The new tv season is upon us and I have to admit that there weren't too many shows that grabbed my attention. Luckily, the few I have checked out have been either great or worth giving a shot.
Of all that I've seen, Pushing Daisies right now has to be my favorite. Created by one of the guys behind the short lived Wonderfalls, Pushing Daisies has a similar sense of whimsy about it. Lee Pace plays Ned, who discovers as a child that he has the ability to bring the recently deceased back from the dead. Like all "gifts" this one comes with the usual karmic balances. He can only keep the person/animal alive for one minute or else someone else has to die. If he touches the person/animal again, they die...again.
It's this last bit that is causing a bit of a problem for Ned. In the first episode, his childhood love was killed and he brought her back to find out what happened and to admit something to her that he'd been keeping secret his whole life. One look at her and he realizes he can't let her die again. Well, there goes the funeral home director then...
The series is just this side of real. It's like watching a combo between Tim Burton, The Wizard of Oz and Twin Peaks. The writing is smart, with a good sense of dark humor. There is just the right balance between the weirder and more whimsical aspects of the story and the realism needed for the relationship between Ned and Chuck (his childhood crush, the girl next door) to be endearing rather than cloying. Lee Pace and Anna Friel, a great British actress, work extremely well together, keeping cutesy-ness at bay while maintaining a real sense of sweetness.
I just recently rented Soldier's Girl that starred Pace and he was freakin' amazing in it. He definitely has no fear as an actor, which should make watching him in this show a real treat. You can catch Pushing Daisies on ABC, Wed. at 7pm.
Second fave new show would have to be Chuck. Since it's on Mon. at 7pm on NBC, I have to tape it (hello...Prison Break also on at 7). The two episodes I've seen have been really funny and even though the action can get a bit over the top, the show is still a riot. Maybe it's because I've worked for Best Buy, but I enjoy all the bits inside of the Buy More where Chuck works for the Nerd Herd (Geek Squad). Chuck inadvertently became the receiver of all of the secret intel gathered by both the NSA and the CIA. He's essentially a living computer and will have weird moments when the info will coalesce and he has to let his secret agent handlers know something is up. Zachary Levi plays Chuck and currently shares Crush Land with Lee Pace in my head. Levi plays confused nice guy very well. Chuck is very much the guy you'd like to date and take home to mom. He is surrounded by a funny sister with an "awesome" boyfriend and the slightly strange best friend, Morgan. This is another well written show full of great actors.
Also worth checking out, Bionic Woman and Reaper. Bionic Woman is being done by one of the guys responsible for bringing back Battlestar Galactica and thus far I'm enjoying it. Reaper is similar to Chuck, in that it's a sort of geeky guy with a slightly strange best friend finding out he has some sort of new power. In Reaper's case, our hero finds out his parents sold his soul to the devil and he has to work for Satan wrangling up escaped naughty souls and returning them to Hell. Actually, a rather clever and twisted idea. The production value on the first episode was a little lax, but I enjoyed the dark humor so I'm going to watch this one to see how it progresses.
Finally, I completely missed Banned Books week. How sad is that considering I work at a bookstore. We used to make a big deal about the week. When we were first open, we had a major table set up with a fake bonfire featuring the titles on the ALA list. Now, I think we might have had a display up on the end of one of the shelving rows. Anyway, I thought I would recommend The Perks Of Being A Wallflower by Stephen Chbosky that was one of the 10 most challenged books in '06.
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