Pushing Daisies Season 2, Episode 1 “Buzzkill”
So, the second season premier was last night. I wasn’t disappointed, but I wasn’t really impressed either. The one thing I absolutely loved about this show is the production quality. The scripts are very well written, but it seems like this has more of a story of the week feel to it. Which works fine for the show.
So basically, we return to the scene were Chuck and Ned are still in love, Chuck is still dead, Emerson is still solving crimes, and Olive is still in love with Ned, and keep a world full of secrets. Olive finally starts feeling the burden of the secrets she is keeping, first that Chuck is still dead (while technically, she thinks that Chuck faked her own death) and second that Lily, one of Chuck’s aunts, is actually her birth mother. She nearly cracks and lets every secret out, until she resigns and Lily sweeps her off to somewhere that would appreciate her secret-keeping. A convent.
Meanwhile, back in the real world, Chuck has decided to move into Olive’s apartment to watch it while she’s gone. She somehow has this romantic notion that living across the hall from Ned rather than in his apartment (and avoiding touching each other) is a fantastic idea, where there could be late night knocking (the literal kind….) and it would be more real.. and easier to live.
And the mystery of the week is…. drumroll please…. A conspiracy in the bee/honey harvesting business. Someone has murdered the spokesperson for “Betty’s Bees” and sabotaged the hives so the company would crumble.
Okay, this was pretty funny…. but for the most part, it was pretty on par with what was going on last season. The feel of the show hasn’t changed. The characters haven’t changed. The story hasn’t changed.
A few things I think they should start addressing:
- Ned touches things that are dead, and they come back to life. If he touches them again, they die. And we pretty much know that be a fact. So what if Chuck actually dies again… can he bring her back to life again? And will the same thing happen where he can’t touch her? Or anyone?
- Ned is a pie maker. He takes dead, rotten fruit, touches it, it comes alive, and he puts it in his pie. For example, a strawberry. It is old and moldy and rotten. When he touches it, it becomes a beautiful plump, ripe red strawberry… Why doesn’t this happen to people? If someone ended up being broken or disfigured as they died, why wouldn’t Ned touching them restore them briefly to pefect health or physicality?
- Will Olive ever admit to Ned that she loves him? Will she ever let go of those heavy secrets?
With all that said, it was a pretty funny episode. And I will definitely be keeping with this one for awhile.
