The Televangelist: ‘Pushing Daisies’ episode 11

“Pushing Daisies” is about a man who can bring the dead back to life with one touch, but only for a minute or someone else dies. He needs only to touch them a second time to send them into eternal rest ... permanently. It’s fitting, perhaps, that ABC’s chosen to resurrect the show from cancellation to air the remaining three episodes of season two, but without hope of complete revival.  Coincidental again is the choice of timing for the episodes — the middle of summer, Saturday night ... graveyard shift (10 p.m.).

ABC has been much criticized for canceling the interesting and promising show before its time, though as I went through my own “Daisy” retread over the last several weeks, I saw a show uncertain of its future starting to lose its way. The murder-of-the-week plots were becoming annoying and distracting B-plots, taking away precious time from our endearing and quirky heroes.

Last we left the precious Piemaker Ned (Lee Pace), his formerly dead girlfriend Lonely Tourist Charlotte “Chuck” Charles (Anna Friel), their private-eye cohort Emerson Cod (Chi McBride), and their Itty Bitty (and occasional chanteuse) Olive Snook (Kristen Chenowith), Ned had given up waking the dead and sleuthing.  He also let slip to Olive that he “didn’t always not look at her like he looked at Chuck,” causing Olive to immediately start reading the informative tome The Double Negative: What You Shouldn’t Not Know.