The Pushing Daisies Review 1.4 "Pigeon"
Posted by Brendan Newton on 10.26.2007
Yes, it's "late" but then so are most of the characters on this show. *rimshot*
First of all, I must apologize for this edition of The Pushing Daisies Review being a bit late. I had a family occasion Wednesday night that I couldn't weasel out of however hard I tried. Yes, on the night that both of the shows that I review air. I tried to tape the shows, of course, so everything should have been okay, but some idiot (possibly myself) went and fiddled with my highly advanced VHS system, leaving me to run around today to find a copy of Wednesday's episode. Thanks to the good people at CTV for streaming episodes of Pushing Daisies on the Net so I could finally catch this week's episode, “Pigeon”; I say this both because it's the only way I could write this review and because it was the usual great episode, a picture-perfect example of how to slowly build an ongoing story arc while at the same time telling a fun stand-alone story. There was some general good news for the show this week, though, as Pushing Daisies has been confirmed as being picked up by ABC for a full season. Judging by this episode, it should be well worth it. Highlights and thoughts:
-As usual, the flashback to Ned's childhood that opened the episode was top-notch; showing us a little more of the past each week works well because as we get to know and care about these characters more from week to week, we start to ask questions about their past, questions that the flashbacks answer neatly. In this case, it's the tale of Digby's Incredible Journey, as we find out how Digby came to be reunited with Ned after he was shipped off to boarding school. Loved Digby's offhand heroics along the way (although it might have been funnier if there was a whole slew of them along with pulling the fire alarm; that might have been too much of a good thing though) and the origin of Ned's “petting stick.” Interesting question about Digby that I hadn't considered previously; it's been 19 years or so since he first died, right? That's getting to be a pretty old dog. So unless he's just unusually old for a dog, he's been given some sort of immortality (and presumably eternal youth) via Ned's touch; perhaps the only thing that can kill anyone that's resurrected by Ned is a second touch from Ned? That could have some interesting repercussions for Chuck down the line once she realizes she's basically immortal, although a sweet ending to the series would be Ned finally touching Chuck a second time when she's ready to die at the age of 90. Of course, he'll be the only one of the two that ages. Either way, the issue of Digby's apparent immortality is a great subtle hint at that possible plot development to come. Field Cate is very good as Young Ned each week, love that messy little boy haircut! (if only because I had that exact 'do until I was about thirteen)
-Great slow development of the love triangle storyline surrounding Ned, Chuck, and Olive after Olive discovered Chuck's identity last week. Affection-starved Olive's concern for her “Pidge”-the first of several great “characters of the week”-was adorable, and the way it led in to her bonding with Lily and Vivian was great, especially the new wing they built for Pidge. It seems to be a recurring theme that Olive channels her frustrations over Ned's not returning her love by taking care of animals and explicitly treating them with the affection she wishes he held for her; witness Digby in “Pie-lette” and Pidge in this episode. Kristin Chenoweth works especially well with the also-musical Ellen Greene, an actress who I finally managed to place this week after years of watching and going “okay, I know her from somewhere...”; among other roles, she was great as Sylar's mother in an episode of Heroes last year. Great song this week, and with those two they really should do a full-blown musical episode sometime this season, it would gell well with Pushing Daisies' whimsicality and sense of magical realism. Olive's bonding with the Aunts is nicely played off when at episode's end she realizes how much it would hurt them to discover that Chuck had faked her death (as Olive thinks) and thus abandons her plan to destroy Chuck. This creates a neat twist as Chuck's Aunt's friendliness towards Olive and willingness to help Pidge are a result of Chuck's having slipped anti-depressants (conspicuously absent from this week's episode; Alfredo the homeopathic anti-depressant salesman in love with Olive, but hopefully he'll return in later episodes) into the pies that Olive delivered; therefore Chuck is rewarded in a roundabout way for her efforts to help her aunts. Talk about good karma. Great arc-based storytelling too as one storyline-Olive's desire to expose Chuck-closes while another-Chuck's knowing that Olive knows who she is-opens in perfect fashion. It will be interesting to see what this is all building to; my guess would be Olive will eventually find out Ned's secret and be brought into the Emerson-Ned-Chuck partnership by season's end. Great to see the return of the gag with Aunt Lily not quite seeing Chuck when she's right there due to her eyepatch, that could be a fun running gag. My guess would be it'll lead to the Aunts learning that Chuck's still alive too; and given that the Aunts are decidedly odd, I wouldn't expect them to be too surprised about the whole thing.
