Totally Frakked: "Pushing Daisies" And The Dandy Lion
"Pushing Daisies"
Title: Dummy
First Aired: 10/10/07
The danger of a brilliantly charming pilot is that it sets the bar very high for the second episode. Doing it right once is much, much easier than doing it right every time. Fortunately for "Pushing Daisies" - and for us - they're two for two. The second episode is just as lovely as the first, with another mystery to solve, more character development, and continuing romance between the piemaker and his not-dead girlfriend.
We spend a bit more time with young Chuck and Ned, learning about Ned's misadventures at the private school his father farmed him off to, and Chuck's rather curious upbringing at the hands of her aunts. He brings the frogs for dissection back to life, she learns to talk about cheese in 5 or 6 different languages. Chuck yearned for more, while Ned, for the most part, seemed to yearn for less. Control over life and death is bound to make you into kind of a weird kid, and it's no surprise that Ned was a bit of an outcast in school.
But enough about that, back to the present. Chuck's sudden presence in Ned's life is wonderful for him, but frustrating for those around him. The adorable Olive Snook is heartbroken that the piemaker seems to have found romance from someone other than her; so heartbroken, in fact, that she has a musical number (Hopelessly Devoted To You) bemoaning the loss of Ned's already distant affections. Poor Olive, she should turn her attention to the cute guy who comes in to clean the floors of The Pie Hole during her routine, instead of pining for the piemaker.
Emerson, on the other hand, is just annoyed that the chirpy little Chuck is intruding on his business arrangement with Ned. In his world, everything would be better if Chuck would just go back to being dead and stop snooping around. Unfortunately for Emerson, it doesn't seem likely that Ned is touching Chuck any time soon. He's so paranoid about an accidental touch that he's starting walking around with his hands clasped behind his back like a schoolboy, which conspires to make the already cute-as-a-button Lee Pace, improbably cuter.
And now, to the mystery. Ned revives Bernard, an automotive safety engineer who was (ironically) hit by a car. Some of Emerson's fears are justified when Chuck's conversation with the dead man takes up too much of the dead man's minute and he only has time to spit out that he was hit by a crash test dummy before Ned has to re-deadify him. This isn't much help, so Ned and Chuck are forced to head over to the Dandy Lion car company, where Bernard was working until his death, resurrection and subsequent redeath. Bernard's last request was to tell Jeanine in promotions that he loved her, so they set out to find her, armed with a sympathy pie.
After a quick chat with the CEO in Japanese (remember the language tapes), Chuck finds the bubbly, bulimic Jeanine and delivers the message, though Jeanine claims she doesn't know who Bernard is. Though later she reveals that she was dissembling because she was afraid of being overheard. The "mystery" of the week isn't much of a mystery really, the CEO looks suspicious from the moment we see him, and it's no great surprise when it turns out that he killed Bernard, and almost did in Jeanine to cover up the design flaws in the Dandy Lion's flagship car.
I'm not sure one could reasonably bill "Pushing Daisies" as a procedural - and some have - unless the mysteries beef up significantly. That said, I didn't miss the mystery much. Watching this episode, I can't help but wonder about the price tag per episode. Tthe sets and design of the show look far from cheap, and I'm forced to question whether they'll be able to keep it up.
In the end of the episode, Ned installs a little plexiglass divider in his car so Chuck can sit in the front, complete with a glove thingie so she can reach through and hold his hand while he drives. Awww. It's infectiously cute, and for some viewers, certainly too cute, but I have to admit that I love it.
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