Huzzah! Another in-depth recap of Pushing Daisies for you, dear reader/listener/viewer.

The show kicks off with a flashback to Ned at age 9, watching bugs get hit by a bug zapper. It’s really just an excuse to recap the rules. Ned can bring the dead back to life with a touch, and a second touch makes them dead forever. If he waits longer than one minute, something in the nearby proximity dies instead. I personally like the narrator’s voice, so these refreshers don’t annoy me too much, but it does seem redundant. I think the audience can figure out the rules as they watch the show at this point.

Of course, tonight’s episode really focuses on the specifics of how the rules work and hearkens back to events that took place in the pilot episode, so this time out, it makes sense.

As the camera zooms in on The Pie Hole, the Narrator explains to us that the phrase “Pie in the Sky” is slang from 1911 for hardcore drug use and that for the next 20 episodes, our protagonists will expand their minds and ruin their bodies.

Actually, he tells us that the phrase means a dessert so delicious, you’d only find it in heaven. But Ned’s are almost as good. Ned and Chuck are baking together. Ned grabs rotten peaches and they revive instantly. Of course, that makes the daisies behind Chuck wilt. It’s a reminder that Chuck has yet to learn about the penalty of the one minute rule, to say nothing of the fact that when Ned had revived his mother as a child, it lead to Chuck’s dad dropping dead.

On an impulse, Chuck places the plastic wrap she’s using to wrap pies between herself and Ned and kisses him. Unfortunately for Olive, who pines for Ned, she sees this. Lost in her frustration, she denies an espresso order to a customer. This customer is Alfredo Aldericio, and when Olive asks him if he ever feels like all the air has been sucked out of the room, he says he can relate. The Narrator clues us in that Alfredo has a deep-seated fear of the Earth suddenly losing its atmosphere, leaving him hurling into space. This show uses it’s special effects sparingly and when they do them, they’re spectacular. To combat his fears, Alfredo got into holistic, homeopathic remedies, which he now sells as a traveling salesman. He is definitely interested in Olive.

Originally, this role was written for Paul Reubens and the fact that I’m missing out on his quirky mannerisms for this character sort of bums me out. He’ll be showing up in a future episode as some other character, as I understand it.

Emerson arrives at the Pie Hole. Olive lets him know she’s mad at him for his previous honesty in telling her that Ned likes Chuck and not her. She doesn’t ever want frank and honest. And she doesn’t like Chuck. Em says he doesn’t either.

Emerson tells Ned and Chuck that someone died and he needs Ned’s help. He doesn’t want Chuck around, event though Chuck is, as always, super-curious about what’s going on. Her zeal for life is a bit infectious and it leads me to spontaneously drop and do 40 pushups on my knuckles. For serious.

Over at the morgue, the mortician is extolling the virtues of moisterizing to Emerson. He’s right. I may be dude, but even I know you have to drink a lot of water and use lotion from time to time. You also have to shave with the grain, or you risk making yourself look older. I learned all this and more from <a href=”http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Patrick_Bateman”>Patrick Bateman</a>. The three go in to check on the body. It’s someone we, the gentle audience, have seen before. The funeral director, who passed on when Ned let Chuck live past the one minute mark in the pilot episode.

Emerson’s plan has become clear. He’s forcing Ned to own up to what went on so that Chuck will be offended and clear out of the way. Em is curmudgeonly and likes their business relationship the way it was. Chuck wants to know why Ned and Emerson know the dead body. Ned tells Chuck that he’s responsible.

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Ned explains the rules to Chcuk. He tells her that he couldn’t think straight when he saw her and forgot about time. Chuck now feels guilty. Every minute she was alive again… it wasn’t really hers.

Over at the Pie Hole, Alfredo asks Olive is she has any neuroses and shows her his box of home-made cures. Ned and Chuck return and Chuck is visibly mad at Ned. Olive, therefore, is happy.

