Pushing Daisies: The Complete Second Season

Product Description

Ned, a pie maker whose touch can bring the dead back to life but will subsequently re-render death, teams up with a private investigator to help solve

In-Depth

The second season of Pushing Daisies became, unfortunately, its last--abruptly wrapping one of the most beautiful and unusual love stories ever told on TV. Farewell to Ned (Lee Pace), the handsome piemaker who can restore the dead with one touch (and un-restore them with another, or else end another life in exchange). Farewell to Chuck (Anna Friel), his true love, brought back to life by Ned and therefore forever untouchable by him again. Farewell to Olive (Kristin Chenoweth), the pixie who pines for our piemaker, and also to Emerson (Chi McBride), the P.I. who partners with Ned (and Chuck and Olive) to solve murders with inside information from the briefly revived. But what a memorable sendoff this second season is: starting with bees gone wild and a shirtless Ned, paying homage to Pete's Dragon in one lighthouse-centric episode, and ending with some measure of closure that comes in a 13th-episode, "we know we're canceled" rush. Like that finale, the season is not always as fully realized as its rich fairytale world, yet it still achieves genuine joy and longing. In many ways, it is a season of separation, with Olive off to a nunnery and Chuck out of Ned's apartment (for a little while, at least). Olive and Ned get to explore their potential romance, while Chuck gets some unexpected family time. This set contains several featurettes, most notably a celebration of the show's music (a character all its own) and series creator Bryan Fuller, who also brought us Dead Like Me, Wonderfalls, and some of Heroes' best episodes. ("I never know what he's going to do, and I love that," says Chenoweth.) There's also a piece on what it takes to create the colorful corpses Ned brings to life as well as the technical challenge of creating a computer-generated rhino, but the real magic of this show comes from the heart. --Stephanie Reid-Simons

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