Pushing Daisies: Dummy (Episode 102)

Say what?: Chuck and Ned ply a witness with pie and sympathy.For those of you who were betting that the producers of "Pushing Daisies" would wait at least three episodes until Kristin Chenoweth's character got to sing, hand over your money. True, she doesn't get to sing an entire song, but the choice of tune (and dance partner) was perfect. Why do I keep forgetting to have a pie for dessert when watching "Pushing Daisies"? It would be so appropriate. Tonight, as with last week, I had a banana waffle with strawberry ice cream. Delicious, yes, but I wanted a slice of rhubarb pie from the Pie Hole. Hell, I would have even accepted a slice from Pies R' Us, Pie City, or Thousands Of Pie In One Place.

Anyway. Ned was sent to boarding school, The Longburrow School, after his mother's death. He spent most of his first four weeks standing under the tree where his father dropped him off. While it's not clear if Ned ever saw his father again, we can guess that if they saw each other again it wasn't soon, or often. The Narrator informs us that Ned's discomfort as the discovery of his new powers, and the limitations which killed his mother and Chuck's father (and therefore led to Chuck's disappearance from his life), has insulated him from his new existence at school. This, however, has not made him immune to bullying but Ned doesn't seem to notice. In fact, he doesn't appear to notice much of anything until he finds himself in biology, handing out dead frogs for dissection. Naturally, chaos ensues when soon after Ned distributes the dead frogs those same frogs spring back to life. When confronted by the school headmaster about his possible involvement in the kerfuffle, Ned pleas ignorance and thus tells his first lie concealing his strange gift. We see the somewhat karmic retribution sought when a flock of birds dies in place of the frogs.

In the present day, Chuck has more questions than she can possibly express, and Ned, knowing this, wonders how much longer he can keep the truth of her father's death a secret. Lying in bed (they now share twin beds in the same room) and the next day at breakfast, Chuck's questions are deftly parried while Ned, eye twitching from nervousness, busies himself. The kitchen is bright and cheerful, though not as effervescent as Chuck and her truly adorable dress. Seriously, I need to find out who does her and Olive's dresses and get 'em to make me some frocks for fall. Girl cannot live by Old Navy t-shirts alone.

Ned lies that he's never brought back anyone from the dead like he has Chuck, except for Digby of course. Chuck exclaims over Ned's small "cheese box" (she called refrigerators this until she was 17 -- there's a clip of her opening the fridge at her aunt's place, and it's full of cheese) while, using a harness and a hand mirror, Olive spies from next door. Still in love with Ned, her competitive hackles are raised by the presence of Chuck the mysterious new brunette, and is mystified by the "surprising lack of physical contact".

Across town at the office -- what? you thought his office was just a booth at The Pie Hole -- Emerson is knitting (a new hobby to deal with Chuck's appearance) when he gets a call from the police about a new body. He calls Ned to meet him at the morgue -- "She better not come." -- but of course "she" does. Before going into the morgue -- which is all red and white and very cheerful for a morgue, Emerson and Chuck both have their own one-on-one convos with Ned in the car, the upshot of which is that maybe Chuck stays in the car because Emerson doesn't want her around and also on account of how she is supposed to be dead. Of course, the next shot is of the three of them slipping past the world's dimmest coroner to talk to their victim. Bernard Slaybeck was 35, unmarried, and an auto safety specialist by the side of the road. The apparent victim of a hit and run, he lives long enough to ask them to tell Jeannie in Promotions he loved her and, by the way, it wasn't a car that killed him but a crash test dummy.

WHAT?

Back at The Pie Hole, Emerson is convinced that if there is a God, He'd be an angry God. I guess it's a lot less controversial than just saying "What the fuck", eh? His take is that Bernard was delusional, and is no mood to do any more doing. Chuck tries to look on the bright side of things: isn't the fun in the investigating? Emerson: "It's counting my money in the bubble bath." Ha! Chuck and Ned decide to leave Sir Grumpus to it, giving Olive an opportunity to slide in next to him and do some digging. While Olive didn't want the truth about who Chuck is, and how Ned feels about her, her heart tells her to listen when Emerson says "He digs her in a way that he definitely doesn't dig you." Literally. Olive seems to choke back a tiny sob, then says "I'll just go get you your pie." But just before she does: "Do they touch much?" Pause. Emerson: "I wish they would."

