Ellen Gray: 'Pushing Daisies' adopts new theme for 2nd season

PUSHING DAISIES. 8 tonight, Channel 6.

ABC'S "PUSHING Daisies" returns tonight as a show with buzz.

And not just critical buzz.

We're talking actual bees.

In a honey (sorry) of a season premiere guest-starring "3rd Rock from the Sun's" French Stewart and "The O.C.'s" Autumn Reeser, the once-dead girl named Chuck (Anna Friel) gets her hive back, thanks to the life-giving ministrations of the pie-maker Ned (Lee Pace), who strips to his boxers to do the deed.

No, not that deed.

Ned and Chuck can never do that. They can't even touch.

"Daisies" fans already know why, but if you managed to miss all nine episodes of last season's best new show, worry not.

The first three minutes or so should catch you up nicely.

"Basically, the mandate from the network was, we don't want a 'previously on,' so incorporate anything anybody needs to know into the body of the story," said "Pushing Daisies" creator Bryan Fuller on the show's Burbank, Calif., set.

Thanks to a strike-shortened season, "Daisies" hasn't aired an original episode since last Dec. 7, but Fuller, while likening anxiety from the work stoppage to "a tidal wave," also sees an upside.

The break, he said, gave writers and producers an opportunity to figure out where the show should go next.

"Last year, it was all about like selling the show: This is what the show is, they can't touch," Fuller said.

"Family is really a big theme in the second season. One of the things that we discovered with the characters last year is that Chuck and Ned are both orphans in a sense and, you know, psychologically, orphans don't grow up in the same way that people with parents do, because they're looking at their parents to react to their mistakes.

"So it's about like kind of going back to their parenting and discovering who they are and discovering who they want to be, based on who their parents were, and their perceptions of their parents," he said.

People who saw the first season may find everything's not as it appeared. "There's a lot of things that happened in the pilot last year that we're going to be looking at and it may not necessarily be matching perceptions that our characters had of events," Fuller said.

One thing that will likely stay consistent, though, is the show's use of color.

Including its general avoidance of most things blue, beyond sky or water.

"Blue-eyed people are fine, just no blue wardrobe, no blue sets," explained executive producer Barry Sonnenfeld. (The "Men in Black" director was wearing blue shoes at the time.) "It's just that it's a color that your eye goes to."

"Project Runway's" Tim Gunn wouldn't, I suspect, be caught dead in blue shoes, but there's no question he knows about dressing to catch (and not offend) the eye.

But as the second season of his other Bravo show, "Tim Gunn's Guide to Style," gets under way tomorrow (11 p.m., Bravo) with a new co-host - stylist Gretta Monahan has replaced model Veronica Webb at Gunn's side - I'm thinking an hour more a week of the Gunn style might be a half-hour too many.

Not that it's really his fault. Blame the format, which calls for every makeover to be followed by an orgy of self-congratulation and product placement that makes "Runway's" name-dropping look subtle.

Tomorrow, Gunn and Monahan do a fine job in helping a Washington-to-New York transplant revamp a wardrobe that must have looked dowdy even in D.C., often maligned as "Hollywood for ugly people."

I'm as far from fashion-obsessed as one can be and still be allowed to leave the house, but even I know not to layer jackets over cable sweaters.

There might not be a whole lot of difference between Gunn's "Guide to Style" and BBC America's "What Not to Wear" (or TLC's, if you prefer your harsh advice in an American accent), but Tim himself is the attraction here, not the Panasonic screen where they project the subject's image, or the extra prizes subjects win for displaying good humor while being fitted for new bras on camera.

Once you get the girl dressed, guys, you've got to let her go.

But by the time Gunn's finished explaining why the show has flown in a childhood friend who's eight months pregnant for what, let's face it, is just a makeover, I guarantee there won't be a wet eye in the house.

TCM's not-unexpected tribute to Paul Newman will take the form of a 24-hour marathon that begins at 6 a.m. Oct. 12 with "The Rack" and concludes with "The Outrage" at 4 the next morning.

Highlights along the way include "Torn Curtain" at 10 a.m., "Sweet Bird of Youth" at 3:45 p.m., "Hud" at 6 p.m., "Cool Hand Luke" at 10 p.m., "Cat on a Hot Tin Roof" at 12:15 p.m. and "Rachel, Rachel" at 2:15 a.m. *

Send e-mail to graye@phillynews.com.