Who or Torchwood or Buffy the Vampire Slayer or whatever else is out there that people gush about. We don't need another one. And yes, I used "bits" rather than "blogs" or "websites" or "domains," and I'm tired so it'll have to do. I'm going to blah blah be blah blah blahdy blah now. That's a taste of things to come tonight, I'm afraid.



Ah, there was a time when this wasn't a problem. All-nighters multiple times a week, and I was only mildly more articulate than I am now. Meanwhile, it is cold as bajeezus, hence the presence of this wonderful blanket over my feet. It is truly wonderful. And now I'll hopefully find a plot to this post, because right now, there's just a bunch of words strung together by general exhaustion. Unfortunately, I used my big couple of entires over the last few nights, and I don't want to use up ALL my ideas when it's barely halfway through the month. I would blame it on the a-a-a-a-alcohol, but I'm sober as ... I dunno, whatever is the paragon of sobriety these days. A nun? But I would look awful in a habit.


LADIES (which, I shit you not, was just uttered on the TV not 30 seconds ago).

I managed to pull off an exceptional amount of cleaning done this evening. Well, really, any amount of cleaning is exceptional for me, but that's neither here nor there. I continue to be unsure of where I was supposed to be going with that, but, man, if I knew, it would be so profound. Just so profound. But hey, that might require that I hop back onto my soapbox, which is not what I'm hoping to do tonight. However, because apparently Kristen Chenoweth is trending on Bing images (I'm not sure why she'd be trending at 2 AM on a Saturday morning, but then, maybe I don't really want to know), let's talk a bit about Pushing Daisies. Also, how is this only 483 words? Geeeeez this is going to be a long night, which is going to make tomorrow a long day of not accomplishing much in terms of studying. Oh huzzah.

Yes, Sujin, I'm going to review a TV show. Hopefully, it'll last a good 1100 words, because it is late like whoa.

See, Pushing Daisies is one of those shows that was really quite excellent and was cancelled before its time. Thing is, I feel like it doesn't get the exposure that shows like Arrested Development and Firefly got (not that those shows are undeserving- quite the opposite). A lot of it probably came from the fact that it fell in the middle of the writers' strike, but even if there hadn't been a strike, it would have been cancelled. Honestly, it was just too darned weird. See, the setting was kind of like Edward Scissorhands- incredibly shiny and very stylized with lots of elements of the fifties sort of ideal without getting rid of the more modern technology. Then, of course, blah blah dark secret (namely, Ned (the main character) can bring the dead back to life, but only for a minute (or else something else of equal status dies at random), and if he touches them again, they're dead for good). Thing is, they don't just let it be the adventures of Ned, the dead-raising guy as he heroically fights crime and save the day. No, they make it the adventures of Ned making pies (his resurrection magic hands work on fruit, too) and his newly-undead childhood sweetheart (who he can of course never touch) and his pie-coworker (who has a thing for him, and is played by Kristen Chenoweth) and his private eye partner with whom he... well, okay, he somewhat heroically fights crime and saves the day.



He also has an undead dog that is ADORABLE. Also, there are crazy synchronized swimming aunts. All of this is true.

This show, for me, had a lot of things going for it. First off, it's visually incredible. They make everything in the imagery just pop. It reminds me of an article I read on Cracked a while ago about the Wii and video games in general. One of the points it made was that so many video games (Call of Duty, Gears of War, etc.) have started working in gray, brown, and muzzle flare as their color palate. The graphic are great, so even though you can't see what you're doing, you can't see it with a phenomenal degree of detail. On the other hand, the Wii didn't have quite the same graphics capabilities, but you look at games like Super Mario Galaxy, and it's fun just because there are so many different colors, and they're everywhere.

You look at a lot of the other TV shows out there around the same time as Pushing Daisies (and beyond), and although they usually had a bit more than just gray and brown, nothing popped quite like Pushing Daisies. They keep the colors matching the characters' personalities, they keep everything bright, and it provides a great contrast for the frankly screwed up lives of the characters.

Another reason Pushing Daisies really appeals to me is a bit more superficial. See that girl in the yellow dress up there? Who does that remind you of? If you said Zooey Deschanel, well, then you're thinking along the same lines as me, and may God have mercy on your soul. I think Zooey Deschanel has a solid singing voice and an interesting sort of fashion sense that really works for her. I think she's very pretty. I do NOT like her as an actress (except in Big Trouble, and that's because she was playing a surly adolescent, so her monotone deadpan delivery worked). In Pushing Daisies, Anna Friel pulls off the fashion and the look, and she even gets in on a little bit of the deadpan snarkiness, but she never fully succumbs to the deadpan manic pixie dream girl schtick that has gotten so old. She's happy about life, but not in an overly quirky way. Well, at least not one that's out of place with the show's environment, which brings me to my next point.

The show THRIVES on absurdity. Not just wackiness absurdity. We're talking Camusian "Life can really suck sometimes, but it might just be worth giving a try" absurdity. Ned brings his mother back to life, not yet knowing about the one-minute-rule, and ends up accidentally killing Chuck (Anna Friel- yes her character's name is Chuck (technically Charlotte Charles, but who's counting?))'s father as a result. Then, after a day with his newly resurrected mother, she kisses him goodnight and dies again. This is all in the first episode. WHAT. And this is all with the pseudo-Danny Elfman serene/ethereal music and narration but the never-seen narrator. WHAT. Their clients/cases throughout the series include: the descendant of an Asian railroad worker who took the identity of a dead Confederate soldier, an insane perfume-maker, a rival insane perfume-maker (played creepily by Paul Reubens), jockeys being haunted by a dead rival (ALSO HOLY SHIT I JUST SAW THAT THE SECOND SEASON IS ONLINE NOW), a polygamist dog breeder, and, well, other crazy situations. The thing is, they're all treated as perfectly normal. It's not the token "Wow, this is WACKY guys" as much as the "Well, this is perfectly reasonable for where we live. Onwards and upwards then." It never came across as forced, because in a shiny world where a piemaker can bring people back from the dead and teams up with a private eye, there's a pretty high tolerance for ridiculous.

Also, the name of Ned's restaurant is "The Pie Hole."

And of course, possibly the most important (well, really, the second most important) part of the show is that everyone is absolutely adorable, mostly due to the writing. Even though Lee Pace plays the incredibly awkward Ned with just enough smoothness to pull it off (and he can just do that smile and make you want to give him a hug), it's the story that makes you really care about him. Every scene he has with that dog is full of warm and fuzzies (in no small part due to the fact that the dog is friggin' cuter than heck and manages to keep me from properly swearing in times like this). He and Anna Friel have great chemistry together, and the story gives their relationship just enough pathos to break your heart without being soap opera (I'm still waiting for the call, ABC and NBC. Well, I suppose I'm more waiting for an e-mail or some such, as I haven't posted my phone number out here for general information) melodramatic. There's enough secrets to keep the characters developing and keep their relationships changing, but they get enough time for you to get that little bit of hope that they'll never come to the surface and that everything's going to have a happy ending. And despite the shiny neighborhood and the adorable cast, it keeps coming so close, but it never quite does.

Of course, the most important part of the show is the pie, because, man, who doesn't like pie?