‘Pushing Daisies’ goes to the circus
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- October
- 9
It’s been one year, 22 weeks and 4 days since the Piemaker brought a girl named Chuck back to life.
OK, so the fabulous folks who put out “Pushing Daisies” aren’t math whizzes. (The show actually debuted one year and five days ago.)
But why get technical? Everything else the show’s creative forces touch is pure perfection.
Take last night’s episode, which sent Ned, Emerson and Chuck to a circus. Yes, a real, live circus. As if life in Coeur d’Coeurs wasn’t freaky enough.
The mystery of the week for our investigative trio? Find a missing teen-age girl, who, quite literally, has run away to join the circus. Of course, murder victims, who Ned must resurrect briefly to help solve the case, pile up along the way.
What follows is hilariously clever jokes about circus staples like mimes (Emerson: “The mimes just pulled up, and they ain’t talkin’.”), clowns (dead ones keep coming out of a car that plunged into a river) and the human cannonball (who is used as an almost-deadly weapon).
In other hands, this material could have been painful to watch. But the quality of the show’s writing—along with the nimble acting by Lee Pace, Anna Friel and Chi McBride—made it seem fresh.
Not to mention that the “Daisies” crew just seems to be having so much gosh-darn fun! Who didn’t giggle along with the main characters when they made fun of a witness’ name, Bryce von Deenis? (Insert your own lewd limerick here.)
So who ended up being the clown killer? Why, the French acrobat, who was upset that the clowns wanted to unionize. Their Norma Rae move would have put the circus out of business!
Oh, and our fun threesome found the missing girl, too. Plus, they got to show off some secret skills: Chuck speaks fluent French! Ned can throw a mean baseball!
A roundabout plot? Sure. A flimsy motive for murder? Absolutely.
And as for the whole story about Lily really being Chuck’s mother? Forget that one, I’m still a little fuzzy on how Lily and Vivian are Chuck’s “aunts” if neither are related to her. (Vivian was Chuck’s father’s fiancee; her sister, Lily, had an affair with Charles Charles behind her back.) Perhaps it’s just one of those terms of endearment, but what does it matter?
Because once again, “Pushing Daisies” possesses the uncanny ability to make the viewer forget about all those silly little details.
You’re just happy to be along for the ride.
(Photos courtesy of ABC)
This entry was posted
on Thursday, October 9th, 2008 at 9:00 am by Heather Salerno.
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