'Pushing Daisies' RIP

My heart sinks around 9:30 every Thursday morning. Sometimes it's at 9:45, sometimes it's at 9:15, but mostly it's closer to 9:30, give or take a minute or two. You see, that's when the Nielsen ratings for one of my favorite shows, ABC's "Pushing Daisies," usually scroll past my eyes -- and the prognosis they bring with them for one of television's most entertaining shows is not good. Not good at all.

Last year, "Daisies" premiered to a wealth of positive critical buzz, and plenty of people gave the show a try, at least for the first couple of weeks. Admittedly, ratings declined somewhat during the season, even as critics continued to rave about this unconventionally sweet-yet-tart, almost fairy-tale story of a piemaker-slash-private detective named Ned and a girl nicknamed Chuck, someone Ned loved, lost, and found again.

A feast for the eyes and the ears, "Daisies" boasted not only some of the best dialogue and characters on television, but a rich visual pallette; every penny spent on the show was on the screen. ABC, to their credit, stayed supportive, and even ordered a full season of the show, just before the writers' strike effectively closed the doors on the television industry for several months. Ultimately, the first season of "Daisies" would be nine episodes long, be nominated for a dozen Emmys, and win 3 of those prizes.

I was thrilled to find out last May that "Daisies" would return to ABC's schedule, even with Nielsen numbers that weren't spectacular. I was enchanted by its season premiere, giving it four stars out of four, my highest rating. And I was -- sad to say -- disheartened at 9:30 the very next morning, when I saw that the second season had opened to less than half the audience of the first. (That more people chose to spend their hour with NBC's wretched "Knight Rider" rehash than "Daisies" was also a bit of a spirit-cracker, I have to admit.)

This week, the show cratered, statistically speaking; an average of under 5 million viewers tuned in, which is a new low point for the series. "Daisies," it seems, has little life left. It's already rumored to have been canceled; indeed, production on the last ordered episode of the season has been completed, and there has been a deafening silence on ABC's end as to whether or not the show has a future beyond the next few weeks.

It doesn't help that ABC wasn't promoting the show, you could argue, but one of the many harsh truths of the broadcast television business is that expending advertising time and money on an expensive hour-long program for which a large segment of the viewing public show precious little interest is, unfortunately, a waste of resources.

Publicly, the producers have said that they aren't throwing in the towel yet, and sources within the network add that there is still a strong amount of support among their executives. Fans have signed online petitions, started letter-writing campaigns, and yes, even mailed pies to ABC in an effort to save it.

Unfortunately, the sad news came down from the network last night: "Daisies" is officially finished, and I'd be lying if I said that I wasn't extremely disappointed. I can only hope that ABC will at least air all of the final episodes, and not simply pull the show from view until the eventual DVD release of this second season. As we go into the typical end-of-year cycle of low-rated reruns and holiday programming, it seems sensible to let "Daisies" fans savor every last moment they have with this wonderful show before it takes its place in the pantheon of great television series gone too soon.