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!