Pushing Daisies S01 E09: Corpsicle

This is the season finale. Yes, the season only got nine episodes, but it’s because it got cut short due to low ratings. Actually the season was only nine episodes because it was in production right before the Writer’s Guild Strike. At this point, only nine episodes were written, so Bryan Fuller made changes to the last episode so that it could serve as a season finale. I personally believe that this is what really caused the series lose ratings in the following season, creating a dark cloud that hung over the production.

Summary:

Another flashback to start the show, but rather than focusing on Ned, we are instead focusing on Chuck. We get to the see the starting scenes of the series from her perspective. We see how she confronts her fathers death as a child and what her home life becomes like. Her aunt Vivian is immediately comforting, even though she normally has trouble touching people. On the other hand, Lily can bring herself to comfort Chuck and is only able to do so after Ned loses his mother. We then jump forward to when Ned is being taken away to the boarding school. Chuck sees him leaving and begins to chase the car, but can’t catch up.

We’re then transported to the present and find Ned looking for Chuck after she left due to a fight caused by Ned’s revelation from the last episode. After scouring the streets of the city, he then heads to the aunts’ house, but is unable to find them there. He then checks at Olive’s apartment and while Olive insists she isn’t there, we learn that Olive is letting Chuck hide from Ned there.

After Ned gets turned away, Olive asks Chuck about faking her death. Chuck actually reveals the truth, but Olive doesn’t believe her, convinced that Chuck just doesn’t want to talk about it. Since Chuck doesn’t want to see Ned, she asks Olive to bake her aunts the pies. She gives her the antidepressants, but tells her it is vanilla extract. Olive makes the pies, but adds way too much of the medicine, believing the vanilla flavor to be too weak.

Down at the Pie Hole, Emerson tells Ned to stop looking for Chuck and Olive agrees. After she leaves, Emerson reveals the case of the week: Victor Narramore, a life insurance adjuster, was scooped up by a snow plow. They head to the morgue and wake him up. The body was frozen solid, but he is able to tell them that they couldn’t see the killer, but was killed by a bat that had the word “kindness” carved in it. They ask if he has any enemies, and of course he does. His job is to quantify life and if patients should be given life saving operations.

We then cut to the roof where Chuck is sitting by herself. Her alone time is interrupted though by Oscar Vibenius. He wants to know the truth about Chuck’s mysterious death scent. He reveals that he stole some hair from Digby and is also able to smell the scent off of him. He asks for a lock of her hair so that he can study the scent more, but she refuses.

Back at the Pie Hole again, Olive returns behind Ned in the kitchen, but Ned is unwilling to engage in conversation. He believes that Olive knows where Chuck is and gets her to admit to Chuck’s location off-screen. Emerson wants Ned to come with him to investigate the only living person who was denied by Victor, but he instead goes to Olive’s apartment to confront Chuck. Chuck reveals that she wants to talk to someone other than Ned about the truth, but can’t. She also insists that she needs to be away from Ned in order to deal with the secret from the last episode. From this conversation, she decides to leave a note for Oscar.

From this scene, we move to one where Emerson is visiting Abner Newsome, a teenager who was denied a heart transplant by Victor. It’s clear that Abner is much too sick to kill the adjuster, but mother is incredibly rude and possibly a new suspect for the murder. However, once Emerson leaves, he finds a snowman, with a dead body inside. This convinces Emerson that the mother isn’t the killer as she doesn’t seems stupid enough to place a victim in her front yard.

Ned wakes the body and they find that he is another adjuster. He also didn’t see the killer, but tells them to ask Kevin, his carpool buddy. They head to the company and learn that both the dead man and Kevin also denied Abner. Kevin has also been missing since the same night.

Meanwhile, Oscar comes to visit Chuck in the kitchen of the Pie Hole. Oscar believes Chuck and Digby came back to life, but Chuck tells him it’s ridiculous. Chuck gives Oscar a hair sample, hoping that she can finally reveal her secret to someone else without having to tell them.

We then switch back to Ned and Emerson, who are visiting Abner at the same time as a Wish-a-Wish agent (a fictional counterpart to Make-a-Wish) who is trying to improve Abner’s mood with a monkey. Ned and Emerson tell the family that they will be doing a stake-out in front of the house, hoping to catch the killer when they potentially put the new body on the front lawn again.

During the stake-out, Ned gets Emerson to talk about his relationship. Emerson reveals that close relationships are not easily mended and that he has also lost ties with someone close to him, his daughter. Emerson refuses to talk further and in the background, we find a shadow sticking a potato in the tailpipe of the car. Ned wakes up from passing out and saves the two from carbon monoxide poisoning. They leave the car and find another body in a snowman. Unfortunately, the body becomes too damaged for Ned to awaken him.

Back at the Pie Hole, Oscar comes back to visit Chuck. He wants to give Chuck her hair back as a sign of trust and reveals that he didn’t smell the hair. He would rather let her tell him in person. Chuck realizes that she was fine with only keeping the secret with Chuck and tells Oscar that he should’ve smelled her hair when he had the chance.

Emerson and Ned then learn that another agent has denied Abner and that the Wish-a-Wish lady asked to go visit him. Emerson and Ned rush over to try and stop her before she is able to kill another person. They get there just in time, but she has a gun and stops them in their track. Luckily, her monkey from earlier plays with her car’s gear shift and runs her over, killing her. This leaves her heart open to Abner for his surgery.

In the end, Ned finds Chuck at her father’s grave. She wants to wake him up, but Ned refuses. He doesn’t want to bring him back to life just to kill him again in front of her. Also, at the aunts’ house, Lily reveals that she is actually Chuck’s mother.

Pros:

-The absolute best part of this episode is Emerson’s reveal. It’s a highly emotional reveal and gives much needed depth to the character. We get to see a new side to Emerson that we’ve never seen before.

-The mystery is good. Not stellar, but is still a good one.

-The emotional journey of all the characters in this episode is spectacular. For the first time, Chuck and Ned’s relationship is truly on the rocks. This adds actual weight to their past arguments, which seemed slightly shallow as you could tell that the issues were never going to break them up.

Cons:

-The new characters introduced in this episode aren’t that interesting. They’re pretty one note.

-Outside of Chuck’s and Emerson’s storylines, not much is too great about this episode. Clearly this was not meant to be the finale as it is not a very strong episode overall.

Overall:

This episode is not that remarkable, which is really a shame for the season finale. However, as stated before Emerson and Chuck’s emotional journeys in the episode are bright spots. We never get to see Emerson get emotional and while Chuck has had emotional problems in the past, we never see her flirting with disaster like she does this episode. It is clear that she is really distraught if she was thinking about telling her secret or getting Ned to wake her father.

On the other hand, this episode made me realize one of the reasons why I enjoy this series so much. It is very much shot like a stage production (which should be obvious given the notable Broadway alums). The episode focus on only 3-4 main set pieces and body language/character placement are hugely important to scene composition.

The sets are highly decorated, which is unnatural for smaller productions, but can be very important for larger ones. Especially if the art style of the set helps to create the atmosphere of the production, much like it does for Pushing Daisies. The set is highly stylized and serves to reinforce the emotion and plot of the episode.

The character placement is important to creating the scenes atmosphere. They placed just so and it is highly visible in this episode. Height of characters or depth within the scene can give characters power over others. This important to various scenes, like where Oscar confronts Chuck on the roof or Ned confronts Olive in the kitchen.

Rating:

7/10 Daisies