The Wife:
Due to Thanksgiving last week, I decided to table a write up on Pushing Daisies until I’d seen this weeks’ installment so I’d actually have something to write about beyond that cliffhanger at the end. “Robbing Hood” involved a really lame mystery involving the death a bajillionare with a floozy trophy wife (who seemed so incredibly out of place in the PD universe, for some reason) and a group of charity bell ringers who moonlight as modern-day Robin Hoods, skimming some of the wealth of the rich off the top to benefit those less fortunate.
The only worthwhile thing about the Robin Hood characters’ potential involvement in the mystery plot came to fruition when Ned decided to use the Aunts’ home as a set-up for a robbery. This was the first time we’ve ever seen the Aunts involved in one of the investigations, and Lily is, of course, quick to grab the shotgun, as she is none too pleased to see her home invaded. Chuck uses the robbery as a means to get into her old bedroom, which has been converted to a cheese room, in order to get some of her father’s things to help them figure out just what Dwight Dixon is up to.
How dare you try to fuck my sister and steal my dead daughter's dead father's watch!
Dwight Dixon, having dug up Chuck’s grave and found no body, somehow has Charles Charles’ watch, which Lily finds to be greatly unjust and she storms over to Dixon’s hotel apartment to steal back the watch he stole from her daughter’s cold dead hands just as Chuck and Ned head out to disinter one Charles Charles and wake him from his 20-year dirt nap to find out what’s up with Dwight Dixon.
“Comfort Food” picked up where that cliffhanger left off, which Chuck and Ned waking Charles Charles for his one minute reanimation, only to see Chuck trick Ned into keeping her father undead for much, much longer by telling Mr. Charles to don her glove and pretend to be dead again when Ned touches his hand.
From there, Ned declares an “emotional snow day” wherein he offers to close down The Pie Hole to help Chuck sort through any residual emotions she may be having from seeing her father again for 60 seconds. She ensures him that she doesn’t need it and that she’d rather stay and work while he goes to help Olive compete in her favorite biannual event, a comfort food cook-off.
I look like a Pie Gondalier in this outfit.
So Ned heads off to help Olive at the cook-off, entering a world of costumes, comfort foods and festive food-themed hats. I was totally thrilled with the world of the cook-off, as it was filled to the brim of Ned’s boating hat with everything I love about Daisies’ design. I loved Olive’s cute little pie-festooned fascinator, Ned’s smart boating hat, their matching striped vests, the brilliant custom-colored tangerine Kitchen Aid artisan stand mixers peeking out from the background. Mostly, though, I loved the appearance of Muffin Buffalo as The Pie Hole’s biggest rival at the cook-off. For those who don’t love Bryan Fuller as much as I do, Muffin Buffalo is the name of the muffin company on Wonderfalls that is run by Jaye’s trailer neighbor, Mariane Marie Beetle, who hasn’t been getting her disability checks. She’s played by Beth Grant, and the actress reprises the role in this episode of Daisies. Clearly, thanks to Jaye’s help, Mariane Marie was able to get her disability checks and get her life and business back on track. In fact, things seem to be going so well for her that she can afford to bake her muffins at comfort food cook-offs and don a jaunty Little Bo Peep outfit replete with a buffalo peeking out of her bonnet.
Chuck, meanwhile, has taken her dearly departed dad out of the grave and dragged him home with her. She starts to feel guilty about the life she knows she selfishly took in order to prolong her afterlife with her dad, who thinks he might be a zombie (“I’m not going to start craving human flesh, am I?”), which I think officially answers a question my friend Drew asked the other week. Indeed, Chuck is technically a zombie. Her conscience heavy, Chuck begs Emerson to help her find the body of the person in the graveyard that Ned killed by didn’t know he killed.
“Don’t you peck at me, woman. That’s the peck of cahoots, which are most definitely not in.” — Emerson Cod
At the graveyard, they discover the body of one rakish and dead Dwight Dixon, about whom Charles Charles had no nice things to say. Chuck wonders why he had been in the graveyard in the first place, and Emerson discovers that Dwight had a shot lined up to kill Chuck and Ned when he saw her at the gravesite, assuming that she was planning to return Charles Charles’ watch to his final resting place. But then, seeing his old army buddy rise from the dead, scared the bejesus out of him and before he could take a minute to process what was happening before his eyes, he took Charles Charles’ place in the afterlife.
