Pushing Daisies Fodder

Pushing Daisies: Bitter Sweets

Wow, a lot of stuff happened in this episode. Plus, it features a cliffhanger ending that makes a girl think, wow, it must be (the end of) sweeps!

The "Previously On Pushing Daisies..." opening is really long. Again. Still. Going all the way back to the pilot. Someday they'll trust that we know the concept of the show. Maybe. Then again, if they pick up a new audience member, they don't want those folks lost and frustrated and not watching. So maybe they'll never trust us.

We open back at boarding school. I probably don't need to tell you this anymore. Every episode opens at boarding school. Or at least in the past. But usually at boarding school. Little Ned's science teacher (the one, I assume, who let Little Ned pass out the dissection frogs) in a fit of pique, decides to let the students pick their own lab partners. Little Ned doesn't get picked, leaving him alone with one other kid who didn't get picked (at least there weren't an odd number of students. Getting stuck with the bowl-of-laughs teacher or wedged as a third wheel into a partnership would be really, really lousy). Little Ned's new lab partner is Eugene, an exchange student from India with braces and neon green headgear. Poor child. Eugene likes making paper airplanes, but not your standard single-sheet planes. These are some serious models with propellers and everything. The boys set a plane aloft using some helium from the lab table. For once, Little Ned fights against his tormentors before the kid can destroy Eugene's plane, hurling a book and knocking the little brat down. Atta boy, Little Ned.

Little Ned discovers he's made a friend in Eugene. However, he makes the mistake, while romping with Eugene, of leaping into a pile of dead leaves. Which, of course, quickly become undead. Predictably, Eugene freaks out. Apparently he'll later attribute all this to "magic leaves," but in the meantime, Little Ned has reaffirmed that he should never, ever get close to anyone. And then the bully comes back for Little Ned.

In the present, Ned greets Chuck. It turns out it's World Hello Day, which he knows because Chuck gave him an obscure holiday calendar. Presumably this means next September 19th Ned and Chuck will be talking like pirates . As should you all.

Meanwhile, Ned asks Chuck if he's her boyfriend. She says he is, which troubles Olive. Tremendously.

Chuck then reveals that in addition to being World Hello Day, it is also her dad's birthday. That'd be the dad that Ned inadvertently killed bringing back his own mother. Now he's troubled. Tremendously. And not doing a good job at all covering it.

Olive is getting pissed off about the whole Chuck/Ned boyfriend situation. She responds to this by spinning herself silly on one of the barstools. Occasionally she spots (It's a dance term. Well, she is a Broadway actress), and if she did more of that, she wouldn't be so darn dizzy when Ned finally stops her.

It turns out Alfredo Aldarisio has been in the shop for some time. Alfredo, if you'll recall, came in some time ago. He's the homeopathic goodies salesman who provided Chuck with the secret ingredient for her Happiness Pies. He also has a bit of a sweet spot for Olive. And he fixed her espresso machine. And now he's back in the restaurant. He's the only one in the restaurant, and Olive has no idea he's there.

A blond goofy looking guy comes in to the store talking about the great new candy store that's opening up across the street. He swears he's "just some guy" with no connection to the store, but they should all come to the candy shop.

Emerson presents Ned and Chuck with their case. Our Dead Guy was strangled, and his girlfriend was arrested. The theory was that it was a crime of passion. Our Three Heroes go to the morgue and wake up Dead Guy, who is actually aware of the fact that he's dead. He says he was killed by Burly Bruce Carter. Emerson points out that Dead Guy was clearly killed by someone with small hands and acrylic nails (the last part he figured out because there's a nail embedded in Dead Guy's neck). Dead Guy said that Burly Bruce used his girlfriend's hands to kill him. While Your Humble Blogger (and apparently Ned) was picturing some creepy scenario involving amputated hands kept in a hermetically sealed jar until he needs them to strangle someone, Dead Guy explains that Burly Bruce's girlfriend is a life-size doll. Dead Guy tried to tell Burly Bruce that the girlfriend isn't a real girl, and Burly Bruce wrapped his hands around the Real Girl's around the Dead Guy's neck, and boom: Dead Dead Guy.

Alfredo is still being ignored by Olive. He tries to tell her that he has to be hitting the road again, but she doesn't hear. She asks him if he loved her (if, just if), but they could never touch, wouldn't he eventually get tired of it and move on so someone else could love him? He says some incredibly romantic things to her about how he would love her in whatever way he could. This also goes right over her head.

