By Buzz Byrne

PUSHING DAISIES is the best new show of this television season. It has the most creative concept, artistically realized in the text and visual presentation. Tonight, the cast was allowed the space to show off.

At the end of the last episode, Ned (Lee Pace) revealed to Chuck (Anna Friel) that he was responsible for her father’s death, although accidentally. These would-be lovers, separated by the bizarre gift of Ned’s to grant life and death, have their relationship fractured by this. Chuck runs and tonight we pick up with Ned searching the snowy streets for her, forlornly calling her name. Chuck is with the third corner of this love triangle, Olive Snook (Kristen Chenoweth), the waitress who’s PJs match her wallpaper. She tries to respect Chuck’s privacy but eventually asks what the deal is with Ned and her. “I died,” Chuck tells her. “He brought me back to life.” Even though Chuck is feeling the need to share this secret and does so, Olive takes it as facetiousness. She also advises Ned to stop with the plaintive wailing. “It may be romantic but it’s not dignified,” she says. She also delivers the homeopathically amped up pie to Chuck’s aunts, double dosing the thing accidentally.


The caper of the night evolves when an insurance adjuster turns up frozen at the bottom of the blade of a snow plow on the two hundred block of Oak street. He doesn’t know who killed him but he does know it was done with kindness…a bat inscribed with the word, “kindness.” Soon a second adjuster is found frozen, this time in a snowman. A cranky boy with a bum heart lives in the house where the second adjuster was found. He was turned down by the insurance company for coverage of a transplant. He seems to be the prime suspect except for his “paper thin” organ that tries to deliver blood to his system. He asks if anyone is planning to sneeze on him and kill him. His mother dismisses Ned and Emerson (Chi McBride) with, “If you’re not here to grant a wish or give us free merchandise, be on your way.”

Chuck has had a visit by the unsettling Oscar Vibinius (Paul Reubens), the man who can sniff out her secret. She is close to revealing how she lives but holds off. Ned finds her as well and pleads with her for understanding and maybe even forgiveness. “I have to hate you a little while…while you’re still here.” She tells him. She goes on to dabble more with Mr. Vibinius, even giving him a lock of her hair to test. He returns it to get the story from her lips, not her follicles but now Chuck is missing her untouchable man and clams up.

Ned and Emerson find a third adjuster and survive an attempt on their lives before figuring out that the lady from the “Wish-A-Wish” foundation is a “Kill-a-Kill-a.” As these two guys have a heart to heart we see that Chi McBride is not simply on the show for his deftness with the pace of the patter. Tonight he displayed a depth and pain in Emerson as he told Ned he was a father and how complicated relationships can be for Dads and their Daughters. It was his Emmy moment.

They reach the next victim in time but she is offed by her monkey Bobo and has a heart that goes right to the young lad who she tried so hard to make wishes come true for. But the great moment of revelation was yet to be had.


Aunt Lillian (Swoosie Kurtz) eats the whole drug laden pie and in her trip she confesses to being…wait for it…Chuck’s mother. And she confesses to a hallucinogenic mermaid that happens to be Olive.

The writers strike needs to be over now so this show doesn’t whither on the vine. I hope we get more episodes of this caliber.