Pushing Daisies

Genre: Dramedy
Network: ABC

Pushing Daisies is back for Round 2. The fact that it survived despite the writer's strike is shear tribute to both its uniqueness and its likability. It is bit quirky (I mean come on look at the picture), but it does have a certain lovableness.

Could it be that people find the show refreshing? Admittedly, the show incorporates a lot of repetition, so after watching a few it might seem like they are all rather similar. (I mean this often happens with good guys catching bad guys shows.) However, the plot line is quite unique and intriguing.

The main character, Ned, discovers as a child that he has a special gift: raising the dead. If something dies, he can bring it back to life with his touch. However, this power is a little uncontrollable. Anything he touches will come back to life, even dead, crunchy fall leaves. To further complicate matters, if he touches it a second time it will die forever and if someone or something brought back to life lives longer than a minute something else in its vicinity will die.

A private detective accidentally catches on to this trick, and gets Ned to join his team. They go to the morgue, touch a dead body, ask who killed him, touch the body again, and then are 10 steps closer to catching the murderer and getting the reward money. This gives the viewer some interesting thoughts to ponder.

A Plugged in Magazine writer said, "If Ned's second touch kills people, does that make him a murderer? Does the substitutional death after the 60-second time limit presume that there's a universal "soul quota" to fill? And why doesn't Ned ask any of the people he raises, "What's beyond the grave?" The show doesn't appear to believe in God or the afterlife.

Just when you thought things couldn't get any more interesting, Ned touches his childhood sweetheart and then can not bring himself to touch her again. They still have the hots for each other, and she comes to live with him in his pie shop. That is really probably the most unique and intriguing concept. They are a couple, but never touch flesh to flesh. They must find other ways to show each other love, which I find welcomed in a sex saturated culture. Yet, one also wonders how it is possible to have a romantic relationship with out any physicality. Is this really possible? Pie Waitress Olive Snook definitely wonders at how this is possible. She probably wouldn't wonder so much, if she didn't secretly like him but be that as it may it is still mind boggling.

Sometimes Christianity has deemed touch to be bad, quoting Paul's verse "It is better not to touch a woman." Yet, other passages in Genesis, Matthew, and (gasp) Song of Solomon claim the opposite is true. God clearly made sex as a gift to be wondrously shared between a husband and wife. It is the consummation of marriage so to speak. The apostle Paul even says that married couples should not abstain from sex except for a limited time and by mutual consent in order to devote themselves to prayer

Admittedly though, there have some things that have gotten me thinking. I read an article in a Focus on the Family magazine about a wife that had Aids. She had lived promiscuously before she was married and she was living for God, and now she and her spouse could not have sex without risking him getting Aids.

Secondly, a dear friend of mine has a brother who went through a difficult divorce after having been married for two years and never having sex. Like myself, my friend did not think divorce was right for any reason, but when she found out they had never consummated their marriage physically she wasn't sure what to say. She confessed to me that she had feelings of "If they didn't have sex, is it a marriage in the real sense of the word?" I would argue that it still is, but it does make one stop and think.

Back to the matter at hand. I look forward to another season of Pushing Daisies. The only downer is that it airs on Wednesday nights, while I am at AWANA. Ironically, I have never actually watched it on a television set. Last season I watched some of the episodes on the internet. It didn't have every one online, but about half of them or so. Hopefully, they will have them online this fall.