Our Three Heroes, meanwhile, have gone to the apartment of Burly Bruce and the Real Girl. Turns out Burly Bruce is called "burly" for a reason. Burly Bruce insists that Dead Guy's girlfriend is the killer. Ned asks if Bianca--er, Sheila (his girlfriend) saw anything the night of the murder. Burly Bruce breaks down; it wasn't Sheila's fault. Burly Bruce demands to be taken in in her place, and Our Three Heroes are only to happy to call the cops and oblige him. Dead Guy's girlfriend is released from prison and justice prevails. Huzzah! And there's still a half-hour left to go in the show!

Oh, and Sheila is, like Burly Bruce, detained. As "evidence."

Olive heads over to the new candy store to say welcome to the neighborhood. She is greeted by some guy asking her "Bitter much?" Oh, sure, just 'cause her romantic dreams are being squished...Oh, but he means because they offer bitter treats to make the sweets, um, sweeter. Hence the name of the store, Bitter Sweets. Olive recognizes this guy. He's the one who came to the shop earlier to plug the store. He's also Billy Balsam, co-owner of the store (Mike White).

Pretty soon his sister and co-owner, Dilly Balsam (a blonde Molly Shannon) appears, as do Chuck and Ned. Dilly declares that she likes competition. However, the customers at Bitter Sweets become entranced by the scent of the welcome-to-the-neighborhood pie Chuck has brought and clear out to go to the Pie Hole. Dilly sputters and stutters at them (she stutters when she's upset, Billy explains), and the game is on. Olive emphasizes her determination by taking two huge handfuls of candy samples. Of course, once Our Heroes have left, it turns out it wasn't really stuttering. She was just being offputting and odd. She declares she'll have the Pie Hole out of business in a week.

When we return from the commercial, the restaurant sign now reads "Pie Ho." Ned feels sure it wasn't done on purpose. He further isn't worried about the new store. Candy is just the traveling carnival blowing through town. Pie is Home, and everyone always comes home. It's true; how do you suppose Marie Callender's has stayed in business? It certainly isn't their dinners. Nor their excellent service.

Olive talks very openly with Chuck about how she's feeling about Chuck and Ned being girlfriend and boyfriend. She's not feeling good about it.

There's only one customer in the Pie Hole, and it's the health inspector (Dana Gould, looking an awful lot like the late, great Phil Hartman). He starts dinging them left and right. Ned's cute floppy hair is illegal, and so is Digby chewing up what seems to be half a pig on the floor (Well, Digby in the kitchen is illegal. The pig is just a bonus). Digby and the health inspector growl at each other. I think Digby won. Unless barking was actually the growl-chicken equivalent of blinking, in which case, I guess the Wonder Dog isn't wonderful at growl-chicken.

Finally, the inspector wants to get into a closed room. Olive says there's no need; they never use the room. Inspector insists. Ned lets him in, and it's full--full--of dead rotting furry fruits. Olive seems horrified by the furry fruit. She actually didn't know the room was used at all.

Unsurprisingly, the Pie Hole is closed by the commissioner of health and mental hygiene. Chuck and a surprisingly ferocious Olive are convinced the Balsams are responsible, but Ned says he doesn't retaliate.

Dilly comes into the restaurant. Her hair is mussed. She explains that she wants the Pie Hole's location, and that things are only going to get worse. She also says she doesn't really stutter. She is, however, legally blind (Unless, of course, she's lying about that, too. Totally possible. Probable, even). And she says she's looked death in the eye and survived. She and Chuck could bond if only they didn't hate each other.

It turns out that the Billy and Dilly's parents were killed by bird flu. Dilly went to look her parents' killers in the beady little eyes, but the seagulls got their revenge first. Molly Shannon has a great Tippi Hedren moment. Only funnier. I assume that's not the only reason she went blonde for the part, but whatever the reason, it looks good. The hair and the scene.

Ned refuses to be bullied into a fight. Which is too bad, because Dilly has a love of taffy and a fear of nothing, not even death.

Everyone, Emerson included, wants Ned to fight back, but Ned still refuses. Chuck and Olive therefore decide to fight back for him. They do it in the hottest cat burglar outfits since, well, Catwoman. The tall high heels are a nice touch. Not remotely practical, but hot. Olive's cat burglar outfit even manages to emphasize her rack.

