Pushing Daisies: Chu’s Or Lose

On tonight’s episode of Pushing Daisies we learn about trust and risks and trusting ourselves to take risks.  We also get a more complex look at Ned the Pieman, a very lonely man who cannot even touch his true love, Chuck, without fear of killing her.  But tonight, Ned, in the spirit of Reagan to the Soviets, started to tear down the walls around him.

The facts were these: Bao Ting, co-owner of the dim sum restaurant below Emerson’s office and a genius in the “delicate art of bun steaming,” is killed after a copper pipe on his bun steamer flies through his skull.  After Ned’s touch, Bao shares that someone was trying to kill him over a bet.  Through their sleuth work, Emerson and Ned learn that Bao’s daughter, Mei Ting, is engaged to the restaurant manager, Rubbie Wu, and that the restaurant is operating an illegal poker ring-to avoid suspicion they play with food, each meat is one of the four suits and they bet with soy beans.  It’s all very elaborate . . . and genius.  A recently deceased undercover insurance investigator tells them that Bao took out a $200,000 life insurance policy the day before he died, naming his daughter Mei as the sole beneficiary.  All chopsticks point to Mei but she knows nothing . . . except she knows that Bao gambled away everything to Shrimpboy at the poker table; the final losing bet was for Mei to marry Shrimpboy’s cousin, Rubbie.

With Emerson and Ned dressed like a zaftig Sammy Davis Jr. and a young Kinky Friedman, respectively, they join the poker game and convince Shrimpboy to share what happened after Bao lost Mei to Rubbie.  Distraught over his loss, but with nothing left to give Rubbie, Bao signed over Rubbie as the beneficiary of the policy, which was payable at Bao’s death.  Bao then played to get his daughter back but lost.  Rubbie, being a sore winner, wanted payment immediately and killed Bao.  While telling this story, the poker players figure out that Emerson and Ned (and Olive and Chuck as mildly offensive china dolls) are imposters.  There’s a brief hostage scene but in the end a dog, smelling the food in Rubbie’s pocket, exposes Rubbie for the cheat that he is.  Shrimpboy, like a hooker with a heart of gold, can’t allow the bet with Rubbie to stand, and he decrees that Mei is free from Rubbie’s engagement.

While the card games go on, Ned meets Dwight Dixon at The Pie Hole.  Dwight claims to be a friend of Ned’s parents and asks if Ned knows how to reach his father.  Concerned that Dwight’s arrival will open up the wounds and feelings from Ned’s past, he is apprehensive at first but with some help from Chuck, he decides to give Dwight (via Chuck) his last known address from his father.  The source of the address?  The postcard his father sent him 20 years ago saying the family had moved . . . without Ned.  Poor Ned.

Chuck, as her crime-fighting alter ego Kitty Pimms, and Olive secretly go to the house and find Ned’s twin half-brothers.  The brothers, Ralston and Maurice, turn tricks, sorry illusions, of the magic parlor variety.  Chuck and Olive are smitten with them and their resemblance to Ned, particularly in the eyebrow department.  But like Ned, the brothers twin were abandoned by their father after their mother ran off with another man.  Chuck tells this to Ned in hopes that he will meet them, but Ned already knows about them and is not pleased with Chuck for going to the house.  Chuck and Olive apologize.  Ned accepts but admits (from his dark place) that he does not want to feel connected to his brothers because he knows it might make his father happy wherever he is.  (Note to self: Don’t cross Ned.)

Meanwhile, Emerson reconnects with Simone and gets to know her in the biblical sense.  They have a strange past relationship where Emerson responds and acts like an obedient dog whenever Simone uses her clicker on him.  After some post-coital clarity, Emerson wants more from Simone, namely he wants to get to know her more than on a superficial nature, and continuing our poker playing theme of the night, he’ll show her his cards if she shows him hers.

In the end, Ned swallows his fear and goes with Chuck to his father’s home to meet his brothers.  His brothers are very happy to see him and go all Hug Machine on Ned, who is relieved as he likely realizes he should have taken this risk some time ago.  But the mystery of Ned’s father only grows.  Across the street from the happy meeting, Dwight Dixon and his gun on the passenger seat are watching the brothers from his car.

Season 2, Episode 5: Dim Sum, Lose Some (originally aired October 29, 2008)

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