Missing Daisies

Pushing Daisies, one of my three favorite new shows this season(Chuck and Reaper rounding out the trinity), has come to an end. This week they aired their last original episode until the WGA Strike is resolved. More and more shows are running out of episodes, and more and more weeknights are becoming vacant.

It ended on such a great note, a teasing revelation I won't spoil here, but between the bombshell last three words, along with a very similar revelation about one of the best characters on the show midway through the episode, it better be coming back. The show has even made strides toward recurring guest star Paul Reubens going once more from household shame to household name. It's witty and unique, and sometimes characters talk so fast you miss how clever the dialogue is. It rivals 30 Rock, another amazingly well written show. This week that sitcom got away with a huge dirty reference that escaped censors who clearly lack internet access and evil friends.

Before the final episode of Pushing Daisies aired, I was already feeling its absence. On Wednesday, my parents were at a doctor's office and I came home to an empty house. Did I slide into the living room in my underwear in my best impression of Risky Business? Sadly and wisely, that was not the case. No, I found myself narrating everything out loud in the same voice used to narrate Pushing Daisies. Instead of just throwing food in the cat's dish, I was using phrases like “The Facts Were These” and “What Young Cubby Did Not Realize Was”, all in a storytelling accent. The cat justifiably looked at me like I was crazy, a detail I immediately narrated: “The cat looked on as though the boy were mad, but what he did not realize was that the boy was exceptionally mad. The facts were these...”

I think life would be more interesting if we all walked around narrating it. “Why had she suddenly stopped walking? Did she somehow sense his eyes lingering on her tight jeans, or had his running commentary betrayed him?” Perhaps interesting isn't always a good thing. The one realization I took from the experience was that perhaps one reason I'd lived at home for so long was that, though my parents sometimes bug me and some nights I don't feel like talking after work, I still need to have people around, to hear voices. I probably won't have pets when I first get my own place, and I don't want to be the guy talking to himself. I guess I always thought the order of life was meet a girl, get engaged, buy a house, get married, and go from my parents' house to my wife's house. That may be a dated notion in 2007, or simply one that requires more dating.

Was I crazy? Lonely? Bored? I'm going to go with bored, since later that same night I found myself watching the Viper episode of G.I. Joe. I haven't seen that in years. The “twist” ending is so cheesy by today's standards, and probably was by ‘80s standards, but I still have a soft spot for it. 20 years from now, I wonder how I'll look back on Pushing Daisies and all these other shows I'm experiencing withdrawal from. By that point, I might be so far gone that a little thing like narrating will seem tame.