Pushing DaisiesThe Legend of Merle McQuoddy
Original Air Date: 10 Dec 2008
PMB - TwoCents Reviewer
pmb@thetwocentscorp.com
Poor Chuck. At the end of “Comfort Food,” it looked as if she could have it all; a new life, Ned and her dad back from the dead. But as the Narrator wisely says, “Chuck would learn the sad lesson that, try as one might, one can never recapture what once was.”
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[photo: ABC.com]
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Poor Chuck. At the end of “Comfort Food,” it looked as if she could have it all; a new life, Ned and her dad back from the dead. But as the Narrator wisely says, “Chuck would learn the sad lesson that, try as one might, one can never recapture what once was.”
ReplyDelete“The Legend of Merle McQuoddy” began immediately after “Comfort Food” ended, with Ned discovering the Chuck had tricked him and kept her father alive for more than one minute. At first the Piemaker feels angry at being betrayed and panicked that his secret would get out.
But Chuck gives him a heartfelt, tear-filled apology, explaining her reasons for tricking him and Ned understands — after all, the same thing had happened to him when he made Chuck come back to life (it also helped that the person killed in the process was none other than Dwight Dixon, who was trying kill them).
Meanwhile, Olive treats the gang to a ghost story of sorts. It seems that the Papen County lighthouse keeper, Merle McQuoddy, had just been found after nine years of being shipwrecked on an island. His family — wife Nora and son Elliot — are adjusting to his return. Or so it seems, until Nora ends up harpooned to the lighthouse light and Merle is missing.
For the second week in a row, the gang splits into two distinctly different storylines. Young Elliot hires Emerson Cod to solve the case (with a jar full of coins) and Ned touches a half-melted Nora (ewwww…), who points the finger via Morse Code at the Papen County Historical Society. And that’s the last thing Ned has to do with the case and Chuck never gets involved.
So it’s up to Emerson and Olive, in raincoats decorated in a fish (for Mr. Cod) and olives (for her), to solve the case. Their journey has a more than a few twists and turns. They start with Gus Papen, head of the Papen County Historical Society and member the county’s Kennedy-like clan. He tells he helped protect the light, giving it historical status, and suggests they could find out more from Nora’s best friend, Annabelle Vandersloop, who runs the Notable Widow’s of Papen County.
Annabelle turns out to be a snob, but has no clue why Nora would be murdered. She does mention that Merle and Nora had argued over his idea of taking Elliot on an around the world cruise. Annabelle also has the best line of the show. “Sometimes I think to myself: ‘Life. You can’t make this crap up.’”
Ultimately, our Dynamic Duo uncovers an affair between Gus and Nora, which would finger a jealous and murderous husband. But then they notice that the lighthouse has glitter on the window — the same glitter Annabelle uses on her dioramas for the historical society. Turns out, Gus had long ago had a one-night stand with Annabelle and she was never able to get over him.
Annabelle threatens to blow them up (her late husband died after an explosion at his munitions factory. Olive solves the day by talking to the spurned woman about how much it hurts to love someone who doesn’t love you back (are you listening Piemaker?) and distracts the murderer long enough to foil her plan. Are that, Emerson lets Olive, whom he calls Itty-Bitty, if she ever wants to work with him for real, she’d be welcome.
If only things had gone as smoothly for Ned and Chuck. They try to get Charles Charles to adapt to his new “alive again” lifestyle, but daddy dearest is still extremely pissed at Ned for killing him. Charles, it seems is a cake man instead of pie. And he wants no contact between Ned and Chuck, something that causes a physical brawl between the two of them.
Things look bad for the two “no-touch” lovebirds, until Chuck has a heart-to-heart with her father (does he even have a heart after 20 years of decomposing?). Charles demands that Chuck come away with him — to choose cake over pie. Again, poor Chuck. She wants things to be the same with her father as they were when she was a little, but it can’t be. Too much has happened since then.
So she chooses to stay with Ned who loves her for the person she is now. And that leads to Papa Charles stealing Ned’s car and hightailing it out of Papen County. You can bet that there’s going to be a lot more of this story.
What did you think of Olive and the Papen boys singing Helen Reddy’s “Candle on the Water?” Or Olive realizing that her passion for Ned is still as strong as ever? Do you think Papa Charles will be making a return visit any time soon? Wasn’t melted Nora the most graphic of all the dead bodies?
It has been made official that Pushing Daisies will end in three more episodes. The last of these, which was supposed to be a cliffhanger, is being reworked to give some sense of closure. Creator Bryan Fuller vows their story will continue in comic book form. Somehow, that just won’t feel the same…
So did you catch all the Pete's Dragon (http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0076538/) references?
ReplyDeleteNora
Elliot
McQuoddy/Passamaquaddy
The raincoat quartet singing "Candle on the Water"
Maybe 1977 was before your time. It's a classic, though.
And how appropriate for the narrator to be Jim Dale who was IN it. :)
ReplyDeletePassamaquaddy is on of my favorite movie scenes ever.
Yes! I have a theory about how it was Jim Dale and his crazy potions that ruined Jeff Conaway, but that's a story for another thread...
ReplyDelete