‘Pushing Daisies’ is bittersweet
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- November
- 29
Hmm.
“Pushing Daisies” was bittersweet for me last night, and not just because the episode revolved around Balsam’s Bittersweets Taffy & Sweet Emporium.
The show was great fun from beginning to end, starting with the odd relationship between a murderer and a blow-up doll and the madcap introduction of Molly Shannon as uber-competitive sweets lover Dilly Balsam.
But I was really disappointed that the series stooped to cliche caricatures of Italian-Americans when dealing with their first murder mystery of the night.
I mean, the death of Tony DiNapoli wasn’t even the central storyline, yet we were forced to endure “dees” and “dohs” from Tony, his girlfriend and Burly Bruce—including the lame “How you doin’” line from Tony to Chuck when he’s resurrected in the morgue. (Not to mention a pathetic “Friends” rip-off.)
Why, oh why, do TV characters with vowel-ending last names have to be low-class and obsessed with pasta? Good grief, I was expecting one of them to say “paisan” at any moment.
Fortunately, the ridiculousless didn’t last long, because soon the show was off and running across the street from the Pie Hole (which eventually becomes the Pie Ho—hee hee) to Dilly’s sweets shop.
Mike White was appropriately goofy as “Some Guy,” who runs around the neighborhood telling everyone about the new store. (He’s really Dilly’s brother, Billy, and the store’s co-owner.)
That in turn brings our gang and a delicious-smelling peach pie over to Dilly’s, which unfortunately drives all her customers over to Ned’s place.
The fight between the Pie Holers and the Balsams was hilarious, until it ends up with Billy’s death by taffy and Ned in the slammer, accused of his murder.
But the fight also cleverly highlighted what’s become a “Daisies” theme: Ned’s inability to deal with unpleasant situations—or happiness, for that matter.
He prefers to let Olive and Chuck do his fighting for him (even though he protests, a bit too much). Instead, he retreats to his apartment to clean and obsess over whether to tell Chuck that he’d inadvertently killed her dad.
Some kind of explosion is set to kick in down the road, and I’m not talking about cars or scratch-n-sniff books. Ned is set to blow soon, either from sexual frustration or having kept his emotions bottled up for so long.
Don’t know if it’ll be in the next episode, scheduled to air in two weeks. But we do know that Paul Reubens returns on Dec. 12 as Oscar Vibenius, and he’s trying to find out what’s so special about Chuck and Digby.
Yikes! If any more people find out Ned’s secret, he and Chuck may as well walk around with a sign.
Anyway, to end on a positive note: I like that the show is giving Olive a chance to explore a possible relationship with Alfredo, even if he’s back on the road. Ah, the life of a traveling salesman isn’t easy.
And even though I didn’t like the show’s take on Italians last night, I couldn’t help but smile when Olive realizes her feelings for the homeopathic huckster and says, “Fredo, it was you.”
(For those who didn’t make the connection: It’s a riff on one of Michael Corleone’s most famous lines from “The Godfather II.”)
Aw shucks, after that, who can stay mad at the “Daisies?”
See you back in two weeks, fans! Until then, here’s a question: Do you think Ned and Chuck can recover now that she knows Ned is responsible for her father’s death?
(Photos courtesy of ABC)ÂÂ
This entry was posted
on Thursday, November 29th, 2007 at 10:20 am by Heather Salerno.
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