Pushing Daisies

Something was quite off with Pushing Daisies’ episode this week. There were some story lines that took awhile to tie together so it fails to make sense to me. And while the background looks absolutely colorful and stunning, it is easy to tell that a lot of these were done through a green screen. I think this could be the weakest episode to date. But I am willing to overlook it because despite the muddle, Pushing Daisies is still the best new show on TV today.

Pigeon opens with another scene from Ned’s childhood….

After several months of staying in boarding school with nary a friend, Ned is reunited with his dog, Digby. (Ain’t Digby just the most adorable dog?) And while both were very glad to have found each other again, Ned and Digby knew they had to exercise restrain and avoid touching each other. Digby was the very reason Ned came to discover his unique gift, when a truck ran over him and died. And if Ned should touch his hairy best friend again, he would have lost him forever.

Fast forward to the present, and we find Chuck baking yet another batch of homeopathic pies for her aunts. In comes Ned who had a few bee sting marks on his face and Chuck wonders where he got it from. Ned brings her to the roof and there she saw the bee hives Ned set-up. Chuck was once was a bee-keeper and this special gesture from Ned made her extremely happy.

Downstairs….while Olive contemplated on how to expose her Chuck, who she thought actually faked her own death, a pigeon suddenly slams into The Pie Hole’s window and dies. Everyone rushes outside and, as Olive clutches the pigeon on her hand, Ned accidentally touches it and it is revived. Olive thinks it’s a miracle and Ned couldn’t find the timing to touch it again and it was almost one minute. In this scene, Digby is seen watching them from the window and I almost died when I saw that! I was holding my breath thinking death will come for Digby. But in place of the pigeon (which was allowed to live) another bird drops from the sky and dies. A small plane also immediately drops from the sky, seconds after this. It crashes onto an apartment building.

Ned, Chuck and Emerson decided to check the scene of the accident, thinking there might be something they could investigate. They arrive at Conrad Fitch’s apartment and saw that the pilot was dead. They also found debris all over the place, causing Chuck to miss a step and slip. Ned deliberately avoided catching her and Chuck lands on Conrad Fitch’s arm. Chuck seems smitten by him.

Emerson and Ned follow a lead to this case as soon as they learned of the pilot’s identity. Chuck, meanwhile, chose to remain with Conrad, in case he needed help in his apartment. This made Ned feel very, very uncomfortable and jealous.

At the coroner’s office, Ned and Emerson come face to face with the pilot who tells them that the reason for the crash was because someone wearing prison clothes tried to hijack his plane. But no other body or no one else was found at the crash site. And if this was true, someone out there was still alive and had to answer for the plane crash.

So Ned and Emerson return to the apartment to discover a body stuffed in the trunk which served as a coffee table. And the two learn that this was the real Conrad Fitch, who was instantly killed when the plane crashed. The man who was with Chuck was the hijacker/impostor.

Meanwhile, Chuck is at The Pie Hole eating with fake Conrad. While he was recounting how the crash happened, he took her hand and held it. It surprised Chuck at first, but she asked if he could do it again. Chuck used that moment to close her eyes and imagine it was Ned holding her hand. When she opened her eyes, she finds Ned furiously staring at them by the window. And fake Conrad quickly took this as his cue to flee. Ned catches up with him and grabs his hand, which unfortunately, like his identity, was also a fake.

Later, Emerson returns with another piece of information he gathered from “his people”. The impostor/hijacker’s name was Lemuel Weinger aka Lefty, the one-armed fellow who was imprisoned for insider trading. At prison, Lefty had a cell mate who stole diamonds and buried this at a secret location. And before he died, he was able to disclose to Lefty were the diamonds are buried. And so now, this is what Lefty is trying to recover.

The trio then digs up Lefty’s cellmate’s body in the cemetery, so that they can ask him about the diamonds. And he tells them that this was by the stairs inside an old mill.

Now, at some point between those events, Olive went to Chuck’s aunts to bring the pie Chuck had prepared for them. She also brought with her Digby and the pigeon that lived. And as it turns out, the aunts were actual bird lovers so they helped the pigeon get better. Lily and Vivian fixed the pigeon’s wings and even added bling-bling using a bejeweler (or bedazzler? I’m not quite the arts and crafts person). The pigeon is christened as Pidge and is in fact, a messenger pigeon.

As the aunts tell their story of how much they enjoy having birds, Olive hatches a plan in her mind. She was planning to bring Lily and Vivian to The Pie Hole to surprise and expose Chuck. But she could not figure out how to even get them out of the house.

And then, all of a sudden Pidge starts to fly out of the aunt’s house. And everyone from Olive, the aunts and Digby, went to chase after it to make sure that it is okay.

At the mill, Ned, Chuck and Emerson learns that The Van Roenn Mill is now a landmark and a national treasure. When they asked the narcoleptic staff if she saw a man with no left arm come by, she told them that he was just by the area a few minutes ahead of them. She gives the three a map of the old mill house and then falls back to sleep.

So then, Lefty arrives at the old mill house to find Elsita living there. He ties Elsita up before he started looking for the diamonds and Elsita, on the other hand, made no attempts of fighting him off. To her, this was the most excitement she had in her lifetime. But they are soon interrupted by the arrival of Pidge, as well as Olive and the Aunts.

Apparently, Pidge was Elsita’s bird. She uses it to send notes to someone far away and she learns that this someone was actually Lefty.

Elsita and Lefty were not the original owners of Pidge. Elsita’s mother, Elsa, and the diamond thief (Lefty’s cell mate) were. And we are treated to a flashback in which they first met and fell in love. They had been exchanging messages this way and when they died, Elsita and Lefty kept the communication alive because both found the messages exchanged as heartfelt…and in essence, it kept the spirit of her mom and his friend alive. Elsita had been wondering what happened to Pidge earlier, because it flew towards a plane’s propeller and she thought Pidge was gone for good. Elsita also shows Lefty where the diamonds are — hidden inside a compartment within her fake leg. Yes, Elsita with the fake leg and Lefty with the fake arm, are so meant for each other.

Suddenly, they hear a knock on the door and Olive peeps to see who it is. When she saw Chuck (with Ned and Emerson), her mind played the idea of exposing her to her aunts who were sitting at Elsita’s living room. But she surprisingly changed her mind and tells the others she needs to step out and talk to the one outside, whoever that is. Coming face to face with Chuck, Olive discreetly clues her in on what could happen if she opens the door. Chuck understood this and understood that she better not let her aunts see her.

So Olive goes back inside Elsita’s house and leads the aunts by the other door. And while they drive away, Lily thought she saw Chuck in her rear view mirror.

Meanwhile, Emerson leads the police inside Elsita’s and arrested Lefty… but not without Elsita telling him they will continue to write each other. And this brought some realizations to Ned and Chuck regarding their relationship and how each of them can work through its kinks. And at the Pie Hole’s rooftop, among the bee hives he set up for her, Ned and Chuck, garbed in beekeeper suits, danced very close to each other.

Some other notes:

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