Pushing Daisies

Where do I begin recapping tonight’s episode? There sure left us viewers with too much of everything and something to miss during the hiatus. Bryan Fuller made a couple of adjustments to this story with a cliffhanger that left my 10-year old’s mouth wide open.

But before that, I’ll get to the murder of the week first. The case tonight involved the murders of insurance agents from Uber-Life Life Insurance, who were all found frozen like popsicles (hence the title corpsicle). Ned and Emerson learns that a very bitter, but very sick teenager was denied a heart transplant by these insurance agents insurance adjusters (as one of them would like to be called), and so they make a few visits to his house. There they meet a lady from the Wish-a-Wish Foundation who was trying her hardest to make the teenager happy. She does all she can to grant his wishes, including the fact that he wished all those who have denied him the transplant he needs be dead. Desperate to grant that wish, Ned and Emerson caught Wish-a-Wish Lady just in the nick of time. She was about to kill another insurance adjuster, but ended up getting dead herself. The pet monkey she brought along with her to provide the teenager some entertainment, accidentally ran over her. In the end, it was her heart that the teenager received in the transplant.

And on to the bigger story….

After Ned tells Chuck he’s the reason why her father is dead, Chuck hides from him and stays angry for a little while. Chuck was at Olive’s the whole time, moping and depressed, while Ned went around the town calling her name out, looking for her.

At Olive’s apartment Chuck tells her biggest secret but Olive brushes it off as nonsense. And later, sitting by her lonesome at the rooftop with her bees, Chuck finds herself in the company of Oscar, who she challenges to discover the sad story of her life. She wanted to talk to someone, she wanted to tell someone. She wanted Ned but she’s still mad at him. So she turns to Oscar. Chuck gives Oscar a lock of her hair so that he could find the answers to why he smells something different from her. But it looks like Oscar couldn’t get anything from it. And perhaps feeling better afterwards, Chuck decided to not tell Oscar what she’s keeping.

Later, we find Chuck at the cemetery, by her father’s grave and Ned finds her there. She tells Ned her anger is passing and she almost begged him to give her one minute with her father. But Ned refused, saying he didn’t want to “bring him back so you can watch me kill him again.” Chuck now understands Ned’s burden but wished things were different.

Meanwhile, Olive bakes a pie for the Aunts and puts a little too much of that “vanilla” Chuck occasionally drops as a special ingredient. And after gobbling up the whole round, Aunt Lily suddenly found herself hallucinating and revealing something very, very important to Olive. It was the biggest secret of it all: Aunt Lily is Charlotte’s mother.

And that’s not all…

I guess holidays make everyone a wee bit sentimental. In one scene, Emerson just admitted to Ned about having a daughter. And at that point, we see a serious side to this private investigator…and what a fine performance it was from Chi McBride.

This episode just opened more doors for a better story development, but it sure left a lot of questions: Is Oscar going to pursue knowing Chuck’s secret? He’s almost zeroed in on Digby. Will Olive finally process that Chuck was telling the truth? And what about the thing she just learned from Lily? Will she be able to keep that or spill it out? Why did Aunt Lily never tell Chuck? What’s the big story behind that? Will we ever see Emerson as a father (as in the parent, not the priest)? And what will happen to Chuck and Ned now that their relationship has taken another step?

It bums me out that we have to wait a while for these questions to be answered.

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