Pushing Daisies: Dummy

By Sonia Lepe
It stands to reason that a TV show called Pushing Daisies would be obsessed with death. It is also obsessed with time.

We begin this week with Young Ned at “9 years 33 weeks 6 days 20 hours and 34 minutes old” when he tries to lash out at his self-imposed exile by bringing dissected frogs to life. Periodically, our narrator breaks down moments by dissecting them by their existence into increments of time. Now that it’s the 2nd episode we’re better acquainted with the main players: Ned, touches dead things, brings them to life; Chuck, long lost lady love, dead but revived and untouchable; Emerson Cod, curmudgeonly PI and Olive Snook, perennially pining for Ned.

This week’s show, “Dummy”, dealt with a guy killed by a crash test dummy. I have to say, very clever use of the crash test dummy as disguise. We’ve got Michael Myers as William Shatner, Freddie as goalie, and now this. There is an innocence to the expression on a crash test dummy, which fits in perfectly with the sweet macabre of the show. But remove that crash dummy face and it looks like Large Marge after she goes all buggy-eyed.

The mystery on this show is really secondary to the characters and their quirks. We learned this week that Emerson knits, especially when stressed, so he’s been knitting quite a bit since Chuck came into the picture. Everyone talks cute-fast, which keeps the show light and airy, despite the heavier undercurrent of death that is really the core of the whole show (though, thus far, isn’t poisoning the sunny overlay).

I waver about Chuck. She is such a little buttinski, wanting to infiltrate everything dealing with the investigations. Ned is so captivated by her but I want to smack him upside the head sometimes and yell: Stop being so smitten! She’s just gonna get you into trouble! It’s no wonder it looks like Emerson is trying to pass a kidney stone when she starts worming in. But just as I was on the verge of disowning her and joining the “Olive & Ned” camp, she breaks out into Japanese. Japanese…with ease! The fact that there is so much more to this small town girl made me like her and want to be her friend again….for now.

This week I came up with two more influences on this show: Dr. Seuss and Willy Wonka (Gene Wilder more than Johnny Depp). The narrator is now reminding me of the Grinch’s Boris Karloff, while one of the guest characters even looked a bit like Cindy Lou Who (albeit with knockers and an eating disorder). The sequences in the Dandy Lion Car factory reminded me of Wonkavision (white walls, in your face angles, and the bright, bright colors).

I’m starting to notice the patterns for the show now, which are still cute but can be potentially grating. Ned feels bad about his power (check), Ned and Chuck can’t kiss (check, except they do through 2 plastic body bags); Emerson looks constipated (check), Olive pines for Ned (check), Digby the dog licks Olive’s face (check). We need to start branching out a bit and soon, or the show is going to run itself into the ground with it’s adorableness and predictability.

Two things of note this week:
1) Kristin Chenoweth sings!
Yup, our little Broadway beauty gets to do her own Olivia Newton John impression while she eases around the pie shop lamenting that she is “Hopelessly Devoted to You”, “you” meaning Ned. She dances with Digby, is unfettered by minor interruptions, and ends dejected. I guess it’s to be expected since she is a Tony Award winner, but it is also just another part of the woven fabric of the show …of course a character would sing…why not? It’s these instances that are keeping that predictability in play but also in check.

2) Best line of the episode:
Ned: “I hate secrets.”
Chuck: “You love secrets. You want to marry secrets and have little half-secret, half-human babies”.

Technorati Tags: pushing daisies, pushing daisies recap

Never miss an update. Subscribe to Pink Raygun by Email or subscribe via RSS

Powered by ScribeFire.

Related Stuff: