Pushing Daisies

So these are the facts from the episode of Pushing Daisies this week:

• Kissing and touching between Ned and Chuck can happen in every episode! Do your count and double check. They have had contact one way or another since the first show.
• Digby is perhaps the front runner for Best Actor on TV today!
• Olive is now part of the Scooby Gang….and it’s good that she’s sleuthing with them. I’ve always felt she was an outcast when they begin talking about their cases.
• Knit-loving Emerson is also a romantic Emerson, if the right type of woman comes along. Dare I say, Simone was exactly the kind of woman I imagined Emerson would go for.

The episode Bitches deals with Harold Hundin, a successful dog breeder who ends up violently dead in his office (His death scene is an homage to Vertigo, ladies and gentlemen!). And as Ned, Chuck and Emerson inquire about the details of this from him in the morgue, we learn that Hundin also lead quite an amazing home life…the kind that would rival Bill Hendrickson on Big Love. Harold Hundin was a polygamist whose wives call each other sister-wife and who all stood as Maid of Honors at each other’s wedding when their husband married them .

• Wife #1 – Hillary, is into dog merchandise.
• Wife #2 – Heather, is a dog psychiatrist.
• Wife # 3 - Simone, is a dog obedience school owner
• Wife #4 – Hallie, is a breeder of dogs for the blind.

And one of them poisoned their husband’s coffee.

To get to the bottom of Hundin’s death, Emerson gives each one on his team (Ned, Chuck and including Olive), a wife to investigate. When all four compared notes at the Pie Hole later, they discover that all of the wives gave Hundin coffee the last they saw him. Except that — Hallie gave the almond flavored one, which turned out to be cyanide heavy. And Hallie is arrested.

Problem solved? Not quite so. Even as Hallie is sent to jail, she receives a lot of love from the blind children she has helped, when, like Chuck, they did not believe she was responsible. The children hire Emerson to prove Hallie’s innocence.

From Hallie, the Scooby team learns that Hundin had a rival breeder named Snuppy, who runs a pet store empire. Snuppy stuck a deal with Hundin which made him the rightful owner of Hundin’s most perfect creation — a dog named Bubblegum. It was the kind of dog with extra-ordinary qualities drawn from four different breeds and Snuppy planned to clone the dog for profit. But his contract with Hundin ensures his company that even after Bubblegum is dead and reduced to ashes, he remains its rightful owner.

With the case deepening, Emerson draws that Simone was behind it all, yet he has no proof. While talking to her again, he discovers that Bubblegum isn’t actually dead and that Simone was keeping it and preventing it from being cloned. Emerson also draws a different kind of conclusion — he was attracted to Simone.

The gang visits Snuppy at his office, only to find him dead…poisoned. And instead of reviving him, they took his body to Hundin’s funeral, upon Ned’s idea. There, in front of Hundin’s grieving wives, Ned revives Snuppy and surprises one of the wives, thereby indicating her guilt of all crimes. And it was Hillary, the first wife, who isn’t sold on the idea of having to share her husband, and then also having to share Bubblegum with every other person, when it is cloned.

Other stuff from Wednesday’s best:

• Ned discusses his erotic dreams of Chuck and Olive with Emerson, while he orients Ned about women and “gangster love”
• Olive tells Chuck that she and Ned kissed (from last episode), leaving Chuck to wonder why Ned didn’t tell her.
• Chuck tells Olive kind of relationship she has with Ned and somehow, Olive now understands where she stands in this love triangle.

There are too many scenes in this episode that I consider a favorite moment, but this conversation between Ned and Olive topped it all, it made me sniffle:

Ned: Olive, I’m sorry I’ve been avoiding you and I’m sorry I said our saliva was incompatible.
Olive: I’m a big girl, I’ll be okay
Ned: I know…
Olive: And you? How will you ever know if your saliva is compatible unless you kiss her?
Ned: I already know….I think I know…no, I know. Or I will know……it just takes time.
Olive: Time can take forever….I hope you and Chuck make it work. I really do. But if you can’t, I hope it doesn’t take forever to figure that out….I just want you to be happy.

*sniffle* *sniffle*

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