Every week Pushing Daisies gets more and more clever. It’s almost frustrating, because I am the queen of multi-tasking, and it just isn’t possible to do that while watching this show. You have to see every subtle gesture, every wink – because they are integral to the show. I wish I had something snarky or clever to say about the show, but I don’t. It’s all around fabulous, and the most unique show on television.
This week’s episode revolves around Sweet Nicki Heaps whose run away from home. Her cold as ice momma calls upon Emerson Cod to find her daughter, and he can’t refuse because he feels the pain that the Ice Queen can’t show – he hasn’t seen his own daughter in seven years. As the team looks for sweet Nicky, Ned struggles with the anger he feels about Chuck moving out, and Chuck struggles with upset Ned making her stay at the Pie Hole. Olive and Lily struggle with their secrets, and Lillian can’t figure out what the hell is going on with everyone.
Chuck is basically reveling in her new life, and as mentioned before, this is killing Ned. He can’t sleep, he can’t think, he just wants her to come back. She uses her snappy personality to glean the info on where Nicki went from Nicki’s best friend by trying a new style of the good cop persona. The whole groups heads out to a van down by the river (I half expect a Chris Farley look-alike to jump out), but all they find is a dead mime.
Ned wakes the dead mime, and he sits up and starts to mime. Irritating – I think mimes are creepy. They ask him about Nicki, and he mimes that she broke his heart. Emerson tells him to cut it out with a gun, and he starts talking. Nicki left him for a clown, and he thinks someone poisoned his makeup – but he has no idea who. It amazes me that they can sit there with the smell that must be emanating from a body that was cooking in a hot van. I guess he stops smelling when the wake him up…
Since Olive is gone, someone’s got to run the Pie Hole, so Chuck gets left behind. Speaking of Olive, she tells Pigby (her new pet pig) the whole deal, and just after she’s called to middle mid-afternoon prayer, she sees Lily. Lily tells Olive to meet her at Early-Mid-Middle Night Prayers.
Emerson and Ned are at the Circus and Emerson characterizes this not as a circus, but as a freak show – he says it smells like sawdust and armpits. A snobby French acrobat calls them “Stubs”, and tells them Clowns only make balloon animals and enemies. The Ring Master who looks like Jesse Ventura claims to not know anything, and his secretary seems nervous. Ned confronts the secretary, and she says no one likes Nicky and she deserves what she gets – which is what she deserves.
Nicky apparently became an apprentice to a clown named Jackie Johnny, and while Ned and Emerson are looking for them both, Chuck is jumping behind counters to escape her Aunt Vivian. Vivian is looking for a pie – and asks after Olive. She tells the worker (who she does not realize is Chuck because she is hiding) that her sister Lily went on an overnight trip, and Chuck is crying as she quietly sits the pie on the counter when Vivian isn’t looking.
Emerson and Ned have a conversation about Ned’s attitude and the circumstances of his and Chuck’s romance. Emerson becomes frustrated when Ned says words that bring icky pictures into his head, and they find a clown mask on the side of the road. Next they find a clown car in a lake – they call the authorities and the coroner arrives. The Coroner kills me as he yells out the description of the victim(s). There ends up being fifteen clowns in this tiny car, and I’m reminded why I don’t like clowns.
Mrs. Heaps wants to know why Emerson hasn’t found her daughter and Emerson really only can say that she wasn’t one of the bodies, so he is confident she is still alive. Since the Pie Hole is closed, Chuck meets Ned at the morgue, and he apologizes. Chuck tells him about Vivian stopping by – and they wake up Jackie Johnny. It’s no wonder these guys are dead, after what they did to Bryce Von Deenis (yeah – a limerick is part of what they did, and you can guess what it said), I’m surprised they weren’t dead long ago.
Olive and Lily meet at prayers, and Lily tries to say that she didn’t sleep with Vivian’s fiancé – she just told him that. But, she’s lying, and swearing in front of nuns, and hiding a flask in her Bible.
Chuck realizes that she doesn’t know her aunts anymore, when Mr. Von Deenis comes in. They grill him about his activities at the Circus, and he explains what happened. The clowns stripped him to his underwear, sang the song and let the audience throw pies at him. Then, they told him he needed a shower, but the shower wasn’t water – it was from a horse named Peppers who’d been fed a whole lot of Chocolate Diuretic. Yum. Anyway, Mr. Von Deenis had not seen Nicky since she hosed him off.
Ned can’t sleep as usual (either from lack of Chuck, or from the image of what happened to Bryce Von Deenis), and Emerson shows up wanting some tea. They discuss the case, and Emerson reveals that he too lost his daughter. At this point, Emerson realizes that Nicky is still at the circus, so the next morning the whole crew go out to find her.
Olive and Lily are eating breakfast and Olive assures Lily that she will keep her secret – because she has her own secrets to keep. I sure wish the scenes with Olive were a little longer…
Ned and Chuck discuss their situation, and Chuck explains that this is her second chance at living her own life, and she is going to live it. They decide to try to work it out, and Emerson finds out that someone was putting out an ad fully three days before the clowns died. They discover the Ring Master knew something was up, and didn’t tell them. The Ring Master admits he knew the Clowns were having secret meetings to create a union, and Nicky was his spy. He swears he had nothing to do with their deaths, and that he was advertising because he was going to fire them. Suddenly, a midget shot from a canon flies through the window, though no is hurt.
The Ring Master’s story checks out, and the crew heads out to find the real killer. They find Nicky hiding in the Prizes Tent. She tells them the whole story, and suddenly she flies up in the air. The French Acrobat has her, and he admits he did all of it, because he wanted the circus to stay the way it was. Sounds like Ned, eh? Ned chucks a baseball at the acrobat, he releases Nicky and she falls safely to the net below.
The Acrobat gets 25 years in prison, Olive settles in for the long haul at the nunnery, and the Aunts return regularly to the Pie Hole. The funniest part of the show is when Nicky and her momma are reunited in Emerson’s office. He bullies her and says, “Love what’s there,” in regards to Nicky and her behavior. They hug, and Emerson longs for his own daughter to love.
Finally, Ned and Chuck try to start anew, and pretend that they’ve never met before as they meet in the hall in the morning. It’s very sweet, and Ned’s face is so aglow he is adorable. I just want to hug him! They decide to play the game every morning, and the music plays as they walk to the Pie Hole.
