Pushing Daisies: The Norwegians
By Sonia Aurora
This week: Orlando Jones!
I’m trying to muster up the love here, but to be quite honest this was not one of the season’s strongest eps and knowing it’s also one of its last just made it harder to bear.
We did learn a few nifty nuggets in the interwoven history of the Pushing Daisies World, notably how Ned came to resurrect the dead for answers. Coming across a dead (and shot) lumberjack, he believes resurrecting him and finding his killer will make him a hero, and prompt his father to come for him to the School for Boys which he’s been banished to. Alas, it was an accident, even if the sheriff doesn’t believe him, and no visit from dad materializes. And so we now have Ned who still does the resurrection trick, and call me impatient, but as the bell tolls I’d really like to see how Emerson and Ned hooked up in their detecting duet.
And speaking of detecting, Aunt Vivian tries to commission Emerson to find dear old Dwight who is missing, and since Emerson knows he’s in Charles Charles’ grave, he brushes off the assignment, which causes her to hire The Norwegians – Magnus Alstadder, the leader, played by Orlando Jones, Mills Nilsson and Hedda Lillihammer, played by character actors whose faces you have surely seen before. Ned and Chuck, meanwhile, are stressed at the disappearance of Chuck’s father, and even moreso now that the potential fallout of the Norwegian’s investigation might pose for our dynamic trio. In the meanwhile, Chuck wants to let Olive in on Ned’s magical finger properties, but she’s not a good variable and it winds up biting them in the butt as she turns itty bitty traitor…or does she? No, she couldn’t, and she doesn’t, but her little investigating and help for the other team does lead them to an exhumation of both Chuck and Charles Charles’ graves…which turn out to be empty! What?? Chuck wants to believe it’s her father’s doing and who else could it be? Who else indeed….
As it happens, our Olive was trying to work deep undercover, and even though our other 3 detectives won’t let her in on the secrets, she has a devotion to them that is unshakeable. You can’t help but love her for it, and when Ned and she steal the Mother (Mobile Investigative Laboratory Facility- the Lab on wheels for the Norwegians) to destroy the evidence, she asks Ned questions of the yes or no variety so that she can get some answers without getting the whole truth – she’s really just looking for honesty. As they reach a dead end, the van careening off, and Olive clinging to Ned – now physically as well as emotionally, she regrets that he never felt for her the way he feels for Chuck. Ned replies “ I wouldn’t say never,” and I daresay if my heart didn’t swell the way Olive’s did, as her face shone in sweet requited satisfaction – even though it was fleeting. They are saved by a mysterious man, who just continues to solidify the case that it was Charles Charles, watching his girl and her friends in the peripheral sense, helping as he can.
The Norwegians then find Dwight in his hotel room, dead by natural causes, and what it does is it proves Lilly right that he just abandoned her and was a bad man, and Vivian hates her for it…until they learn about the desecration of Chuck’s grave (and the implication that the body was burned by Dwight along with Charles Charles). In a tender moment, Emerson tells Vivian that the body wasn’t Chuck, her spirit lives on (I’ll say) and now Vivian, even as she is upset with Lilly, knows how her sister’s heart will break at learning about Chuck, breaks the news gently, as a sister would. It makes me take pause that Vivian knows how much this Chuck news would affect Lilly, and I wonder if our delicate aunt doesn’t know more –or as much as – we do.
And so some loose ends are tied and Ned’s secret is still thus…and he decides to start using fresh fruit instead of reviving the rotting fruit: “no more dead fruit no more dead people” is his new motto and he’s just going to go cold turkey since this was too close a call…but the thing is, it wasn’t Chuck’s father helping to clean up Ned’s mess…it was. . .
Ned’s father! Who, has a surprising perma-tan in the form of…George Hamilton!
I have a hard time with stunt casting and celeb cameos, and while that can be deemed a loose description for Mr. Hamilton, it felt flat to me that Ned’s dad would look like that or be him. I don’t know that he’s quirky enough for the show as a whole, and I admit with the exception of seeing only his face and not much performance except for the reveal of who he is in the Pushing Daisies-verse I wonder if the fit will take or remain unfit. With less time to spend at the Pie Hole, I become more and more regrettably aware of the end and the disappointment of complete closure, and rumors of Bryan Fuller completing the arc in comic book form are small consolation. I can only hope the rest of the truncated season (and series) can deliver at its height. This episode was not it, and I hope it’s not my disappointment at the network that is coloring my opinion. Only 4 more to go, and it won’t be til after the holidays that we know how much we can learn and live in the world that is Pushing Daisies.
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About Sonia Aurora: Aspiring screenwriter and seamstress, Sonia’s dream is to write life-changing films while product-placing her own line of handbags. In 1999, she wrote, co-directed and co-starred in the short film Dr. Lovestrange, or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bug, a satirical homage to Stanley Kubrick set amidst the panic of Y2K (Featured on ifilm.com & Coming Soon to YouTube!). While Sonia waits patiently for the Studios to call, she continues her selfless, humanitarian efforts (think Mother Teresa) through her scripts, short stories and sewing (a true triple-threat!), knowing all the while that someday her efforts will indeed save (or at least mildly tweak) the world. She still struggles with which picture to kiss before bedtime: her boyfriend’s or Bruce Campbell’s. And, in the interest of time, she’d like to start thanking the Academy now.
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The story of Ned and Emerson's first meeting was told early in the first episode of the series. Emerson was chasing a guy across the rooftops when his prey fell into the alley behind the Pie Hole. The criminal was killed by the fall, but bounced and hit Ned, thus resurrecting for a brief time before Ned re-deaded him. Emerson basically blackmailed Ned into working with him at first, but the partnership proved mutually beneficial and they became friends. [/continuity dork]
I, too, was pretty surprised at the casting of George Hamilton, but I think it'll work. I can believe him as the serial monogamist and amateur magician who abandoned Ned and the twins. I just hope that our adorable Piemaker finally gets a last name. It's driving me nutty that he and his brothers are the only ones in the series not to have one.