Em and Ned have a one-on-one. Ned is upset that Em shared something private. Em says he shared “their” info. Ned also doesn’t like being blamed for murder and instead terms it “Accidental Involuntary Manslaughter”. That is both funny and far too accurate. That’s gonna end up on the books one day, I bet. Regardless, Emerson explains that he took this case for a reason. The late funeral director (Laurence)’s brother, Louis, hired him to figure out who killed his brother and Em didn’t want anyone else getting to the bottom of this case. Em knows that Laurence was stealing jewels and heirlooms from the folks at his funeral home and intends to find that and use some of the money to satiate Lou. He guilt-trips Ned into helping. It’s an okay guilt-trip, but my mom could do it faster.

Chuck wants a chance to talk to Laurence, seeing as how she’s sort of living his life. The trio hit the funeral home for Laurence’s own funeral and bump into Louis. Turns out Louis is a twin brother. A morbidly obese twin, just like his brother. He is wearing a t-shit of Chuck’s aunts’ old mermaid show. It makes Chuck miss them.

Cut to the aunts. They have returned home from a vacation only to look through their mail and get a postcard from their recently deceased niece. Not realizing she’s back in the world of the living, the aunts are pretty depressed. Vivian, the aunt with the eyepatch, played by Swoozie Kurtz, lifts her patch a tad to let a bunch of water spill out. Those are tears, you jerks. Have some compassion or don’t watch the show at all. Oh wait… you probably didn’t or you wouldn’t be reading this recap.

Louis posits that he has solved his brother’s murder. He had seen Laurence grave-robbing. Laurence confessed to him that he buried all the treasure. When Laurence died, the truth came out and many families want their heirlooms returned. Lou figures with all the angry mail he’s received, one of them had figured out what Laurence was doing and killed him. He then offers Emerson the cigar from his brother’s pocket, which Em actually accepts. He then asks to see the hate mail. Mayhap they’ll find a clue! Lou lumbers off to get the mail.

Ned leans over Laurence’s coffin and revives him. Ned apologizes and Chuck thanks Larry. Larry says “hey” to Emerson. He tells them that Louis always knew what was up and that he has everything. Then Chuck compliments Larry on his nice pocketwatch which is just like the one her late father had given her. “Caught me in the act,” admits Larry. Chuck is offended at Larry’s skeeviness and in her anger slams his coffin lid down on him.

The lid sticks shut! “49 seconds!” shouts Ned. Emerson makes a break for it. He quite rationally does NOT want to be in the vicinity in 11 seconds.

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“5 seconds!” says Ned, as he frantically bashes at the coffin’s latch with an urn. Unfortunately, he fails to act fast enough and Chuck drops dead. The end.

No, of course he manages to touch Larry at the last second. Chuck likes that her aunts had thought to bury her with her watch. She really wants her aunts to be able to go back on their tour and not have an emotional relapse.

Emerson, Chuck, and Ned get crackin’ on reading the hate mail. There’s piles upon piles of it, but it’s nowhere close to the volume of fan mail we have to sift through each week here at Television Zombies, so I don’t want to hear them complain. Chuck accuses Em of being a pirate because he’s going after all the heirlooms. Em defends his rather mercenary position by saying that if he finds something that’s already been stolen, he’s not a pirate himself. Chuck disagrees. In the background, we see a pickup truck pull up and in the darkness inside, it looks like maybe some Asian man? The Narrator tells us that murder is in someone’s mind.

Chuck is working away at the Pie Hole and mentions something or other about depressing. Alfredo overhears and offers a cure. Chuck takes a sample of some elixir designed to cheer you up. She then bakes a pie for her aunts, using the elixir and puts it in the fridge. Later, Olive is overseeing the deliveries and notices the pie and decides to deliver it herself (it’s not on the delivery boy’s route). She walks away and we see Lou’s dead body in the freezer!

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Morning. Ned is baking. Chuck comes in. Apparently she didn’t come home last night as she was out all night, thinking about what Ned did when he brought her back. She wants to be able to think of Ned as her Prince Charming but is having difficulty reconciling that he let someone die when he brought her back. Whoops, before they can go any further, they see Lou’s body!

Meanwhile, Olive Snook drops off the pie at the aunt’s creepy house, rings the doorbell and runs away (grabbing her boobs as she jumps down the stairs – look, this show has something for everyone!). She gets to the gate and tries to rattle it open when Aunt Lily appears right behind her. Lily thanks her for the pie and invites her in.

