Pushing Daisies - Bzzzzzzzzz!

It's October 1st and swelteringly hot in Los Angeles. But last night I got a tall drink of water with the premiere of the new season of Pushing Daisies and the return of Lee Pace as the Piemaker.

Aaaaahhhhh!

Given how the writers strike caused an abbreviated season one of the new series, much time was spent getting new viewers up to speed with the characters backstories:

Ned (Lee Pace) has the gift of bringing the dead back to life. But only for a minute or someone or something else will die in their place. Also, a second touch from him will cause the revitalized to become a corpse once again. And this time for good.

Chuck (Anna Friel) is Ned's childhood sweetheart whom he brought back to life. It's a love affair in which they can never touch. And yet it's super romantic!

Emerson Cod (Chi McBride) is the private detective who utilizes the piemaker's gift to solve murder cases and collect the reward money.

Olive Snook (Kristin Chenoweth) is a waitress at the Pie-Hole and not so secretly in love with its owner, the piemaker.

Aunts Lily (Swoosie Kurtz) and Vivian (Ellen Greene) mourn the death of their niece Charlotte (Chuck) not realizing that she's still alive.

Interesting factoids about last night's episode (which found a clever way to tie-in Chuck's beekeeping obsession):

Diana Scarwid, who played the Mother Superior at the convent Olive retreated to (after freaking out about keeping the secret that Chuck is still alive and dosing their pies with homeopathic anti-depressants from her aunts and the secret that Lily is really Chuck's mother), also played Lee Pace's mother on Wonderfalls. She's credited with three episodes, so it looks like Olive will be absent from the Pie-Hole for a while.

I wonder what happened to the homeopathic remedy salesman from last season that was a potential love interest for Olive?

The scene where Olive first appear after retreating to the convent is an homage to The Sound of Music. But then y'all probably knew that! The producers are always looking for ways to integrate music into the show to take advantage of Kristin Chenoweth's singing talents (among her many Broadway roles, she's played Glenda in Wicked)--as well as those of Ellen Greene (Little Shop of Horrors).

The inside joke behind Emerson Cod and the pop-up book is that originally (according to show creator Bryan Fuller in the extras of the season one DVD) Olive's backstory was supposed to be that she was going to be a lesbian pop-up book designer that got fired from her job for changing all the Jack-and-Jills to Jill-and-Jills. With the Girth episode, the writers changed Olive's backstory to that of a horse racing jockey, but this season they found a way to incorporate the pop-up book motif into the show.

It looks like we're building up to a reunion between Ned and his estranged (for twenty years!) Dad in upcoming episodes. That should be interesting...