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Pushing Daisies: Bitter Sweets

By fred | November 29, 2007

(S01E08) This ongoing writers’ strike is really starting to bite us, or at least me. No, this wasn’t the last episode of Pushing Daisies we’ll see before that too long and indefinite hiatus due to the strike, ABC still has one more episode in store for us, but that’s just enough to have me realize how hard things are going to be. Because it’s not one show we’ll miss, it’s more or less all of them.

And I sure do love myself some pie, especially those made out of dead fruits. This was one again a very sweet and highly enjoyable hour of television, it’s no wonder why this show is getting so much love from so many viewers out there, that loves comes right from the show itself.

This was a pretty special episode, because the case of the week turned out to be a quite easy one, which got solved in about 10 minutes or so. It was the girlfriend, and she’s a doll. A real doll, I mean. In a pure tradition of Pushing Daisies style, of course.

But this case was only a way to reflect on the pie maker’s own life. The facts were these, after all that time together he needed to know where things between he and the girl named Chuck were, and so he asked her whether or not he was her boyfriend. To the delight of mostly everyone - except for Olive - the girl said “yes”. Soon after, she also mentioned that today was her father’s birthday.

A fact which brought back some painful truth that only the pie maker was aware of : if Chuck’s father wasn’t in this world anymore, it was because of him, in a way. A fact he always failed to mention. Just like Burly Bruce and his doll, Ned and Chuck are together, yet cannot really be together, they can’t fully interact with each other, and when he comes back from prison, it’s Olive who has to hug Ned for Chuck, too.

And of course, Bruce was all free to be happy because he refused to see the world as it really was, and preferred to live in a lie, that his girlfriend was real. Revealing, or accepting, the truth would destroy the happiness of his life. As he discussed with Emerson, the pie maker wasn’t sure what to do with Chuck : should he tell her the truth, or should he not ?

Having some time to think about it while behind bars, Ned made a decision : “yaay to not telling the truth“. But as he was looking at Chuck he felt overwhelmed with emotions, so much that he committed a crime of passion, releasing the feared confession of his involvement in Chuck’s father’s death.

Of course, this was the end of the episode, so we don’t know how Chuck will actually react, needless to say I’m very grateful to everyone involved that we’ll actually only to have to wait a couple of weeks to find out, because more than that would have been simply unbearable.

In the mean time, let’s talk about what else happened this week. As I said the case of this week was resolved quickly, but it was only so because then another plot kicked in, with another store opening next door, ready to fight to the death to bring the Pie Hole down. That witch!

After a little while this started to worry me, not because I don’t like such plot or feel like the show is better when focusing on the weekly case, I certainly don’t. Pushing Daisies has enough of a unique atmosphere and colorful characters not to require any case whatsoever to deliver a compelling hour of television. Although we’d miss on usual dead bodies brought back to life only for about a minute, I’m sure.

No what worried me was simply this : I feared that the case being done, we would get to see only less of Emerson. He is my favorite character on the show, and his snappy remarks and so unique laughs are as much a required part of the show as Chuck, the pie maker and his ability to bring dead people back to life is. Besides, he always have the greatest and funniest lines of the show, I think.

“See, this is how it all ends. Some weird guy comes in saying stuff that don’t make no sense, and by the time your hear realizes ‘hey, this weird guy don’t make no sense’, your guts are all over the window.”

Posted in Reviews
Shows: Pushing Daisies