The Untouchables

I'm just gonna spit it out: Pushing Daisies has to continue. If for no other reason than it is completely unlike anything else on any network. Indeed, almost like nothing else anywhere, unless you open Tim Buton's noggin like a boiled egg and pour all his yolky-strangeness out into a TV show. For weeks the show has been "about to be cancelled", but the makers have finished the order of 13 episodes that ABC commissioned. So maybe we'll see them all.

Daisies is something we don't see on TV much anymore. Gentle, funny, intelligent and, though you may disagree, edgy. Yes, I said edgy. No, it doesn't have huge theatrical explosions; no it doesn't have graphic sex; no, it doesn't need to be edited for language. So why do I say edgy? Only because you can look anywhere on TV between 8pm and 11pm and find all of those things. And when something is everywhere, it's the thing that is unlike the others that is edgy. It's daring. Risk-taking, at times breath-taking, and unapologetically, heart-breakingly romantic. Daisies dares to not offer you sex and guns and violence and intense social dilemma. It doesn't need those things. It takes Hepburn and Tracey and puts it in the blender with Tim Burton and Mike Hammer. The result is something you can actually show your kids without worrying that they're being desensitized.

Not only does it have the boyishly handsome Lee Pace, perfectly cast as Ned, it has something for the guys too, in the imported Anna Friel, who's come a long way from Brookside Close. Their awkward romance is endearing and, for them, literally untouchable. If you haven't seen the show, watch this trailer:




Now, I'm not an advocate of committees and organizations that want to sanitize tv. Not at all. I'm in favor of a lot of explosions and sex and cussing on the tv. But Daisies offers something for us to marvel at, like the first time we saw a giant Christmas display in a department store, or the first time we saw fireworks. And when there is so much tabloid tv, so much "unscripted" tv, how can ABC be contemplating letting this one get away?