Chuck and Emerson bury Dwight’s body and attempt to give him a proper funeral at the urging of Chuck’s extremely guilty conscience, which feels so terrible about Dwight’s accidental death that she imagines a re-animated Dwight talking to her up until the moment the dirt covers his face. Lily shows up at the graveyard, gun in hand, and Emerson manages to succeed at keeping Chuck’s cover.
“Olive, you’re cooking with hate.” — Ned
Mariane Marie’s presence at the cook-off antagonizes Olive so much that she becomes determined to win. That is, until one chicken magnate Colonel Likken is found dead, dipped in his own deep fryer.
“At least the colonel left this world frying.” – Olive
The Colonel’s wife assumes that he had a heart attack (one of many) and fell into the deep fryer. Her only concern is that Colonel Likken’s secret recipe containing no less than 500 herbs and spices died with him. Hoping to help the widow Likken, Ned sneaks into the crime scene to wake the colonel, who tells Ned that he was actually murdered. He was dipped in his own batter before he was deep fried, by someone who “snuck up from behind. Stealthy like a snake. Or a yankee.” Whoever killed the colonel, it seems, also stole his secret recipe.
While trying to solve the murder, Chuck and Olive get disqualified from the event when they are caught inside the Waffle Nazi’s prep tent. I was pleased with the idea of the Waffle Nazi and the fact that his restaurant is called the Waffle Iron (with an Iron Cross for a logo), but I would have been even happier if his restaurant was called Der Waffle Haus, after the restaurant where the reapers hang out in Fuller’s Dead Like Me. (Although, I’m glad the Waffle Nazi was played by a man who I now only think of as the face of Utz Potato Chips, Patrick Fischler, Mad Men’s Jimmy Barrett.) The Waffle Nazi reveals that he would never have killed Colonel Likken as “Herr Likken and I were set to go into business together” creating the delicious Southern comfort food known to all as chicken and waffles.
Looking back at the crime scene, Ned notices gurney tracks in the batter surrounding Colonel Likken’s body and realizes that the only person who could have killed him was Leo Burns, the scooter-riding cook-off organizer.
“I ride a scooter. What kind of killer could I possibly be?” — Leo Burns
The facts were these: Leo was once a thin man who, when faced with hard times, ate a bucket of Colonel Likken’s delicious chicken and became hooked. He then became a very morbidly obese man out to revenge the man he blamed for his fatness, stealing the secret recipe that caused him to eat his way to obesity. Once Leo is arrested, his disqualifications are discontinued and Olive and Ned can once again compete for top prize. Olive cleverly brought along one cold pie just in case someone should sabotage their oven, ruining their chances of winning. She races Mariane Marie to the table in the last thirty seconds of competition and just beats her there to get her icebox lemon pie in on time, a pie which ultimately took first place.
Olive, thrilled at finally winning and receiving much respect and admiration from Ned, bursts into a sad rendition of “Eternal Flame,” only to have Ned once again leave her to check on Chuck, just as he always will. He drops by the Aunts house to ask if they’ve seen Dwight Dixon and Lily notices someone stirring in Ned’s old house across the street. When Ned goes to investigate, he finds Chuck . . . and her zombie dad, waiting for him.
Overall, I feel like this was a pretty abrupt end to the Dwight Dixon storyline, a character we never really learned all that much about. But then again, this is not the first time Daisies has done this. I expected more Dilly Balsam from the first season, and also more of Raul Esparza’s herbalist character, but it seems those two characters are never to return. Much like Dwight Dixon. However, I am perfectly happy with the sacrifice of that arc in favor of this Charles Charles arc. It’s much more informative of the kind of person undead Chuck has become and, I hope, will bring us back to the levels of poignancy found in “Bad Habits.”
While I can’t say that Chuck was up to her usual levels of finery in either of these episodes, I would like to note something very clever on the part of the wardrobe department that other people might not have noticed. There was a nice visual link between the two very separate stories tonight: one featured Muffin Buffalo, while in the other, Chuck donned a Buffalo plaid jacket. Very clever.
