“The Fun in Funeral”
October 16th, 2007
Perhaps starting a trend for the series, Pushing Daisies used its third episode to bring its pilot back to life. With creator Bryan Fuller writing, the story returned to Aunts Lilly and Vivian, to the Schotz Brothers’ Funeral Home in Couer d’Couers, and to the very premise of the show itself. The result was a charming episode that returned to the witty dialogue of the pilot even while losing some (but not all) of its dramatic flair. If this is what happens when Fuller steps back behind the computer, I think the series has plenty of longevity.
And I think this was a smart decision for its third outing: after the second episode felt extremely self-contained outside of some small moments of character continuity, this episode returned to the premise of the series in a big way. The mystery of the week surrounded the mysterious death of the funeral director who oh-so unfortunately died when Ned kept Chuck alive. When Chuck becomes aware that she is living in place of someone else, she is understandably mortified. And thus begins a game of cat and mouse that, while not quite capturing the pilot’s charm, certainly contains a great deal of wit.
What I love about the way Fuller’s mysteries have come about is that we find there is always more to the story than we expect. A civil war heirloom has a much more complicated past than one might imagine within this universe, and I like the precedent this sets for future mysteries. Jim Dale’s narration (toned down considerably, as far as I could tell) allows us to investigate these people’s lives in a way that opens a lot of doors. We don’t get a full-on life story for the criminal-of-the-week on most procedurals, that’s for sure.
And really, even moreso than last week, this week’s mystery was much more about the relationship between Ned and Chuck than it was about thieving siblings. There were some fine moments of physical comedy from Emerson (Chi McBride can “Hell No!” with the best of them) and Olive (Who spent the episode fraternizing with an amorous salesmen and Lilly/Vivian), but it was really about Chuck coming to terms with Ned coming to terms with the whole “someone else died” thing.
While it seems relatively resolved by episode’s end, the show still has the explosive “I killed your father” waiting in the wings for when it is most effective (Season Finale, anyone?). However, Ned can clearly claim ignorance in that case, can’t he? I mean, he didn’t know his powers could do that, so Chuck will only be punishing him for not telling her. Although, the longer he waits the more angry she is likely to be.
All in all, it was a quality episode. However, in the interest of adding some new features, and as opposed to mentioning some favourite moments (Emerson’s escape from the funeral home, Emerson as Winnie the Pooh, etc.), I want to deal with something.
This Week’s Question About the Premise of Pushing Daisies
How Random is “Random Proximity?”
This episode raised a lot of questions about Ned’s ability that I think need to be answered…or at least posed in a public setting.
Here are the correlative death experiences that we saw Ned perform in the episode (Some as part of an experiment to figure out how long he had to kill them again, the others as part of his cooking).
- Firefly -> Spider
- Firefly -> Firefly
- Peaches -> Flowers
What I want to know is whether or not these situations will always work in this correlative form: if he brings a human back to life, will he always kill another human? Will bringing a plant back to life always result in plants dying? And are animals at risk when Ned brings a four-legged friend back to life? If that is the case, it is only random within species? Can Ned bring a house plant back to life and leave only the cactus in the corner at risk?
It seems that this is the case, which means that there are no real consequences to Ned’s fruit practice, arguably the most egregious use of his power.
Cultural Learnings 