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Pushing Daisies: Dummies, Dessert Spoons, and Cheeseboxes
By Lisa LaValle
As is typical with pilots, in last week's pilot episode of Pushing Daisies, we got a ton of information: backstory on Ned's power and Chuck's life with her aunts, plus the mystery of who killed Chuck. It was a lot to take in - and I enjoyed doing so - but I was curious as to what format each future episode would take. It seemed as though all Ned and Emerson had to do was wake up the victim and ask him or her a few questions and their job would be done, which could get a little repetitive. But it turns out the victims don't always know the whole story, or don't always get the chance to tell it.
Right off the bat, this show is triumphant in its self-awareness. It's kooky, it's weird, it's cute, and as Ned puts it, it's "eccentric in a quaint way, like dessert spoons." All the little details in the first few scenes were great. Up until she was in her teens, Chuck thought a refrigerator was called a cheesebox. Olive spies on Ned with an elaborately rigged mirror. Emerson knits in his free time. The City Morgue is painted to look like a candy cane for no reason at all. And we accept these things because the details are what matter in the Pushing Daisies world.
The theme of this week's episode was secrets. Chuck is psyched to be alive and able to learn more about Ned, but he doesn't really have much to tell - except the huge bombshell about killing her dad when they were nine. Chuck is getting on Emerson's nerves; he doesn't want her accompanying them on their investigations, and rightly so. Ned wakes hit and run victim Bernard Slaybeck and Chuck jumps in to ask for his last requests. They chat about Buddhism and he tells her to send his love to Jeanine in promotions. There is just enough time to find out that Bernard was killed by a crash test dummy and that's it. But how? And there's our format: a quirky whodunit with a theme that somehow ties into the main characters' lives.
Bernard was a "scientist guy" at Dandy Lion Automotive, a company that developed a car that runs on dandelions. The head of Dandy Lion is a man named Mark Chase, played by Patrick Fabian who I immediately recognized as Professor Hank Landry from Veronica Mars, but I'm more fond of his role as Professor Lasky on Saved by the Bell: The College Years. (Side note for Veronica Mars fans - it was a good week for some of our favorite actors: Beaver was on SVU and Charles Wiedmore was on Aliens in America.) Chuck finds Jeanine in promotions, dressed up as a dandelion, and at first she denies knowing anyone named Bernard but fully embraces her love of pie... and then throwing it up afterwards. Jeanine has a secret, and it's bulimia.
After viewing a Dandy Lion crash demonstration, Chuck stumbles upon a closet full of crash test dummies hanging from the ceiling. The team returns that night to see that the closet is now full of dead bodies in dummy suits, so Ned gets to questioning them. Dandy Lion used human bodies as test subjects instead of dummies, but why?
Olive sings "Hopelessly Devoted" in a musical interlude that seemed a little weird, but then I reminded myself what show I was watching and just enjoyed it. After all, if you cast Kristin Chenoweth in a show, you might as well have her sing. Jeanine joins the crew at the Pie Hole and confesses that she and Bernard were secretly in love. He began to grow distant so she followed him on late night drives and she agrees to lead them to his destination. On the way, Chuck gets on Ned about keeping secrets again: "You love secrets, you want to marry secrets and have half-secret, half-human babies." And then Jeanine's car explodes.
The team (crew? Gang? I need a clever name for Emerson, Ned, and Chuck - any suggestions?) finds a pile of dummies in a hole in the ground. Since the dummies are programmed to collect crash data, there must be someone who doesn't want that data to get out. It's probably the guy in the dummy costume that just tasered them and put them in body bags inside a Dandy Lion car. Drumroll please - the murderer is... Mark Chase!
That's right, it's the old Scooby Doo trick where it turns out the caretaker of the amusement park was actually the ghost! Bernard had known about the crash data and didn't want to take Chase's bribe to hide the results anymore. Chase killed him in the Dandy Lion crash facility then set it up to look like a hit and run.
Right when things were getting a little dark and creepy (those dummy masks are scary!) there's a sweet, genuine moment to balance it. Since they're protected by body bags, Ned and Chuck can finally kiss, with a rubbery aftertaste as their only setback. Emerson's knitting skills come in handy as he uses one of his needles to undo the zipper on his body bag, and they take off in their Dandy Lion as Chase gives chase (ha) in a Hummer (double ha).
Ned, Chuck, and Emerson just barely escape the same fate as Jeanine - if the car reached a certain speed with the seat warmers on low, it would short circuit and explode - by breaking for Olive and Digby crossing the street in front of them. Chase gets caught by the cops and all is right with the world. Especially when Ned shows Chuck the new addition to his car. He's built a Plexiglas wall separating the front two seats so she can finally sit shotgun and they can hold hands through a rubber glove. I love how these clinical, sterile materials are used in a clever, sweet way that gives them new meaning. I never thought Plexiglas would make me go "aww" until now.
This episode was a great follow-up to the premiere. I can definitely picture how the show would last, as long as there are interesting cases to solve and Ned and Chuck's relationship has ups and downs. Cheeseboxes and historic erotica kept in the milk cellar will help too.
