The New Season: Pushing Daisies and More
Lee Pace and Anna Friel in Pushing Daisies by Scott Garfield/ABC
Will the TV audience go out on a limb to embrace the much-buzzed-about pilot of ABC's delightfully one-of-a-kind
Pushing Daisies, or will this one go the way of the whimsical and short-lived
Wonderfalls (another offbeat gem from creator Bryan Fuller)? Will ABC's
Private Practice and NBC's
Bionic Woman continue to duke it out for bragging rights as the season's sole breakout hits? Or is it possible that having sampled the first episodes of each out of curiosity, disgruntled viewers will find something else to occupy their time? Is CW's over-the-top
Gossip Girl destined to be a cult guilty pleasure at best? Can Casey become the first female
Top Chef (here's hoping) when the winner is announced in the live finale? Will Cartman make us blush as he pretends to have Tourette's syndrome on the season-opener of
South Park? (You've noticed I've turned away from network TV in addressing the 10 pm/ET hour. Only ABC's
Dirty Sexy Money piques my interest from the big-three offerings in that hour.)
These are among the questions looming large as we enter the second Wednesday night of the official TV season, and the first Wednesday with all of the networks' lineups finally intact. Not only am I dying to see how it all plays out, I'm actually excited to watch most of these new episodes.
And to answer my own first question: Comparing
Pushing Daisies' situation to that of
Wonderfalls isn't entirely germane. ABC is giving one of its largest promotional pushes of the fall season to this colorful, wacky and magically endearing series about life, death and improbable love. Whereas back in the spring of 2004, Fox treated
Wonderfalls like something of a leper, burying it in a Friday graveyard slot and casting it out after a mere four episodes. (Thankfully, the entire 13-episode series was preserved on DVD.)
Daisies is almost certainly going to get some time to grow. And who knows? We're overdue another miracle like
Lost, a show that defied the rules and, by offering something wondrously different, attracted a large and enchanted audience right from the start. I'm not counting on it, but stranger things have happened.
