Pushing DaisiesFrescorts
The Case
Original Airdate: Oct 22, 2008
Crystal - TwoCents Reviewer
crystal@thetwocentscorp.com
This week’s case on Pushing Daisies was made for all of the people who were lonely weirdoes in high school. Thanks for giving me hope, Pushing Daisies, that I can hire a friend when I need one. It all begins when Emerson Cod gets a visit from a woman named Veronica Villanueva (say that five times as fast as you can) and she hires him to investigate the murder of her “best friend.” Well, it turns out her best friend has another best friend, who also hired Emerson to investigate the murder. So the dead man Joe has two best friends who didn’t know each other, and he was a different man with each of them. Sounds like a fun party.
Continue Reading about this week's case...
Read about the Relationships this week...
[photo: ABC.com]
Posts
Pushing Daisies
ReplyDeleteFrescorts
The Case
Original Airdate: Oct 22, 2008
Crystal - TwoCents Reviewer
crystal@thetwocentscorp.com
This week’s case on Pushing Daisies was made for all of the people who were lonely weirdoes in high school. Thanks for giving me hope, Pushing Daisies, that I can hire a friend when I need one. It all begins when Emerson Cod gets a visit from a woman named Veronica Villanueva (say that five times as fast as you can) and she hires him to investigate the murder of her “best friend.” Well, it turns out her best friend has another best friend, who also hired Emerson to investigate the murder. So the dead man Joe has two best friends who didn’t know each other, and he was a different man with each of them. Sounds like a fun party.
Ned, Chuck, and Emerson go to the morgue to see the dead man. Noticeably missing was our beloved man-of-few-words coroner, and Joe amicably tells them that the last thing he remembers is getting ready to play ball. Joe has a stab wound to the back, and he stretches to get a look at it, and suddenly Joe is leaking formaldehyde. Memories of various biology classes came back to me, but I never remembered formaldehyde being quite so dynamic. One minute he just sitting there, and the next moment Joe has formaldehyde spewing out his ear. He manages to tell our three investigators that he wishes he could have told his one and only Downy how he felt. He wonders if it has something to do with his best friend. Ah, but which one? The mystery is not known.
Emerson and his mother sit down with Veronica and Joe’s other best friend, and his turns out that they each hired Joe from “My Best Friend, Inc.” The three bring in Olive to help them, and Olive and Chuck inquire about becoming “Frescorts” (friend-escorts” while Emerson and Ned go talk to the head best friend about Joe.
The head guy “Buddy Amicus” is, as per his amusing name, is amicable, and tells his story about how he was the football quarterback in high school (he has a mannequin with his old uniform in his office), and was awful to the nerds and weirdoes alike, until he got injured and became one of them. And so he decided that everyone deserves a best friend. I’m with Emerson on this one.
The whole thing sounds depressing. I’m like Ned in that I don’t make friends easily, and social situations escape me most of the time, but I find it difficult to buy this whole “I’m going to buy myself a friend” thing. But in Pushing Daisies land, it’s very successful.
Meanwhile, Olive and Chuck, aka Kitty Pimms and Patty Boots meet Barb, an energetic and friendly Frescort who creeps me out more than she makes me feel at ease. She gives Kitty and Patty an impromptu Frescort lesson about “faking it with the best of them” in a hilarious scene that puts Kristin Chenoweth and Anna Friel’s comedic talents and ability to make awesome faces to good use. Barb says she likes them, so they are hired.
Ned and Emerson head to Joe’s apartment and encounter his roommate, Randy Mann (ha), who is played by the wonderfully awkward and fabulous David Arquette. Ned and Randy bond over their awkwardness and loss of best friend (Chuck has moved out of Ned’s apartment and he doesn’t like it) but things turn sour when Emerson wants to go to Joe’s room, but Randy won’t let him.
Back at The Pie Hole, our heroes discuss the case, with nothing forthcoming as to who did what where. And suddenly Randy Mann is there, with an invitation to a pie baking class, and he brought along his animal parts and innards to make meat pie. With Ned distracting Randy with cooking, Emerson goes back to the apartment and finds a room full of taxidermied animals and a jaw with an appendix that is labeled Joe. Cut back to The Pie Hole where Randy is enjoying himself a fine meat pie. Ew, suddenly I’m having visions of Sweeney Todd while Randy has what is probably the worst pies in Pushing Daisies. Emerson bursts in, the appendix in one hand and a gun in the other.
Confronted, Randy tells the guys his secret. He hired Joe, but couldn’t afford to pay him to be his friend anymore. So he offered Joe a deal: Joe would continue to be his friend, and Randy would give him a place to stay rent-free. The appendix in the jar was a joke. Randy also reveals that Joe was going to be quitting his job to be the woman he loved, another Frescort.
At the same time, Olive and Chuck discuss the latest on the case in the locker room at “My Best Friend, Inc.” when Barb comes in, showcasing an interesting quirk – when she does crossword puzzles, she only does the downs, and not the acrosses. Aha! So Barb is the mysteries “Downs.” She breaks down sobbing for a brief moment, but it turns out that she is always a massive fake, when she throws Chuck and Olive into a locker and locks them in there. Chuck and Olive hash it out until Ned and Emerson show up to break them free. They head in search of Barb and find her in Buddy’s office, suffocated by Buddy’s hugging machine.
Ned re-alives her and she tells them how in love she and Joe were, and how the night he was supposed to meet her, he never came home from his moonlighting job with some wannabe-jock, a “bleacher leacher.” She came in for hug from the machine, and a Spartan rushed her and cranked the machine up to “suffocate a woman.”
They re-dead her, and Buddy rushes in. They suspect that the culprit is Randy Mann. Perhaps he was the mascot (Spartan) bullied by Buddy and wanted revenge. But an almost-touch for Ned and Chuck results in a surprise re-awaken of an apparent body in Buddy’s old high school football uniform. The body, thank goodness, was hidden behind a mask, but it communicates that it was once the high school quarterback and Buddy was the high school mascot. They re-dead the football player and Buddy rushes in and is wearing his Spartan uniform.
The facts are these: Buddy, an outcast with no friends, was enamored with the quarterback and saw himself as friends with the other boy, despite the fact that the quarterback couldn’t have cared less for the boy. As the mascot for the team, Buddy gave his best show for his “best friend” but accidentally costs the team a huge play, and is the subject of massive ridicule by everyone, including the boy he thought was his friend, the football team’s quarterback. In rage, Buddy kills him, stabbing him with his sword. Flash forward to adulthood, when Buddy befriends Joe, again becoming enamored with another person in his life. Joe eventually tells him that he wants to leave to be with his girlfriend, and Buddy strikes again, convincing him to play one last game of football. That’s when Buddy the Spartan takes his revenge. He later gets rid of Barb for good measure. Luckily Emerson has a baseball bat with which to club Buddy.
Here’s hoping Buddy makes friends in prison.
So what did you think of this week’s case? Did you find the idea of Frescorts sad and depressing, or are you ready to invest in your own Joe? Would you hire Kitty Pimms and Patty Boots? Did Barb creep you out? Or do you sympathize with Buddy and why he did it?