There’s really nothing like good television. It’s a great alternative to watching movies since the latter implies dressing up, getting up and going out. Television has become our greatest source of available entertainment. And this season, it’s back with a vengeance. While last season featured such polished new gems as Heroes, the defunct Dirt that starred Courtney Cox, Studio 60 that starred her Friends hubby Matthew Perry, and Ugly Betty, this season is no slouch with a stellar lineup of shows that will surely blow your brains out. High-end Manhattan. Twilight Zone meets the surrealism of Desperate Housewives. Plot lines that seem oddly familiar, cast in an entirely different light. Meet this season’s must-sees. Pushing Daisies and Gossip Girl.
There’s an odd sense of comfort in watching Pushing Daisies. It’s as surreal and disturbing as it can get with an out-of-this-world plot and a premise that is surprisingly charming. What happens when a guy is able to bring a dead person back to life? Miracle. What happens if the same guy touches that same person again? Dead forever. I’m speaking of a mild-mannered pie maker who can do just that. Bring people back to life, but for over a minute will hauntingly take the life of something or someone else. An added alarm comes with the fact that the resuscitated being can no longer make physical contact with his or her savior again. Fair enough? What if the reanimated being is someone the pie maker loves dearly? So near, yet so farfetched. The twisted charm of Pushing Daisies can only spell love-struck disaster for Ned and his queen of hearts Chuck, especially with a level of chemistry that surpasses that of Meredith and Dr. McDreamy’s in Grey’s Anatomy minus the sex, or touching part, for that matter.
Pushing Daisies delves a little bit into mystery as well. Ned becomes acquainted with private investigator Emerson Cod who stumbles upon the pie maker’s extraordinary talent of bringing people back to life. Together, they solve crimes by interrogating corpses within minute’s time. It certainly is an interesting twist to the incomparable and classic murder mystery. To a large extent, the show is well cast with a narrator as chilling as Mary Alice from Desperate Housewives. The strengths of the actors lie in that they have great chemistry and an odd sort of enchantment that fits well with the phantasmagorical world of Pushing Daisies. The environs are painted, computer-generated, and made to look like they were cut from a Salvador Dali painting with the plot threads being equally enchanted. The show stars Lee Place as Ned the pie maker, Anna Friel as ill-fated love interest Chuck, Kristen Chenoweth as Ned’s snooty pie assistant Olive Snook, Chi McBride as private investigator Emerson Cod, and Swoosie Kurtz and Ellen Greene as Lily and Vivian Charles, Chuck’s kooky aunts.
Meanwhile, on the Upper East Side of Manhattan congregates a group of teenagers who are the next heirs apparent to the Big Apple throne. Cocktails, diamonds and burlesque: you’d think they’d have an appropriate drinking age in the United States. Not when these prep school teenagers comprise Manhattan’s upper crust or possibly own the actual hotels in which these bright young things can sip a cocktail or ten, and go about living their much-envied and wealthy lives.
Based on the popular series of novels by Cecily von Zeigesar, Gossip Girl tells the story of Serena van der Woodsen (Blake Lively), once Upper East Side’s most notorious party girl who returns from a self-imposed exile that may have had a lot to do with her younger brother Eric (Connor Paolo). The teenage socialite seems to be carrying a well-kept secret that will surely affect her best friend Blair Waldorf (Leighton Meester), daughter of one of the top apparel distributors in Manhattan with whom she has developed a competitive love-hate relationship over the years. Things get even more complicated when Blair’s boyfriend Nate (Chace Crawford) stirs things up between the two, along with his recklessly eccentric best pal Chuck (Ed Westwick) whose quirky and spoiled Weltanschauung has made him wealth and power personified. On the opposite side of the social spectrum are Dan (Penn Badgley) and Jenny Humphrey (Taylor Momsen), middle-class brother and sister who get mixed up with the g-l-a-m-o-r-o-u-s yet 99-percent troubled lives of their privileged counterparts.
Like Pushing Daisies, Gossip Girl has a weird sort of charm that grabs you hook, line and sinker. The annoyingly ditzy narration of Gossip Girl, voiced by Kristen Bell of Heroes and Veronica Mars fame is mitigated by a stylish wit and a haughtiness that borders on both naughty and stimulating. The locations and images are compelling with the luxuries of partying, champagne, riding limousines and photo shoots becoming an enviable snapshot of the good life and the best self magnified. There’s something about the way these teenagers live their lives that makes you want to project forward and daydream about the day you’ll be in their shoes. It’s wishful thinking, perhaps, but you know what they say, “Reach for the skies and even if you don’t, you’ll land among the stars.”
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Catch your breath and let me know what you think at imcalledtoffee@mac.com.