Meanwhile, the cutest non-touching couple in town are baking a three-berry pie. While Emerson appears to care only about the reward, Chuck argues Jeanine still needs to know that Bernard loved her. Ned, still in a secret-keeping kind of mood, wonders who they will break such news to her. Chuck is all "We bring food. It's what we do." And you would think that a pie man of all people would know this, but I guess if you've spent your whole life using food as a way to keep distance between you and other people (especially Olive), you wouldn't know this. Oh Ned. Ned and Chuck leave, pie in hand, to pay Jeanine a visit, leaving Olive to feel the distance between her and Ned grow vaster and vaster. Oh Olive.

The Jarlsberg is on the table.

A commercial for the Dandy Lion SX, a car which is powered by (wait for it) dandelions, introduces us to Dandy Lion motors, where company president Mark Chase is demonstrating the car to a group of Japanese dealers. Models dressed as dandelions hand out dandelion bouquets. Chuck, speaking flawless Japanese, chats up Mark and finds Jeanine the model. And yes, Chuck speaking Japanese is explained by the discovery of a portable tape player and a cache of foreign language tapes. Cue footage of Chuck saying "The Jarlsberg is on the table" in multiple languages. Oh Chuck. Finding Jeanine, Chuck and Ned offer condolences and pie. Jeanine, however, ain't copping to anything, though she goes to town on the three-berry in a heartbeat. Not the most elegant pose for a model, but when the car you're promoting looks like a wedge of goat cheese with wheels, there isn't a lot you can't do to make it look good. Though Jeanine blows them off, the three sneak away from the crash test to find a secret room full of crash test dummies. Strangely, one of them is missing its face and its orange jumpsuit.

Back at the Pie Hole, Ned, Emerson, and Chuck are full of questions: if it wasn't a dummy, then who's running around in a dummy mask and jumpsuit? Who at the company has access to that room? Emerson is resigned to the fact that they must return, and must do so that night. Ned gets going, shoving their pie plates at Olive while absentmindedly: "Can you close up?" Olive, mournfully now: "I think I just did." The Narrator gently informs us that the Olive imagines the music in her heart could only be heard by her and her alone until it spilled out. And it spills out in song when she begins to sing "Hopelessly Devoted To You". Yes, the song from "Grease", a musical that I've never cared for but I've always loved this song. Well, this and "There Are Worse Things I Could Do" (which I could see working if it were sung by, say, Emerson). Closing up, Olive croons while closing up, interrupted once by a couple seeking late night pie (they are quickly shooed away) and Manuel (who must be tiny because Kristin if 4'11" and her heels can only add at most 4" to her frame, then he's got to be like 5'4") the floor buffer guy. Manuel stays, unawares and unhearing because of his iPod, and Olive sings and dances, first with Digby who is lying on the floor (and offers up a single paw for Olive to take while she twirls around the floor) and then with Manuel as he shakes his booty to his own private music.

At the factory, Ned is filled with the familiar mixture of happiness and trepidation, and even he wonders aloud: "Why is it always a mixture?" Poking around, the three find the room full of cadavers instead of the dummies Ned and Chuck saw before. Touching a few of the dead, they discover that the people know nothing about the car company or where they are or why they're hanging from the ceiling like pinatas but they all may have signed releases permitting their bodies to be used in auto safety testing. Who even does that?