Olive reveals that she thought she was okay with Chuck and Ned as a couple, but apparently she was mistaken. She just needs to get angry about it for a while. She then puts on a black (well, it can't clash with the rest of the outfit, after all), motorcycle helmet and runs headlong through the glass door of Bitter Sweets. The girls release tons of rats into the store. One of them climbs into the taffy vat and drowns. Apparently the rat's taffy displacement causes a very deceased Billy to float briefly to the top of the vat.

As they strut away from the destruction, Chuck and Olive declare you shouldn't mess with the pie hos. Ho's? Hoes? Forgive me, your humble blogger is painfully not street.

Chuck comes back into the bedroom, still in her hot cat burglar outfit. Ned seems to think she looks hot, too. But he's also consumed by concerns about their relationship. Mainly, concerns about Chuck's dead dad.

He decides he has to clean up the pie hos' mess, which he does with his Digby-scratching stick. He mainly succeeds in pushing the drowned rat deeper into the taffy. So he digs with his hands. I was going to complain about the unsanitary nature of that operation, but I suppose after the dead rat and the dead Billy, Ned's fingers are probably the least of the taffy's problems.

Ned's fingers happen to touch Dead Billy, who suddenly becomes less dead and sits up in the vat. Ned asks him what happened, but what with having been drowned and all, Dead Billy can pretty much only blow taffy bubbles. The cops bust in with Dilly, furious that Ned has killed her brother (Well, you would hope she'd be at least a little annoyed about that). Luckily, Ned managed to make Dead Billy really most sincerely dead before the cops get there.

Emerson and Chuck visit Ned in jail. Ned doesn't think Chuck should be there in case a cop recognizes her. Emerson and Chuck will have to solve this one and spring Ned. An attractive pie maker shouldn't spend a lot of time in jail.

Emerson and Chuck go back to the prettiest morgue ever. Billy has been totally cleaned up. I guess Deadpan Coroner has nothing to do all day than clean sticky candy off corpses. Speaking of which, Deadpan Coroner comes in and has actual dialogue again! He gets to cut Billy up. Yay! Chuck sticks around to watch. Emerson, meanwhile, goes to check Billy's background, which should hopefully be less gross. Or at least less messy.

Olive visits Ned at jail. She's not as comforting as one might hope, though. She's weeping uncontrollably. Ned and Digby (who came with Olive) both seem a little embarrassed by her behavior. Olive also baked Ned a Special Pie. It seems to have a pistol and bullets baked into it.

Chuck and Deadpan Coroner have found a finger in Dead Billy's stomach. They can't get the prints off it, though, because Dead Billy's stomach acids destroyed the finger too much to get prints. Still, you'd think it would be pretty easy to find a 9-fingered murderer.

Meanwhile, back at jail, Ned gets a new cellmate. It's Burly Bruce. And despite the fact that Burly Bruce was willing to be taken in in Sheila's place, he's now furious at Ned, since it's Ned's fault he's in jail. Seems like if it's anyone's fault (other than Burly Bruce), it's Sheila's. But of course, Burly Bruce loves Sheila, so it's easier to want to kill Ned. Trying to avert being smashed to a pulp, Ned asks Burly Bruce how he met the Real Girl.

Burly Bruce wanted to take the carpool to work, so he answered an ad, and next thing he knew, Sheila was at his door. Apparently the crate she came in was just her playing hard to get. She moved into the passenger seat of his car and into his heart.

Ned suggests that being in prison will give Burly Bruce the chance to move on, but Bruce can't do that. He's madly in love with that Real Girl. I wonder how much he'll love her when she never comes to visit him in the slammer.... It doesn't matter. Burly Bruce has no interest in the Truth.

Emerson says no one's come in to any hospitals missing a finger. Chuck suggests that maybe the murderer has phantom limb. Not the supervillain from The Venture Bros. The actual sensation of having a finger that isn't there.

Olive goes to Bitter Sweets, where Dilly tells her she has spunk. She spunkily serves to distract Dilly while Emerson and Chuck sneak into the store to find clues. They discover that there was a fight in the shop before Billy was killed. Chuck sprinkles flour on the marble countertop and then blows it away. It turns out that marble has special properties, which leave two perfectly formed hand prints on the counter. And one of the hands has only four fingers! Gasp! They use a sheet of fruit roll-up to take the prints. I'm not sure that'll really hold up in court, but they've got them, anyway.

