On Daisies, and the Pushing Thereof

ABC/SCOTT GARFIELD

The Second Coming Pushing Daisies debuts tonight on ABC. You may have heard of it. I reviewed it in our fall arts preview, so you'll have to excuse me for not doing so a second time here.

I am very curious to see how this show does in the ratings. It'll be a test of whether unrestrained, constant critical advance praise draws viewers to an oddball show like this, or whether they run screaming. Or whether they're drawn and then run screaming.

ABC sent only one episode, the pilot, and particularly with an intensely art-directed, tightly constructed pilot like this I always feel like I should attach an asterisk to my review. There's such a thing as pilotitis, the ailment that afflicts shows that can never live up to the lavish look of their expensive first episodes, or that have really great initial stories but don't have premises that can sustain themselves for the length of a series.

Either complication could strike Daisies. There have already been widely publicized budget cutbacks from the studio, Warner Brothers. And as for its longevity: guy solves murder cases by raising victims from the dead (then retouching them and killing them again), and has a love interest he can never, ever touch? Great movie idea, but are there 100 episode ideas--or 22--in that?

You don't know, nor do I, and that's the point. In the meantime, though, I worry that the critical buzz has set a bar that even this charming, nimbly written show will not be able to clear. Maybe that's why TV critics like Pushing Daisies so much. We have a tendency to kill things we love by touching them too.