Back in the showroom, they find Jeanine, who accompanies them to The Pie Hole to share some secrets of her own. Though she lied about knowing him before, of course Jeanine knew Bernard. She, in fact, loved him. It was love at first sight -- she training with the other floor models, Bernard peering shyly at her over his lunch. They hid their love, which I guess means doing it in one of the cars on the showroom floor. Yeah, really. But as the launch of the new car approached, Bernard spent less and less time with her and more and more time working. Or was he cheating on her? Taking a break to binge and purge (she is a model -- did you think she could eat all that pie and just leave it?), Jeanine continues that she followed him out one night to... But she can't tell them about something that it would be easier to show. Having no choice, they follow Jeanine down a dark road, Chuck and Ned bickering about Ned's secrecy. Chuck: "I hate having secrets, and now I am one." Ned lamely protests, but Chuck isn't finished: "You want to marry [a secret] and have half-secret half-human babies!" Um, what? I mean, go on, sister. Sure, Chuck was sheltered because of the aunts, but at least not as sheltered as Ned, who is still going by the "I revive the dead and bake pies" line he's been feeding Chuck when she asks for more information. The point is, she misses her aunts as they were all she had. And now all she has is Chuck (aw!), and she doesn't know anything about him past the age of 9, so why doesn't he tell her something already? Aw!, again. Also, the aunts had historic erotica in the milk cellar. Before we can ask "Really?", Jeanine's car explodes.

In the hospital, still-alive (yet thoroughly bandaged) Jeanine reveals that she was taking them to see the bodies, "different bodies -- the ones in the big hole." They figure out that the bodies were actually dummies, dummies with internal hard drives containing the results of the crash tests performed on them. The cadavers back at the factory have no data to download, and their secrets are safe with them. Back in the pit, the three are about to retrieve a dummy when they are tasered by a dummy.

Back in her abode above The Pie Hole, Olive is restless -- every time she closes her eyes an image of Chuck and Ned making with the sexy-sexy in a bubble bath for two rains on her secret love parade, and so Olive gets out of bed to take Digby for a walk. It either takes her ages to get ready to leave the house in her pajamas, or the three work awfully quick, because while Olive takes a forlorn walk, the three are zipped up in clear body bags, stuffed in a Dandy Lion, and told what happened to Bernard by his killer, company president Mark Chase.

It was Mark who tried to bribe Bernard to keep the disastrous test results to himself, because it would have cost more to halt the release then send out the defective cars. But Bernard could not be bought, and because he could not, he was Mark's first crash test cadaver. Mark Left him on the side of the road to suggest an accident that never happened, and it's his intention that Ned, Chuck, and Emerson meet the same fate. Their doom sealed, just like they are in their body bags (aw snap!), Ned feels like he wants to tell her everything -- all his secrets. Instead, Chuck and Ned share a tender kiss, steaming up their plastic bags. Somewhere out there, there is a plastic fetishist just beaming (and steaming in delight).

Emerson, finding a pair of knitting needles on his person, frees himself, Chuck, and Ned, who is able to take the wheel of the car and drive away. They are followed by Mark, road raging in a yellow hummer that soon forces them down a steep hill at a speed conducive to the kind of explosion that blew up Jeanine. But before that happens, the two cars bounce onto a road where the police stop Mark for once and for all, and the three skid to a screeching halt mere inches away from Olive and Digby. Ned is elate to see Olive and Olive, sadness put aside for the time being, has never been happier to see Ned, even if he loves another.

When Mark is punished, his company closes, and Jeanine finally gets some help for her bulimia. Emerson, resigned to the fact that Chuck is going to stay, stops knitting for good. Olive, however, does not give up Digby as a companion. With Ned putting a special plastic barrier in the front seat so Chuck, always relegated to the back seat, can finally ride shotgun. There's something about the air holes, cut for talking, that reminds me of the bulletproof barriers at the Harold's Chicken I patronized in college. There's even a rubber glove, so that Chuck can slip her hand in for "steering emergencies". I'm far too refined to suggest other, possibly cruder, activities that require the use of only one hand, so I will leave it at that.

PS: I think if Mike Leigh ever directed an episode, it would have to be called "Secrets & Pies" after his Oscar-nominated movie. And if there was ever a sexy episode, it could be named Pies n' Thighs after the barbecue and pie place in Brooklyn.

PPS: Did you sing along with Olive? You know I did. I loved the musical interlude, and I can't wait for more. Click here to take my newest poll, which asks: Who should be the next character to sing on "Pushing Daisies"?