Nearly five months passed between the time I got my first look at the miraculous Pushing Daisies pilot and the second episode. It was worth the wait. I am officially in love.Flashback (I wish I could count back the days, hours, minutes and seconds as precisely as Jim Dale does in his spot-on narration): It’s the week before the network upfronts in May, and I’m in Los Angeles working on the TV Guide Network’s America’s Next Producer show when a studio exec not even associated with Pushing Daisies leaks me a copy of the pilot, which I’d heard was good but had no idea was THIS good. From the moment I saw it, I was enchanted and could only hope that fellow critics and viewers with open minds and open hearts would share my enthusiasm. I was also so satisfied by what I’d seen that I couldn’t help wondering if they’d be able to pull it off on a weekly basis.Flash to the second week of October, and in brilliant high definition, I watch the second epis...
read more
Subtitled: Are Celebrities Out of Control?Extras gets funnier every time I see it. It is so good, I had to watch it twice and I believe I laughed even harder the second go-round. Did you know that HBO is airing this show up to a day before it is programmed? I like this idea. I can watch on Saturday and let the juices meld and then write on Sunday, having watched it a second, hilarious time. Stories get out of hand as Andy’s restaurant faux pas turns into a horrible media scandal. When he tries to fix it, he refuses to apologize the entire time, and the spin becomes negative again since he had gotten into a fight with a dwarf and had knocked him unconscious. The episode guest was Daniel Radcliffe, whose naughty little Cub Scout routine was out of control. In a scene where he is dressed as Harry Potter, Daniel says to Maggie, “I’ve done it with a girl, I mean intercourse-wise.” He tries to have it off with every girl on the set — not exactly the Harry Potter...
read more
