Portrayed by: Lee Pace
Show: Pushing Daisies
It will always be a prodigious shame in the TV world that a brilliantly crafted series like Pushing Daisies didn’t survive beyond its sophomore season. It’ll always be an enormous loss that viewers will never witness how these characters evolve and the additional journeys they could have gone on. Yet, what we do get is marvelously comforting still, especially for those who are fans of the romance genre and understand the term “book boyfriend” to a t. Well, he might not be from a book, but Lee Pace’s Ned the Pie Maker set a gold standard for TV boyfriends, and he has yet to be topped.
If the idea of the endearment gentle giant matches one character pristinely, it’s Ned the Pie Maker. It’s his big, lovely heart on full display at all times and his hundred-watt smile that makes every episode of Pushing Daisies an absolute gem. In his own words, he makes pies and wakes the dead, but he’s also a caretaker—someone with a tremendous capacity to love and a whole lot of kindness to contribute.
Ned the Pie Maker Embodies Kindness
When it comes to kind men, there’s often a rarity in TV shows that include them. (There’s also a scarcity in the real world, but that’s not the point right now.) People tend to dismiss kindness as a weakness, but gentleness and sincerity often go hand in hand with strength in a way that we don’t discuss too frequently. It isn’t a drawback to be gentle in a harsh world; it’s a strength to stand despite the pain that reappears in one’s nightmares. And when it comes to Ned, his reality is the definition of a walking nightmare on paper.
His mother dies in front of him; he brings her back to life, and then she dies again once she tries to kiss him goodnight. He learns that this is the ability he’s stuck with, and how he copes shapes him into the man he becomes. As a kid, he’s sent to boarding school where he doesn’t fit in and consistently feels lost, harboring this enormous secret that could damage anyone. His narrative holds all the markings of a villain origin story, yet Ned takes every rotten thing and brings life back into it instead. The fact that he becomes a pie maker says everything we need to know about him, but the detail of quiet solitude also speaks to his character. He wants to honor his mother and feel close to her, but he also wants to do something kind for people.
Ned is a simple man, and while he prevents himself from enjoying things because of his past, it’s also because he understands the significance of quiet moments and ordinary days. He holds on to his childhood love because she was a light in an otherwise dark period in his life, but he also does everything in his power to ensure that people have a sliver of joy with a good dessert. If we’re being honest with ourselves, isn’t he the blueprint of chefs in romance novels? A man who puts his whole heart and soul into the beautiful thing he creates because watching people love it without wasting a single thing is something that gives him life, too? The fact that he takes the darkness in his life and adds a plethora of warmth to it is so wildly gorgeous sometimes that it’s hard to believe we ever had a character like him on our screens.
There’s also something to be said about how mild-mannered Ned is, even when he addresses something grim. He doesn’t dismiss the fact that his father’s abandonment brought about a myriad of issues in his life. Kind people often see the ways others cause pain, but they choose to push beyond it. They hold on, little by little, until the thread no longer clasps, and once they let go, it’s the final straw. However, knowing Ned and understanding how he admires life as a gift in this world, exploring how forgiveness and anger co-exist could’ve been a riveting narrative.
One of the first things viewers learn about Ned the Pie Maker is that he doesn’t like hugs. But as the show unravels and the story expands, we understand how this ties to his attachment issues. If he lets people in, then the chances of them hurting him grow more prominent. If he keeps them at arm’s length, then his chances of aching due to their betrayal decrease. Yet, amid all this, he doesn’t shut off his heart. He merely protects it. And when the time comes for a second chance, Ned takes it because he seizes something for himself. He seizes that tiny bit of light from his childhood.
When a person like Ned starts to open up, the people around him become his world. It’s why he barricades himself for so long because his capacity to love is vaster than the love he’s received since his mom died. It isn’t until Chuck comes back into the picture and shows him that love can still be strong even when it appears different than people expect it to. Thus, in loving her, he slowly starts to appreciate himself more, and he begins to note that the things that happened in his life were never his fault. Additionally, one of the most enamoring things about Lee Pace as an actor is how effectively he talks to the audience in silence. Every word out of Ned the Pie Maker’s mouth packs a punch and gives us far more than a simple explanation. He shows us what’s on the inside and what he’s still having trouble saying aloud.
For a show that’s now seventeen years old (at the time this article is written), it stands the test of time because of characterizations. Kindness isn’t something that’s ever going to go out of style or become problematic. And Ned, through everything, was first and foremost a good person who wanted to be harmless to the world.
The facts were these…Pushing Daisies writers understand the importance of a character moving beyond their pain and becoming someone others can rely on. It also understands that the caretakers of this world deserve immense love and compassion, too, which says a lot that Ned and Chuck make it to the end of the two seasons we get. They’d always be endgame, but how we treat our kind characters often says a lot about how the writers view the gentle and soft people in the world.
First Featured Image Credit: ©Warner Bros.