Pushing Daisies was the first Bryan Fuller show I ever loved, and Ned was the first Bryan Fuller character I ever adored. The series is packed to the gills with delightful, vibrant characters, but it’s the lanky pie maker who won me over the quickest and the most completely. He’s a wonderfully built-from-the-ground-up character, so understandably a product of his experiences that, despite the magic and whimsy of the show (and Ned himself,) he feels nothing but genuine.
If, before watching Pushing Daisies, you’d asked me to describe someone who could bring the dead to life with a touch of his finger, I have no idea what I would’ve come up with. With Ned, though, I can’t help but think, “Of course!” You might think someone who’d discovered such extraordinary powers at a young age would develop a potent god complex, that he’d feel above the laws of men and nature and carry with him a sense of invincibility. But young Ned’s crash course on his powers included the sudden death and resurrection of his mother (first touch: life,) the even more sudden and cruel second death of his mother (second touch: dead again, forever,) and the inadvertent death of his best friend’s father (keep a dead thing alive for more than a minute, and something else has to die.) The man is damaged, and he comes by it honestly.
As such, it makes perfect sense that he grows into someone closed-off, lonely, and incredibly cautious. It’s logical that he adheres to things so rigidly, because knowing the rules of his powers is the only way to prevent devastation. Until Emerson learns of Ned’s powers and proposes a waking-the-dead P.I. partnership, he only renews dead fruit to make eternally-fresh pies. He walks through the world like he’s folding into himself, hunched up with his arms folded to avoid unintentional resurrections. Furthermore, as someone who lost everyone who mattered to him as a child, he loves deeply but worriedly, and he clings even as he berates himself for being clingy. He’s uncomfortable in his skin around other people, even living people, like he still feels his mother dying irreversibly when she kissed him good night. When you think about it, it’s a wonder he’s as reasonably well-adjusted as he is.
Because, all things considered, he really is. Yes, he’s shy and a little awkward, and he keeps secrets almost possessively, but he’s also bright and kind. We tend to see him more at ease when he’s talking to the dead, getting any information that will help solve their murders. Though he keeps a punctilious eye on his ever-present stopwatch, he becomes relaxed and conversational, treating them like people rather than freaks (I love the scene in the pilot where he chastises Emerson for using terms like “zombies” and “living dead.”) And it’s true that, at first glance, his nervousness might seem to be his defining characteristic, but he’s capable of real bravery and heroism when the situation calls for it. The more traditional bravery, of course – confronting dangerous people, thinking on his feet in tight situations – but he also displays a less showy bravery reserved for shy, tightly-wound people. Over the course of the show’s two seasons, we see how incredibly far he steps beyond his comfort zone, how he swallows his nerves to open himself up to new people and experiences.
