Chi McBride is an ensemble actor we welcome: dry, authoritative and capable of making a stock role feel human. Pushing Daisies gives those qualities something more interesting to do than simply keep everyone in line.
Fi1m perspective
Chi McBride does not ask us to find Emerson Cod adorable. In Pushing Daisies (2007), his dry delivery gives us a welcome pause from the sweetness, without suggesting that the fantasy is beneath him. We felt relieved by that lack of insistence: we could enjoy the absurdity without being prodded to admire its charm. McBride takes the material seriously enough to let it be funny. It is an approach we trust, especially in a programme that can exhaust us by being so insistently endearing.
The recurring job titles tell us how he tends to be used. His first major starring television role was Principal Steven Harper in Boston Public (2000); I, Robot (2004) cast him as Lieutenant John Bergin. After Pushing Daisies came Human Target (2010–2011), then Captain Lou Grover in Hawaii Five-0, which he joined in 2013. This is a career built largely around the ensemble, with McBride often providing the steady partner or senior figure. We can see the appeal, though another person in charge is not in itself a reason to watch.
Cod is a private investigator with questionable morals, and that gives McBride more to work with than simple seniority. Alongside Lee Pace and Anna Friel, he helps make the impossible romance of Pushing Daisies matter without making the programme still sweeter. Kristin Chenoweth’s Olive Snook is funny because she accepts the silliness without embarrassment; McBride’s drier delivery is equally assured. Both allow the absurdity to stand without repeatedly pointing it out. His humour belongs in this company, even when he seems the least inclined to indulge it.
The caution is that steadiness can become an excuse to ask too little of an actor. We welcome McBride’s authority, but would rather it came with Cod’s wry humour and doubtful morals than another set of instructions for the other characters. Start with Pushing Daisies, accepting that even he cannot make every sweet moment bearable.
Biography
Chi McBride is an American actor. Born Kenneth McBride on 23 September 1961 in Chicago, Illinois, he began his career in music before turning to acting in the early 1990s.
He is best known for playing Emerson Cod in the series Pushing Daisies (2007–2009). Other television roles include Steven Harper in Boston Public (2000–2004), Edward Vogler in House (2005), and Lou Grover in Hawaii Five-0 (2013–2020). Film credits include The Frighteners (1996), Gone in Sixty Seconds (2000), The Terminal (2004) and I, Robot (2004).
