Whimsical 'Daisies' gets the chopping block

Sorry to be a tryptophan buzz kill, but Your Friendly Neighborhood TV Critic doesn't have much to be thankful for this Thanksgiving.

Not after ABC all but canceled "Pushing Daisies" last week, diminishing a TV season already sorely lacking in quality.

Entertainment Weekly columnist Michael Ausiello reported ABC would not be extending "Daisies," "Eli Stone" and "Dirty Sexy Money" beyond the 13 episodes already in the can. For the moment, all three remain on the prime-time schedule, but once they've run out of new shows, they'll be gone.

In this, ABC has itself partly to blame, as "Money" and "Daisies" didn't come back after last season's writers' strike placed them on extended hiatus. The fall ratings have proved that shows that returned right away to prime time last spring, like the CBS comedies "The Big Bang Theory" and "How I Met Your Mother," have had an easier time retaining an audience.

Now, the trashy, tawdry "Money" and the tedious, treacly "Stone" are no great losses, although I did like the "Stone" episode featuring Katie Holmes and thought it displayed that the series had signs of life.

"Daisies," however, was another matter entirely. From a dubious, high-concept premise - involving a pie maker who could bring the dead back to life with one touch and kill them again with another, a knack that came in handy until he brought his childhood sweetheart back to life only to be forbidden to ever touch her again - it created something whimsical and sometimes even profound.

It landed in the middle of the Nielsen ratings, however, in its lush 7 p.m. Wednesday time slot, averaging fewer than 7 million viewers, and ABC wasn't patient enough to let it flower. The big budgets required by director Barry Sonnenfeld, responsible for the show's visual splendor, didn't help, and prevented a move to a less-pressure-packed time slot, like Friday nights.

A network doesn't spend millions of dollars an episode to fill time when almost no one is watching.

That makes Bryan Fuller a two-time loser with shows too good for this TV world. His wonderful "Wonderfalls" got even less chance to succeed five years ago on Fox. And the world's a worse place for it.

At the same time, the CW, mired in last as the "fifth network," announced it was scrapping its Sunday lineup, which had been farmed out to the MRC production company. Again, MRC's "Valentine" was no great loss, but Laurie Metcalf's "Easy Money" was an interesting, worthwhile drama about a family of loan sharks - "The Sopranos" transplanted to a southwestern strip mall. Still, it's hard to cry foul about a show that was dead last in the Nielsens, 121st out of 121 shows and time slots, averaging far fewer than a mere million viewers a week.

Even so, the CW likewise had no one to blame but itself. It barely promoted its Sunday lineup, and it got precious little support from its Tribune-owned subsidiaries, like WGN Channel 9, after some apparent ill will broke out between the budget-cutting Sam Zell and the CW powers that be.

Yet that made for one less quality program in prime time, and that was after CBS had already canceled "The Ex List," an endearing if unlikely hourlong romantic comedy with a lovely ensemble cast. "The Ex List" displayed an open and honest sexuality, but that set it apart on stodgy CBS, which wanted more from its follow-up to its top-25 hit "Ghost Whisperer," averaging more than 10 million viewers a week, than it was getting from "Ex List," 67th in the Nielsen rankings, just behind "Daisies," with 6.4 million viewers.

So excuse me if I'm not exactly jumping up and down this Thanksgiving. As the end-of-the-year holidays arrive, the fall TV season more and more seems just a bucket of coal.

• Ted Cox writes Tuesday and Thursday in L&E and Friday in Sports and Time out!