Pushing DaisiesThe Norwegians - The Case
Original Airdate: 17 Dec 2008
Crystal - TwoCents Reviewer
crystal@thetwocentscorp.com
Normally, our case on Pushing Daisies is unrelated to the relationships between the main characters, and doesn’t involve them beyond a purely investigative role. Well, not this week. This week, our investigators are not Emerson, Ned, Chuck, and Olive. And our dead victim or missing person is not a stranger to our Pie Hole heroes. Our missing person is Dwight Dixon. And Vivian Charles is looking for someone to find him. This is where things get tricky…
Continue Reading About This Week's Case...
Read About The Relationships This Week...
[photo: ABC.com]
Posts
Normally, our case on Pushing Daisies is unrelated to the relationships between the main characters, and doesn’t involve them beyond a purely investigative role. Well, not this week. This week, our investigators are not Emerson, Ned, Chuck, and Olive. And our dead victim or missing person is not a stranger to our Pie Hole heroes. Our missing person is Dwight Dixon. And Vivian Charles is looking for someone to find him. This is where things get tricky…
ReplyDeleteIt all begins when Vivian Charles enters the office of Emerson Cod, looking to hire Emerson to find Dwight Dixon, her gentleman caller who suddenly stopped calling. She believes that something horrible must have happened, for he was not the type of man to just leave with no contact.
Emerson panics, for good reason, because he knows the facts: when Chuck tricked Ned and kept her father alive in the cemetery for more than one minute, Dwight Dixon was the casualty. Dwight had been at the cemetery with the intentions of killing Ned and Chuck, but had lost his own life that night. Emerson and Chuck later found his body in the cemetery and buried him in Chuck’s dad’s now empty grave.
So Emerson sends Vivian away quite harshly, telling her that Dwight just stopped calling for her and starting calling on someone else, plain and simple. This scene is actually kind of heartbreaking, simply because Emerson is very mean and Ellen Greene does a good job of making a member of her audience tear up with her.
But Vivian is not to be stopped. She enlists the services of a crack investigative team from Norway to investigate Dwight’s disappearance. A trio that bears striking resemblance to Ned, Chuck, and Emerson is on the scene, ready to take the case that Emerson will not touch.
The Norwegians, Magnus, Heda, and Nills, were decorated in their homeland, but the lack of crime in Norway resulted in them losing funding, so they headed for America, the land of baseball of death by baseball bat. They’re kind of creepy all together, one of them on each side of Emerson’s face, leaned in close, and the other directly in front of him. They suspect he knows more than he’s letting on. And boy does he.
Their facts are his refusal of taking on the case. And then his references toward Dwight Dixon are all about how he is a bad awful man. And then there’s the fact that Dwight was a common customer at The Pie Hole. Cue the ominous music, and let the Norwegians head to MOTHER, their mobile investigative lab facility.
Emerson follows the Norwegians, and keeps an eye on them. Chuck convinces Olive to talk Vivian out of her investigation. But it doesn’t quite work, and Olive ends up encouraging her. She is tired of lies. Meanwhile, the Norwegian investigators find that letter for Dwight from Lily in his motel room, the one where she told him to meet her at the cemetery.
Her story is that he never showed up, and as far as she knows, he doesn’t, but Vivian can’t quite believe her. This murder case is causing huge rifts among main characters, as Olive has also abandoned her Pie Hole brethren. Olive has joined forces with a different set of investigators and has become a Norwegian. As the Narrator said, “Oh hell no.”
She brings them a vial of Ned’s spit and they all share a drink. Then the Norwegians share what they know. Dwight had a lot of weapons in his room, which is pretty shady behavior; among these was a shovel that was covered in dirt from the cemetery. And now they have an exhumation order to dig up the graves of Charlotte and Charles Charles, in order to find out exactly why Dwight Dixon was hanging around their graves. This is not good. A proper Pie Hole panic is in order.
I must say though, that the scene with Olive and Norwegians is just hilarious. When Nills reveals that they ran tests on her hair, she makes a little crack about how she was sure penicillin would clear that up. And then the look on her face when she takes a swig of whatever strong clear alcohol they’ve given her is just priceless. Finally, there is Heda, who is appears is smitten with Olive. I couldn’t stop laughing at this scene.
But back to the case. The Norwegians dig up both graves, and find them empty. Both of them. No Dwight Dixon to be found. Chuck is sure that it’s her father, who stuck around to look after them, for who else could it be? I don’t know, so we shall play along with her assumption. Emerson has an assumption of his own, that assumption being that he is in a lot of trouble. But Ned has a plan.
Emerson calls over the Norwegians to tell them everything he knows? What? But he isn’t, he’s just making generalizations about society and talking about Shaft. Ned sneaks aboard Mother and has a hard time hotwiring the vehicle. Olive pops up, and it turns out that she isn’t a traitor at all; she’s trying to help from the inside out, which is why she hands Ned the keys to the vehicle.
For some reason, Ned isn’t a great driver today. It’s probably because Olive is asking him questions about Dwight’s disappearance. It isn’t long before Mother goes careening over a cliff, and Ned and Olive are left hanging out from a branch.
But not for long, as it seems like just in the nick of time, a masked and hidden stranger rescues them. Meanwhile, Emerson apologizes to Vivian for his previous treatment of her, and kindly breaks the news to her: when they exhumed the graves of Chuck and Charles, they were empty, and it looks like Dwight was the one who took them. Emerson shows a kind and caring side not oft seen, and it’s quite nice.
Ned and Olive relay their story to Chuck and Emerson at Olive’s apartment, and Chuck is sure that it’s her father. It has to be. But I’m still not sure why it would a huge secret. It’s not clear why the audience isn’t privy to this knowledge.
We move forward to the Pie Hole, and the Norwegians would like an explanation from Olive. She claims that she has no idea who stole Mother, but they were singing ABBA, and eating tiny little meatballs. Those damn Swedes. But they’re not certain, for Heda grabs Olive’s wrist, and her pulse is racing, which implies that she is lying. Until they get word that there has been action on Dwight Dixon’s credit card.
So the Norwegians, and Ned and Emerson head back to his room, and find Dwight laying on the bed, the story set up perfectly. There’s a bag full of stolen personal effects in his jacket; a can of fuel accelerant next to the bed. This grave robber died of natural causes.
Everything is order. We knew what happened to Dwight, so the fun came in the fun of the Norwegians, who were all hilarious, in my opinion. There was also the part that implies that Chuck’s father is still around, looking after them, which is a nice little sidestory.
And then there’s the bombshell the Narrator drops at the end of the episode. It’s not Chuck’s father that’s been helping out; it’s Ned’s father, sitting in a booth at the Pie Hole, watching everything unfold. Cue the dropped jaws and surprised blinking as the show cuts to black.
So what did you think? Was this murder mystery that wasn’t quite a mystery satisfying? Did you enjoy the Norwegians as much as I did? Is the surprise at the end not very surprising to you? What did you think? Thoughts and comments?