Pushing Daisies: Window Dressed to Kill

By Sonia Aurora
I love my DVR. Imagine my surprise/shock/delight to come home this weekend, check my recordings and see “New: Pushing Daisies” in the queue. Honestly, I stared at it mouth agape for a full minute trying to process if it was a joke. I took a day to cautiously proceed to it. I had mourned this show, after all, processing all the stages of grief until I came to the conclusion it was gone. And now, here, before me, the ghost of a beloved, claiming to still be alive.

Throughout the viewing I kept sighing and saying, “I missed this show.” It was bittersweet, because I know (or at least read) there were only 3 episodes that had been shelved once the cancellation loomed; and also knowing/reading that because of budget constraints and time they wouldn’t be able to properly wrap up the show (though, supposedly, one mystery would be solved). So I had a hard time watching and concentrating on this episode because I wanted it to mean that it was coming back, enriching my life with its color and banter. Being back with Ned, Chuck, Olive and Emerson was like coming home to crazy eccentric beloved relatives you long to visit but have long since passed.

I’m mourning too much here, I know. It was just hard. I let a day pass before I could bring myself to watch it, and I was sad at the end, no doubt, even though there were coming attractions to next week’s episode. But I’m here to review and report, and so I will motor on.

Young Olive Snook was 9 years 39 weeks 19 hours 59 minutes old and dressed to the 9’s (naturally) when she was kidnapped by Jerry Holmes and Buster Bustamonte. 25 years later they are busting out of prison with Little Miss Snook on their minds.

Meanwhile, in the present Olive is still searching through the double negative that Ned gave her as they dangled from the cliff to their deaths that he wouldn’t say never to thinking about her in a romantic way. She wants clarity to that statement, to continue to cling to that hope that he could love her the way she loves him, the way he loves Chuck. And our beloved Ned has decided to stick to his guns and hang up his proverbial superhero’s cape and live his life as Clark Kent. That throws a wrench in Emerson’s plans for, well, making a living, which reduces him to doing what he did pre-Ned – greasing palms with payoffs, much like he does for the coroner. Chuck does still want to help, so she becomes his sidekick avenger.

David Arquette is also back as Randy Mann, taxidermist and now potential paramour to Olive. His awkward swoony-ness around her is endearing, and I push aside my prejudice that Raul Esperanza (aka, Alfredo Alderasio, our herbal medicine salesman) won’t be back to woo Olive, and decide Randy is perfect for her.

Erin Embry, department store window dresser, is gussied up and drowned and frozen in a fountain. There’s a bruise on her head, so it looks like an accidental drown-and-freeze. Chuck and Emerson really want to investigate her murder, so, while Chuck realizes that Erin’s demise is a replica of her most recent window display (and in my favorite bit of the episode) she infiltrates the group of mourning Erin Embry fans outside the store and drums up money to feed the investigation.

We then meet Dick Dickers, store owner, and Coco Juniper, Erin’s window dressing partner who also seemed to be the lesser talented of the 2, who’s determined to show she was just as talented, and, perhaps, the real star of the pair. All she really succeeds at doing is dressing down her assistant Denny Downs.

Jerry Holmes and Buster Bustamante catch up to Olive and (after socking Randy in the eye) we come to find out they weren’t her kidnappers, they were car thieves stealing the car Olive had stowed away in. They brought her home only to realize her parents hadn’t even noticed she’d been gone (for days!) and the thieves scolded them. The Snooks told the police they had kidnapped Olive, and thus their incarceration. Olive wrote them every day, including the little white lie that she was engaged…to our Pie Maker. Whoops. Ned, brimming with friendly and well meaning devotion, agrees to go along with the ruse. Cue happiness, high jinks, and Randy’s broken-hearted expression. The jig is only supposed to last as long as they can get the guys over the border and into freedom, and Ned, Olive, Randy, Jerry and Buster pile into Randy’s taxidermy truck and head out. But the police checkpoint forces a detour to Aunt Vivian and Lilly’s, and that only complicated the faux engagement. Our Olive, channeling Kristen Chenowoth (herself) and Lionel Richie, mournfully sings “Hello”.

Meanwhile, our new Detective Duo realizes that Coco’s window display tribute to Erin’s is just peachy, until she dies just in the way of the display (by escalator, as it were). The killer is still on the loose; could it be harangued assistant Denny? Well, maybe, as it seems he was the real talent behind the Milli Vanilli – I mean Erin and Coco  – duo. Emerson and Chuck bring their concerns to Dick Dickers.

Vivian is so thrilled about Olive’s pending nuptials that she breaks out the veil that she wanted to give to Chuck, and Ned freaks out enough to confess he was trying to do the right thing, but in his convoluted confession, manages to break Olive’s delusion of could-ever-be into smaller pieces. She confesses to all of them that she are Ned never were, just as the coppers show up and surround the house. As they hide, Randy and Ned have a heart to heart about Superman and Clark Kent, and how no one ever noticed Clark Kent; no one loved him, and Ned decides to don his cape and dust off his magic finger to save the day. He reanimates the rhino Randy had (for stuffing) in his van, and it sends the cops away. Ned leaves, off to resume his crime-fighting, while Jerry and Buster open Olive’s eyes to the fact that Randy seems awfully devoted to her.

Ned bursts into the morgue to save the day and verify Emerson’s hunch that Dick Dickers is the real murderer, who’s wanted the magnificent window displays to stop so his store could go under without being disowned from the family. Of course, murder’s always better than being cut off, right? Our crack team manages to just catch him before he could chainsaw off Denny’s head. Denny takes over as store manager and takes an admiring apprentice under his wing.

Meanwhile, back at the Pie Hole, Chuck confesses her minor jealousies that Ned and Olive played engaged, again reiterating how she longs to be able to touch him and stay alive, and as Ned watches Randy take Olive’s hand, he feels the same pangs of jealousy – but why? For the same reasons Chuck has? Or for now dormant feelings he may have had for Olive the whole time? Tune in next week, same Pie Time, same Pie Channel, for possible answers.

I continue to love this show, for its quirky goodness. I still revel in the language (something that can’t translate to Bryan Fuller’s  Heroes stint). There isn’t another place you can get the kind of aw-shucks response that Randy gives Olive that he’s “aid and a betcha” anytime. There’s a sweetness in this show unlike any other, without the sugar shock. I resent ABC for not giving this show the chance to properly end, and if it wasn’t for V next season, I could reasonably boycott the channel. But I’m gonna take what I can get. 2 more weeks of Pushing Daisies-Land. I’m gonna bask in it’s glory for as long as I can.

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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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