Pushing Daisies Series Finale

Sadly, this past Saturday marked the last episode of Pushing Daisies. The episode started out with everyone celebrating Chuck's half birthday by going to the Aquacade, a show combining all different types of water acts, including a stunt show with a shark and a famous pair of sister synchronized swimmers. Chuck's aunts used to take her because of their past involvement with synchronized swimming, so they agree to go (in the present) in her honor. Chuck really wants to go again, too, so Ned agrees to it as a half birthday present (but keeps watch for her aunts so they don't get caught).

The fun outing soon turns bad when one of the sister swimmers gets swallowed by a shark. Both the shark and the sister die, eliminating two acts from the show. Emerson is hired by the shark's trainer to clear his name in the murder. The whole gang goes undercover (minus Chuck) as Lily and Vivian's entourage after the sisters agree to become the Aquacade's new opening act, and they dive right in (pun intended) to solving the mystery. They first suspect a jealous acrobatic swimmer, but he denies his motive and points his finger at the sister who is alive. While this leads the group in the right direction, they soon discover there is one more suspect they haven't cleared who just might be behind the whole thing.

The episode was fun as usual, and like the other recent episodes, it focused on the past of a supporting character (well in this case, characters, since it was about Chuck's aunts). I like how everyone was in a bunch of scenes together and weren't as scattered as usual. The aunts got more screen time, which added a lot to the show. Lily finally discovered Vivian's secret about being Chuck's mother, but just as she was about to throw her out at the end, a suprise visitor came to ease their feud.

The show's crew must have retouched this episode after finding out they were going to be cancelled because it wrapped with a hasty rundown of how all the characters ended up. Everybody somehow got their happy ending despite barely starting out on achieving it, but I think the writers wanted the audience to feel like there was a purpose to the show instead of leaving with a cliffhanger. I appreciate the effort, but it was so rushed that I felt it might have been better without it. Oh well. At least we know all will be well in Coeur d'Coeurs even if we can't keep an eye on it.

Double Dose of Pushing Daisies

ABC sadly axed Pushing Daisies from finishing up it's second season and returning next Fall for round three. They ran 10 episodes through December last year, and then it was canceled. However, viewers found out that they actually had three episodes left to show. Instead of waiting for the DVD release, ABC is now playing these episodes on Saturday nights at 10 pm. They've played two so far, so the series finale is this week. Here is a quick recap and review of my thoughts on the episodes shown this month.

First, we had a playful episode entitled "Window Dressed to Kill." There were two main plot lines in this one, the first dealing with tracking down the murderer of window display designers in a department store, and the other dealing with Olive helping out old "friends" from the past.

We find out that when Olive was little, her parents paid little attention to her. To correct this, Olive stowed away in a car being stolen by a couple of thieves. The thieves wanted to return her right away, but she refused to give up any information on where she came from. The thieves eventually tracked down her parents and brought her home, but they had fallen in love with how cute Olive was, and were upset to see her parents hadn't even noticed she was gone. They threatened her parents if they didn't show their daughter the love she deserved, so the parents had them sent to jail for kidnapping.

The thieves escaped prison in present day and track down Olive to help them escape to Canada. Randy Mann, a taxidermist from a previous episode played by David Arquette, agrees to help Olive by driving them across the border. Ned tags along, too, and pretends to be Olive's fiancee to keep up her happy life charade she had presented in her letters to the convicts. Of course, chaos ensues and leads to a temporarily revived Rhino chase and a simple costume trick by nuns. It's not to be missed.

I loved that Ned compared himself to Superman throughout the episode as he strives to play the normal Clark Kent side of his life with Olive. Randy tells him that Superman is awesome and why would anyone want to be Clark Kent, and Ned finds out who he really is and embraces it. It's quite cute and helps jumpstart the revival of the show.

The murder mystery of the episode is left in the hands of Chuck and Emerson since Olive and Ned are otherwise engaged. The set up of the mystery is fun, and it's cool to see them try to solve a case without Ned waking up dead people. It's not the best plot of the series, but most episodes are just bright and childish and don't rely on an intricate plot. That is what made the show really fun and refreshing. I'm sad that I only have one episode left to watch. P.S. Look out for the guy who played Stanford in Sex and the City. He plays the department store owner.

This past episode, "Water and Power," gave a lot of background on Emerson, and managed to keep it pretty interesting. A Dam owner, Roland Stingwell, dies a rather unfortunate death, and when Emerson is hired to investigate, we find out Emerson had already known the deceased quite well. The owner used to be romantically involved with Lila Robinson, Emerson's baby mama. When Emerson was hired to track Lila when she ran off during the day, he got to know her and they fell in love. Unfortunately, Emerson was no better than Stingwell at keeping Lila around, and she eventually took off with his daughter Penny. Lila, played by Angel and Firefly's Gina Torres, spoke to Stingwell the day of his death, so she quickly becomes a top suspect because of her con artist background. She asks Emerson to clear her name, and threatens to take Penny away forever if he doesn't.

By bringing Penny into the mix, everyone starts getting involved to help Emerson out. Even Emerson's hillarious dog trainer girlfriend comes back and corners Lila to seek out her motives. Olive recruits Randy to help as she tries to decide if he can be her rebound or a real shot at happiness. Ned and Chuck ponder why people love as they see Emerson go to great lengths for his daughter. Luckily, everything works out pretty well. As always, to get to the ending, we see a lot of crazy investigating by the characters, including Chuck and Ned hiding away in a trunk to follow Lila and ending up stripped down to their underwear on the side of the road.

I enjoy learning about different characters, so focusing on Emerson was a good move since we only new the superficial facts about his past. I also love his girlfriend and how she uses her dog training methods on Emerson, so it was great to see her again. I wonder if she will be in the finale.

And for all you loyal Pushing Daisies fans, here's a news tidbit. Both Anna Friel and Lee Pace are on the emmy ballots this year. Hopefully their great work will earn them an official nomination!