Now that the dust has settled upon the Fall TV season, its time for me to review and comment about the shows that are rising above the rest. Of course, I don’t have the time to see every show and not every show interests me, but I’ll discuss some of my new favorites of the year.


In this blog, I want to discuss some of the more promising shows like Pushing Daisies and Life, and some I touched upon last time with Chuck and Journeyman.

I only started watching Pushing Daisies this past week but it was the last 5 episodes and I have to say I was impressed with the show. Pushing Daisies is very creative, original, vibrant and hard to compare to anything else on TV right now. I would have to say it has a very Tim Burton-esque feel to it, as well as Men in Black. Barry Sonnefeld (MIB) directed the pilot and you can tell from the overall appearance of the show it’s his style. The premise of “Daisies” is pretty cool, I think. Ned (Lee Pace) is a gifted individual who has the ability to bring back the dead, but for only sixty seconds. One touch brings them back to life, and the second touch is death, permanently. There is the rare occasion where that sixty seconds will pass and that dead body will stay alive, but someone else must die. In the pilot, that’s how we get to meet “Chuck,” Ned’s former neighbor and first kiss, who perished off a cruise liner. Torn between finding out who killed Chuck, Ned used his heart to keep Chuck alive. In turn, the funeral director died instead. Ned and his buddy Emerson, a private detective use Ned’s gift for financial gain. Not really the best message to give to people out there, but why not? I think Emerson is the money obsessed one anyway. Ned just wants to continue to run his pie shop, The Pie Hole. Each week we get a different story for someone dying and the Pie Hole gang must figure out who did it. 5 episodes in, we get a small glimpse each episode with character development. I guess with the series picked up for this year, they can space the story-lines out a bit. I think it’s been one of the most refreshing shows on TV in awhile.

Life is new drama from NBC and it stars Damian Lewis, star of the outstanding HBO mini series Band of Brothers. Lewis plays a cop that was wrongly imprisoned 12 years ago and sentenced to Life in prison. The thing is, Lewis’ character, Charlie Crews, was framed and is now set free. It’s hard to figure what happened that they finally released him after 12 years in a maximum secure prison. Crews is now a wealthy individual who has to decided to return to the force and do some justice in this world, of course with alterior motives. It’s not known exactly how much Crews has gained from his settlement with the State, but it’s supposed to be around $50 million dollars. Crews now spends his time living in the laps of luxury in Los Angeles, with his financial advisor, Ted, played by Adam Arkin. Together, they hang out and live a life of bachelorhood in a pretty giant house that has nothing inside. Ted used to be prison with Charlie and if ever given the chance they would help out one another on the outside. That time has come. Charlie pretty much is back to work for fun and because he now is very eccentric and takes a Zen approach to life. Deep down though, he’s really back for vengeance and to find how high his set up has gone through the LAPD. Not everyone is happy to have him back and he’s partnered with a Detective that has her own skeletons as well. I hope it starts getting a little more intense with the “who done it’s” because the other one arc story-lines can grow tiresome.

I’m still watching Chuck and Journeyman, and I think I’ve grown to like Chuck more now that I’ve seen more episodes. I just love the girl on the show Yvonne Strahovski, who plays Sarah. She is the secret spy who is sent to watch over Chuck and protect him as an asset to the government as is Adam Baldwin who is just great on the show. He always plays the grumpy tough guy, but has a little bit of comedy to his performance which is cool. Journeyman I really like as well and look forward to it every week. I hope it sticks around, but knowing my luck, it will be canceled.

Ok now that I got you up to speed, you can jump into some of these shows and start watching. There are some good shows out there people, get watching!