Citizens of the World & Eulogy for a Pie Maker

<--Promo posters for TV shows that don't exist are what I do when I'm bored. Clicky for big version! Two new season 1 loglines for my baby, Citizens of the World and a eulogy for one of my favorite shows, now canceled: Pushing Daisies.

THIS PAGE IS LEFT INTENTIONALLY BLANK – On October 31st, 6 year-old Gabrielle watched her father ride off on his motorcycle, never to be seen again. This episode looks behind the events leading up to that day, revealing in the process the sinister machinations of a covert black ops organization and how they changed James' life forever.

THE DANGEROUS EPISODE FOR GIRLS – Intent on stopping the all-male cult of Singulatarians from sacrificing James to the sentient Sysco matrix (S1. E?), Gabrielle and Christian, with Mickey's help and some specialized Cipher Suit tech, infiltrate the cult, disguised as males.

The final synopsis was actually written for an arc planned for the second season, but it seems proper to introduce the origins of that arc before properly planning season 2. Season two will be going deep into Philip K Dick territory, so we won't discuss it too often until I'm sure about Season and definitely not until the pilot is completed.

Now to briefly mourn the passing of one the best shows on American television.

Pushing Daisies.

This peculiar and adorably macabre program airs on one of the best channels on American television, rivaled only by NBC, PBS, The Discovery Channel and The Food Network. While initially a little odd and maybe disturbingly off-beat, Pushing Daises quickly won me over with it's quirky but not altogether hopeless concept of a friendly neighborhood baker bringing the dead to life with a single touch. This, coupled with a quirky undead love interest (Ann Friel as Charlotte "Chuck" Charles), fantastic Wizard of Oz style execution, a slew of talented stars, a cartoonish ability to make an absurd plot believable, and most importantly, pie, created a TV show that was light years ahead of every currently running show on television.

There is a 1950ies feel to Pushing Daisies--most likely deliberately...a certain agedness that permeates the shows characters and gives them a gritty yet incredibly soapy texture, if that description can be understood. It is the sensation of blowing the dust off of a preserved reel of I Love Lucy or Bewitched. Perhaps the avante garde expressionism of the show can be partially attributed to the addition of theatre trained actors such as Swoosie Kurtz, the ever adorable Kristen Chenoweth and Lee Pace, the star himself, who portrays the Pie Maker with a puppy-like recognition of his failure at being infallible, and yet, is the perfect panacea for nearly everyone he comes in contact with (dead people notwithstanding).

Bryan Fuller made anachronism as enjoyably silly as it is supposed to be, trussing his characters up in decade inappropriate wear and creating a world that defies any recognizable historical timeline, yet manages to leave the viewer feeling happily detached from a reality he/she probably doesn't enjoy that much anyway.

There is no pretension in Pushing Daisies, and certainly none of the "why so serious" urgency one may find in other seralized shows such as Heroes or Lost. The comparison to such shows, in fact, is unfair, considering Pushing Daisies' genre is storybook surreal rather than dramatic and plot focused.

It has the diversity of a sitcom, the action of a Mike Hammer episode and never once tries to be anything other than what it is. Another aspect of the shows beauty is how it's surreal beauty is not only fascinating to look at, but it serves the larger function of the world that the show exists in. It is altogether a happy accident of American engenuity that I will be very sad to see go.

Citizens of the World: Seven episode synopsi

The series pieces together slowly, despite the pilot episodes being in an indefinite limbo. When I write, it's as if I'm observing the characters from afar, maybe from behind bulletproof glass. They do a lot of things when I'm not looking, it seems, because my best ideas tend to be forgotten when I sit down to write. These are a few episode synopsi (that is the correct plural tense, I do believe) for "Season 1". The show, while riding on a general arc, is deliberately not like Heroes or LOST's running arc because the desired atmosphere of the show is an adventurous, Knight Rider type one. The determined goal of the characters remains a constant, but I want the viewers to be able to observe the society the characters live in, and be able to juxtapose it to their own lives, while of course being glad they don't have the CIA and various rogue orgs on their asses...

S1.E3 - J & G's INFINITE HAT TRICK – With Juan Gutierrez dead and their mission seemingly at a dead end, James and Gabrielle cook up a con to use the Pillbox as a cash cow. When the con goes wrong, they find themselves caught between the CIA and a ruthless group of cyberterrorists.

S1.E4 - AMBER ALERT – During the course of a violent anti-police protest, Gabrielle is kidnapped by a seemingly psychopathic individual named Carmichael who forces her to carry out a list of bizarre and dangerous demands.

S1.E? - SHUT THE DOOR THEY'RE COMING THROUGH THE WINDOW – When Gabrielle, James and Christian stop for fuel in a rural suburb, a military presence rolls in and lock the town into an unexplained and nightmarish quarantine. When the soldiers begin inexplicably killing people, James, Gabrielle and Christian, aided by a cyber-journalist and a blind photographer battle the lock down, discovering, in the process, who and what the soldiers really are.

S1.E? - THE DOUBLE LIFE OF VICTORIA JONES – When Gabrielle wakes up in Baghdad held hostage by unknown kidnappers, she is rescued by the mysterious Henry Carmichael who sends her on a surreal journey of self-discovery that Gabrielle refuses to believe.

S1.E? - (THE SENSATIONAL REVERSE BROTHERS) BASSACKWARDS – When James and Christian are taken hostage by a mysterious duo of faceless militia, Gabrielle must avert the kidnapping and ensuing mad-scientist machinations of an ex-NORAD geneticist by sleuthing though an world which has suddenly been altered by a machine which causes time to run backwards.

S1.E? - THE GREAT GUZZOLENE ROBBERY – When an old boyfriend of Christian's asks for her help to smuggle several tons of Puerto Rican gasoline into America, Christian finds herself on the run from her boyfriend's Godfather's oil running cartel.

S1.E? - I HAVE NO MOUTH AND I MUST SCREAM – During a heated chase, Gabrielle is trapped by a more pesky than usual WASP which, by a bizarre technical fluke, somehow transfers it's consciousness into her mind, leaving Gabrielle's body seemingly comatose, and her actual mind trapped in the cybernetic prison of an artificial military intelligence.

FYI, the only reason why I would divulge such detailed information about this show is because if any producer ever steals the concept, this blog, as well as several dated and locked documents on my laptop will be undeniable proof of the true author. Of course, should I be the one to produce the show, this blog and all spoilerish evidence will promptly disappear.