Tuesday, December 25, 2007



AFTERTHOUGHTS (37)
TOP TV SHOWS FOR 2007

It’s that time of year when Top 10 lists breed like rabbits, and though the sheer number do make the head spin, I still check out a lot of them, just to see what others have to say about the shows that I love (if and when my top choices happen to coincide with theirs).

Time had two lists of top TV shows, and Lost crashed into the #2 spot on Time’s Top 10 Returning TV Shows, while Pushing Daisies took root in the #5 spot of their Top 10 New TV Series.

#2. Lost (from Time’s Top 10 Returning TV Shows)
Like a boulder on a desert-island mountain, a Lost season starts slow, but after a dithering first six episodes, season 3 was an awesome force. This spring's episodes delved deeper into the mythology of the mysterious island, then vaulted years ahead in an astonishing, forehead-smacking finale that set the bar even higher for next season. In between, we got Desmond's mind-blowing premonitions, invisible mystic island honcho, Jacob, and the moving death of doomed romantic junkie Charlie. What more could you want? Only more Lost, and soon.

#5. Pushing Daisies (from Time’s Top 10 New TV Shows)
It's whimsational! It's twee-riffic! It's preciously precious! In this grown-up fairy-tale, a piemaker (Lee Pace) can raise the dead with a touch, but kills them if he ever touches them again. This complicates matters when he resurrects the love of his life, whom he can never kiss, at pain of her life. Playful, fantastical, and art-directed within an inch of its life in candy colors by Barry Sonnenfeld, Daisies is as romantic as it is outlandish.

Pushing Daisies also sprouted in the #2 spot on Entertainment Weekly’s Best TV Shows of 2007.

2. Pushing Daisies (from Entertainment Weekly’s Best TV Shows of 2007)
Filled with mermaid divers and windmill farms, Pushing Daisies is a fantastically fantastical, bubble-gum-colored fable about a pie maker named Ned (Lee Pace), who magically brings his childhood love, Chuck (Anna Friel), back to life with his touch but will kill her if he ever makes contact again. Between solving oddball mysteries involving puppy cloning and scratch-'n'-sniff empires, Chuck and Ned banter and moon at each other. (As Ned's gruff detective buddy, wonderful Chi McBride undercuts any excess sweet.) When so many TV couples are bickery brats, there's something strangely mature about this chaste pair. It's easy to whip up a juicy drama about evildoing bastards — it takes a boatload of creativity to make all this niceness so mesmerizing.

Congratulations to all involved with Lost and Pushing Daisies. Onward, ho, to 2008. And let’s get the WGA strike resolved soon so we can all breathe easier…

Entries quoted above are from time.com and ew.com. To see the other Top 10 shows, the complete lists can be accessed from the links above.

(Images courtesy of abc, fanpop.com [Lost] and about.com [Pushing Daisies].)

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