By Buzz Byrne

I owe PUSHING DAISIES an apology. So far I have given the show props for an amazing production design, lauded its giddy approach to the specter of death and applauded the casting. Tonight the show delivered on unanswerable moral questions, giving pause to thoughts outside the mainstream without treating them as simple punchlines.

I never thought this show would climb to this complex height. I never gave it credit for that possibility. I am sorry.

Tonight’s caper starts with the death of Harold Hundin (Joel McHale of THE SOUP fame), the president of a prestigious kennel club. The club offers a reward for information leading to the capture of his killer. Enter Ned (Lee Pace), Chuck (Anna Friel) and Emerson Cod (Chi McBride). When we last left this group Ned had just saved Olive Snook (Kristen Chenoweth) and she rewarded him with a kiss. Olive is pining for Ned and he is taken with Chuck. It seemed to be a painful, predictable, mundane love triangle. But this has to wait on the immediate issue of a reawakened Harold who points the incriminating finger at his wife.


But Harold is a polygamist. He has four wives. I don’t know whether the writers were having a laugh at the DESPERATE HOUSEWIVES or ABCs new show WOMEN’S MURDER CLUB but they threw four sister/wives at us- Hillary, Heather, Simone and Hallie. They are respectively a dog clothier, a dog psychiatrist, a trainer and a guide dog specialist.

Olive finds out from Chuck that she and Ned can never touch(Chuck blames it on a deadly allergy, not the prospect of death). It breaks Olive’s heart and rather than see it as an opportunity to advance her own interests, she feels empathy. But in the pursuit of this potentially murderous gaggle of wives, it does present the issue of the different ways one can love different people. Could Ned love Chuck emotionally and Olive physically? He says, “I would make a horrible polygamist!”

Hallie is set up as the fallwife but the blind children she has helped have set up a defense fund so now the team is set on freeing her. This leads to the discovery that what the murder was really about was Harold’s prize quadruple cross breed, the late Bubble Gum. Bubble Gum is a Collie/Labrador/Jack Russel Terrier/Poodle or a Colabackapoo. Harold was going to sell her to a puppy chainstore run by Ramsfeld Snuppy. Snuppy dies next and Emerson finds a very much alive Bubble Gum under Simone’s care. Simone has been training Emerson along the way but despite this she chloroforms and ties him up when he thinks she is the true killer. That turns out to be Hillary. This is discovered in what can only be described as a WEEKEND AT BERNIE'S homage.


With the caper all wrapped up we are left with the romantic questions. Olive takes a subdued tone with Ned, telling him she hopes he and Chuck can be together forever or that if they can’t, it doesn’t take forever to find that out. She only wants him happy. And she is clearly speaking truth and from her heart. The narrator tells us of the many different forms love can take as Ned turns down Chuck’s bed. “What do you need to be happy?” Chuck asks him. “You,” he replies. Throughout this polygamy hovers and rather than mock this obviously unusual approach to relationships, the show wonders if there are cases where this could work. And more importantly, it doesn’t cast any of the players as evil for having love in their hearts.

It is remarkable to find a show that will respect its characters as much as this. Bravo.