Pushing Daisies: BFFs 4EVA

Last week’s episode wrapped up last season and set us on a course for reconciliation and acceptance between the unusual love triangle of Ned, Chuck, and Olive.  This week the healing continues but not without a convoluted murder mystery to help everyone put things in perspective.

The facts were these: Ned, lonely now that Chuck and Olive are living together next door, is in need of a friend.  Emerson, who’s also been longing for his seven-year-old daughter, is visited by his mother (and former detective partner), Calista Cod, who is in town working a case.  Turns out they’re both investigating the same murder-Joe.  Ned’s magic touch to Joe only points the finger back on the two clients, and through some creative interrogation, the mother-son team of Cod & Cod learn that Joe was a “frescort”–a friend escort, hired through another unique Coeur d’Coeurs enterprise, My Best Friend, Inc.

At MBFI, Ned meets with CEO Buddy Amicus (cute name) and uses a hug machine, thinking it is Chuck.  Chuck and Olive, posing as Kitty Pimms and Patty Soots, respectively, apply to be frescorts even though they are already friends and fraternization between employees is strictly forbidden.  During their training, Barb locks Chuck and Olive in a locker, wherein their amicability quickly collapses under the weight of its superficiality as they are jealous of the other’s relationship with Ned.  So for those keeping score at home, our frescorts-in-training became frenemies-in-fact.

Across town, Emerson and Ned meet Joe’s creepy roommate, Randy Mann, who is a creepy person with a creepy hobby-taxidermy.  Ned and Randy bond over their anti-social tendencies and meat pies.  We also learn that Ned is a vegetarian, which makes sense if everything he touches comes back to life.  I wonder how this works in his digestive tract . . .  Meanwhile Emerson fights with his mother because she learned about his estranged daughter before Emerson can tell her the truth.

Back at MBFI, Ned and Emerson rescue Chuck and Olive but find Barb hugged to death on the hug machine, which was ironic because Barb hated being hugged-in part because she was not hugged enough as a child.  With Ned’s tap, she says she was killed by someone in a Spartan mascot.  (Go Spartans!)  The power goes out, and Ned, in trying not to touch Chuck, touches the mannequin wearing Buddy Amicus’ old high school football uniform.  But faster than you can say Andrew McCarthy, the mannequin comes alive and we learn (via narration) that Buddy killed him in high school and created his current identity that he was everyone’s friend and a high school star-athlete.  Buddy, dressed in his old mascot uniform and wielding a knife, then walks in but they catch him and figure out he killed Joe.  So why did he kill Joe?  Buddy developed an infatuation with Joe (like he had with the high school quarterback) but when Joe announced his resignation to be with Barb (recall the no-fraternization policy), Buddy reverted to his psychotic form and killed Joe.

In the end, Ned and Randy accept that they both possess unique, special gifts and that they should stop hiding from their talents.  Ned then held a party at The Pie Hole for Joe’s former client list of weirdos.  But in a moment of personal growth, Ned will not let Chuck move back in with him because he needs to learn to be comfortable being alone and she needs to learn to live with Olive.  Chuck and Olive forge another period of detente and pseudo-friendship, and Emerson and Mother Cod decide that she needs to be his mother for now instead of his best friend (she realizes this now?!?).  And Ned the Pieman, enjoying the peace of his solitude, answers the door.  It’s Chuck wrapped in a duvet . . .  She drops it; he smiles, knowing how much he’s missed her.  You know what I missed this week?  The mirth and whimsy.  Let’s hope it’s on next week’s menu.

Season 2, Episode 4: Frescorts (originally aired October 22, 2008)

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Wednesdays at 8/7C on ABC

Photographs courtesy of ABC