Dilly notices Emerson sneaking out of Bitter Sweets, so she locks Olive in the trunk of her car. She goes into the store and threatens Chuck and Emerson with a gun. Chuck cleverly notices that Dilly is wearing big-ass mittens, which makes pulling the trigger difficult. It turns out, though, that Dilly has all her fingers. Apparently she was just being, um, fashionable. She lets them go so they can take the prints to the cops. She tells them to take Olive the "trunk monkey" with them.

Deadpan Coroner found out that the finger in Dead Billy's stomach had been there since well before Dilly and the cops found Ned with the body. Of course, judging by the lines Deadpan Coroner is tracing on Dead Billy's x-ray, Dead Billy had the only ziz-zag intestinal tract known to man. However, Deadpan Coroner exonerates himself (after having exonerated Ned) by pulling prints off the fruit roll-up and discovering that Dead Billy was killed by none other than the health inspector. The Balsams had paid him to pop in on the Pie Hole. In turn, he started blackmailing them for a bribe or else he would reveal that they had paid him and shut down Bitter Sweets instead. Billy wouldn't give in, and a fight ensued. During the fight, the health inspector fell onto the marble counter after his finger was bitten off (which is how Chuck got those prints). Apparently Billy's saliva is some sort of coagulant, because that is the cleanest severed body part wound I have ever seen. I mean, I realize this is a TV show that usually airs at 8 p.m., but there's no blood. At all.

There's a manhunt for the health inspector, Emerson gets television credit for breaking the case, and Ned is set free. When he comes into the store, Olive gives him an enormous hug, which has to go double for Chuck. It also goes on just a little too long.

Emerson admits to Ned that he can do this job without Ned, but it's really, really hard. Ned, meanwhile, declares that he isn't going to tell Chuck about her father. The girls present Chuck with a welcome-back pie with a candle.

After everyone has left, Alfredo comes into the shop. He and Olive kiss each other silly. But it's only in her imagination. Her crime of passion was not realizing Alfredo was in love with her in time and letting him get away.

Burly Bruce's crime of passion was seeing Sheila as a Real Girl.

Dilly's crime of passion is just a crime, though, tossing the health inspector (or some other guy missing his right ring finger, but probably the health inspector) into a pond.

Ned tells Chuck that in prison, she was his phantom limb; he felt her even though she wasn't there. He feels closer to her than he's felt to anyone, despite what he learned through his experience with Eugene. This leads to his crime of passion: He tells Chuck he killed her dad.

Instead of the sweet fade out we've had previously with the happy couple enclosed in a circle or heart or whatever, there's a huge pull out from Chuck out into the city. Where's it's starting to snow. Oh, this is very bad.

I really enjoyed this episode. I even enjoyed Molly Shannon. It turns out that with good writing, she doesn't annoy me. Which is why I didn't care for her when she was on Saturday Night Live. Bad writing. But Dilly is just quirky enough to fit perfectly into the world of the pie-maker. I'm really enjoying Olive's pissy side, so when she got all screamy when Dilly threw her in the trunk, it seemed really out of place.

There is definitely a continuing theme with birds on this show: The creepy aunts have all the birds, alive and otherwise. There was the pigeon in the episode by the same name. And now Dilly has been traumatized by seagulls. This seems to be a trend.

I do wonder if the Burly Bruce and the Real Girl thing intentionally referenced Lars and his Real Girl, or if it's just one of those entertainment media synchronicity things, like when all those body switch comedies came out at the same time in the '80s. Or like last year, where two shows about the inner workings of sketch TV shows came out completely independent of each other. Sometimes that sort of weirdness happens and it doesn't mean anything. And sometimes it happens on purpose. Not sure which this was.

A couple of administrative notes: Pushing Daisies is off next week but will be back on December 12. For some reason it's listed as being on at 10 p.m. Paul "Pee Wee Herman" Reubens will be back.

The other one is that the show has wrapped until the writers' strike ends, having completed episode #9 on Monday. This was only episode 8. Hopefully the strike ends soon. It could wreak havoc on new shows. Like, say, this one. Plus, of course, the writers deserve better. Your humble blogger makes a lot of use of the episode player the web. She also takes advantage of other shows being shown on the 'net. Comedy Central's website in particular gets a lot of use by her, and their writers, especially the ones for Pushing Daisies deserve to get paid fairly for what they do.


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