Ellen Greene

Ellen Greene plays Vivian Charles on Pushing Daisies, Bryan Fuller's 2000s candy-colored noir about a pie-maker who wakes the dead with a touch he can never use on the woman he loves. Storybook frames, tragedy under the frosting. Greene's Vivian is aunt-and-accomplice voltage — a voice that makes the fairy tale feel inhabited. Canceled too sweet, still the sugar rush.

Ellen Greene files under Pushing Daisies the way the network did from 2007–2009. A pie-maker who can revive the dead with a touch solves murders while forbidden to touch the woman he loves — whimsy with a tragic engine. Vivian Charles is supporting voltage: the chair the format actually sat in.

Put s01e01 on for Ellen Greene first — Pie-lette is the dessert-pilot: a pie-maker's forbidden touch, candy-colored noir, Kristin Chenoweth in the margins, tragedy under the frosting. s02e13 is not filler: Kerplunk is the series closer named like a comic-strip fall — Fuller's too-sweet cancellation, the storybook frames taking a last drop. s02e01 is the stamp the catalog still cites when it means Vivian Charles (Bzzzzzzzzz! reopens year two as onomatopoeia: the revival-of-the-dead conceit still a fairy tale, ABC already unsure it wanted the sugar).

On TV Flash she is catalog cult craft. Watch the frosting for the form; stay for Vivian as family weather in a world that looks like a storybook and plays like a bruise. We file Greene as 2000s ensemble sparkle: the reason a short-run gem still tastes like a complete confection. Later arguments, reboots, and clip shows are weather around that assignment.