By the way, not only is everything on this show vibrant and colorful but there are always flowers everywhere and girls are always wearing nice sundresses. This show just always feels like Spring.

Lily, Vivian, and Olive share some pie. They talk about their niece who they miss and who used to bake brie into the pie crust for them, just like this one. They mention the boy who had grown up next door who was always hanging out with Chuck and who once gave her a “Beaver” sweater. As they describe their niece and neighbor, Olive seems to be figuring out that they’re describing Ned and Chuck. We’ll see.

Over at Emerson’s Private Eye office, he picks up the phone. A panicked Ned tells him about Lou. Em says he’s being set up by someone.

The police knock at the Pie Hole’s door.

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Ned revives Lou and tells him he needs to follow him and Chuck to get to heaven and they only have one minute. The three go out the back and Em pulls up in his car. Lou is surprised Emerson is there too, but Em explains that they all got called up to Heaven because of the Rapture.

Lou relays his tale of woe: An angry funeral home customer surprised Lou last night and he choked to death on his dinner. The family member was complaining about a missing Civil War heirloom that belonged to the Woodruff family. Ned puts Lou back to “sleep”.

Emerson has a plan to return Lou to where he died and basically re-frame whoever was responsible for killing Lou. Chuck mentions that the “Woodruff” family name was a letter she had read and will get that from the funeral home so they can resolve all this.

The funeral home is locked. There is a window into the basement that’s open and Ned gets in, but Emerson gets stuck. Chuck calls Emerson “Pooh”. Love it.

Ned bumps into some bodies on trays and accidentally revives them, but quickly puts them both back to sleep. But the sheet over a third one is still moving as a body breathes. The sheet is hurled away and it’s the Asian. He attacks Ned, swinging a sword right at his head.

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The Southern Asian (he has a drawl) misses thanks to Ned’s agility. He is the Woodruff who wanted the family heirloom (the one he’s swinging) back. Ned asks if he was adopted. He wasn’t. The Narrator takes us back to the turn of the century where Chinese slave labor works on a railroad. When their overseer drops dead, they all run North, except for Fan Bing who ran South thanks to heat stroke. He came upon some dead soldiers and put on one of their uniforms. Woodruff’s uniforms. From there, he got drawn along by a passing batallion and started his own line of the Woodruff family.

Back in the funeral home basement, Ned finds a sword and there’s a great sword fight. Chuck, meanwhile, is trying to pull Emerson out of the window and tells him, “Mind over matter makes Pooh unfatter” pleasing Emerson not at all.

Woodruff tells Nate that he practices swordsmanship with a Civil War reenactment troupe. Yeah? Well Ned wanted to be a Jedi! Woodruff tells Ned he knows Ned is the real killer and he’ll tell everyone. He had been hiding at the funeral home, waiting to confront Larry when he saw Ned run away and Larry later turned up dead. Ned wonders why he was there and Woodruff says he was worried about the death threat he’d made getting him in trouble.

Woodruff swings at Ned at the top of the basement stairs. Ned jumps off and uses his own sword to cut through the red drapes to slow his descent, like any good swashbuckler. Chuck meanwhile, found another way in and enters at the top of the stairs. Woodruff runs towards her and Ned throws his sword, tripping Woodruff down the stairs. “Kick, Pooh!” shouts Chuck. And with a mighty mule kick, Emerson knocks out Woodruff.

Chuck looks down and sees Ned draped in red cloth – her Prince Charming.

And we get a montage of everyone to wrap the show:

Olive sees that their Espresso machine has been fixed. The Narrator lets us know that it was Alfredo’s idea of a romantic gesture.

Emerson steps off a scale, happy that he has apparently lost a few pounds.

Aunt Lily and Aunt Vivian enjoy their pie.

Chuck wraps up the heirlooms to anonymously return to the families. Ned says he’s ok with everything that happened because he is glad Chuck is back. Chuck is glad that Ned admits he let Chuck live on purpose, because that’s better than it having been an accident. Ned tells her that he’s going to look for some plastic wrap.

And I’m out!