-Meanwhile, Ned and Chuck have their problems this week, as Chuck meets an attractive man who can actually touch her, which he does when she slips and falls in his presence. The “date” scene was cute with Chuck trying to explain without going into too much detail about why it was actually a “very sweet gesture” on Ned's part not to catch her, which if you think about it it actually was. I love when shows do this, manipulate a plot and a relationship so that actions that seem callous and even violent are actually acts of love. One of my favourite X-Files moments was along these lines, when Scully shot Mulder in order to prevent him from being framed for murder by killing another man. Such a clever twist to have things like shooting and allowing someone to fall actually amount to saving someone's life. Also a good way of exploring all of the ramifications of Ned's not being able to touch Chuck, it reinforces how central to human life some form of touch is, and how hellish it is for Ned to have to do without it. I personally would have preferred to have seen Chuck be a little more genuinely attracted to Lefty; while the whole thing with her holding his hand and pretending it was Ned's was sweet, it would have made for a much better, more interesting story if Chuck was legitimately interested in the other man. Considering that she lived pretty much all of her life alone with her Aunts, it would realistically make sense for her to want to live a little bit now that she's out in the world, and since she can't touch Ned...I guess that would ruin the fairy tale love story between her and Ned though, but I don't see what would be wrong with shaking things up a bit and introducing romantic rivals into the mix. We know that she and Ned are meant for each other in a deep, loving way, but that needn't impede having other romantic interests for Chuck in the meantime. It could even be used as a catalyst for Ned to try to learn more about his gift, where it comes from and if there's anything he can do about it (one thing about this show; the characters are very accepting of the weirdness around them, and no one ever thinks to ask “why?” about the big questions). They made up for it with the sweet love story between Lefty and Elsa which had some nice parallels to Chuck and Ned, but it would be interesting if they explored the idea of Chuck looking for a “Mr. Right Now” as opposed to Ned's “Mr. Right” at some point in the series. The whole thing with Ned giving Chuck a slice of her old life back by giving her beehives was sweet, especially with them dancing in beekeeper's outfits at the end, it's great seeing what goofy protective outfit Ned and Chuck are going to break out to touch each other each week. I've said it before; at some point, they need to break out those Naked Gun-style full body condoms for “safe sex.” Great gag about the bees stinging Ned, dying, and instantly coming back to life too, at which point a nearby bee drops dead too, yet another amusing implication of his “gift.”
-Good to see that Sy Richardson as The Coroner has been “promoted” to the recurring cast, along with Field Cate (Young Ned). That character's such a great touch, and funny to see him very slowly catching on to Emerson and Ned (“You and that white boy got something shifty going on?” It takes a good actor to make the simple word “shifty” sound hilarious). It would be cool for him to get an episode focused on him one of these weeks; tell us more about the character, but still don't have him quite catch on to what Ned and Emerson are up to. Also loved Ned's vague explanation to the coroner and the pilot's widow of how he found out the pilot was killed; “DNA-ish.”
-Interesting new revelation about Ned's gift this week as we find out that he can bring people back from the dead even if they've been dead for a considerable amount of time, in this case the bank robber Jackson Lucas. Usual great moment with Emerson's squeamishness around the dead, freaking out when he realizes that Jackson's been dead for a while and therefore won't look very nice. Love Emerson's relationship with Ned's gift and with death in general; it makes him a lot of money, but he's fundamentally uncomfortable with the whole thing; Chi McBride plays this reluctance very well. Interesting question, though; if Ned can bring anyone back from the dead, provided there's at least something of a body (ie a skeleton) left, couldn't he potentially bring all manner of famous people back from the dead? He could even solve major mysteries such as who wrote Shakespeare's plays and who shot Kennedy? I know it's not the focus of this show so we won't be seeing it, but it's an interesting idea.
-As always, this show is able to bring in interesting one-off characters, tell a great story with them, and draw a connection between them and the main character's situation. I'll admit I geeked out pretty hard when I realized that the actress playing Elsita, Jayma Mays, also played Hiro's love interest, Charlie the Waitress, in Heroes last year; I stopped just short of yelling “CHARLIE!” at the top of my lungs in a Japanese accent. Great to see her again as she always has a real wide-eyed, “Reese Witherspoon in Walk the Line” country charm. She also made “windmillery” seem like a real word; I love how off-the-wall all of these characters' lives are. In this case, we had a one-legged windmill owner/keeper who fell in love with a one-armed white-collar criminal turned hijacker. In addition to having a cool name and character backstory, Dash Mihok brought a great blend of decency and villainy to the character of Lefty, and it was great how they subverted the typical “nice guy turns out to be ruthless villain of the week” formula by making the ruthless villain turn out to not be such a bad guy after all as he was trying to pay a debt to his deceased mentor (nice how they made the prison inmates' relationship turn out to have actually been a friendly one instead of the violent/sexual relationship the audience expects) and proceeded to fall in love with the damsel in distress that he had tied up. Neat way to dovetail (I'd like to say pun not intended, but that would be a lie) the two plots at the end, with Pidge bearing a message for Elsita from Lefty that clears things up. As I said earlier, I would have liked to have seen Lefty as a more serious competitor with Ned for Chuck, but they made up for that with a sweet love story with him and Elsita becoming a second generation of prison penpals, a “love without touching” (well, except for conjugal visits I guess) situation that of course parallels Ned and Chuck's. Nice that Lefty goes from frustrating Ned and making him jealous early on to teaching him something about love's persistence in the face of seemingly insurmountable odds and becoming something of an inspiration to him.
All in all, this was a great episode. I would have liked to have seen them take the storyline with Chuck and Lefty in a different direction by actually making him a serious romantic interest, and I do hope that angle is picked up again with other suitors for Chuck in later episodes (what can I say, sometimes I like seeing characters get tortured), but they replaced that angle with a really sweet love story for Lefty with Elsita-great guest stars as usual-and ended up making some important points about love and about Chuck and Ned's relationship. Cute subplot with Olive and “Pidge”, and a great slow build of Olive and Chuck's character arcs. Not quite what I was expecting, sure, but yet another great episode, and it's great to hear that this show's getting a full season of great episodes and time to properly build its' storylines.
The 411: Great episode, quite probably the best yet. Granted, not what I was expecting from the previews, but when an episode's this good, who cares about expectations?
