Episode Report Card Al Lowe: A+ | Grade It Now! YOU GRADE IT Fat Man in a Little Coffin
By Al Lowe | Season 1 | Episode 3 | Aired on 10.16.2007
In a hurry? Read the recaplet for a nutshell description! Finished? Click here to close.Were you wondering why Chuck allowed herself to be so selfishly annoying on the occasions Ned brought the morgue residents back to life? All that quizzing them on their last wishes and stuff is basically not cool, especially since going past the sixty-second time limit would result in someone else's death, right? But see, as yet, Ned has not clued Chuck in on that one small point. As a matter of fact, he's still sort of lying to her about it, even now as she smooches him through a sheet of plastic wrap. Poor Olive, a witness to said smooch, shares her unhappiness with a new Pie Hole patron, Alfredo, erstwhile traveling herbal antidepressant salesman. Alfredo -- as any man but Ned would be -- is charmed by Olive's Chuck-inspired jealous rage. Leave them on screen together for a minute longer, and they will steal this show. Emerson's not really feeling Chuck, either. He is still sick to death (ha!) of her butting in on their biz, and it's making him hilariously bitchy. When they all meet up at the morgue to get the current dead-guy scoop, the GENIUS coroner actually gets some lines. That thrill is quickly forgotten when Emerson reveals that their new client is the brother of the funeral director, Lawrence Schatz, who died in the first episode as a result of Chuck re-living. Lawrence's brother, Louis, has hired Emerson to find out who killed the fat man. Since they already know how Lawrence died, Emerson really wants Ned to wake Lawrence up to discover where he hid all the stuff he stole off the bodies in his funeral home. Ned is reluctant, but Chuck wants to talk to Lawrence, also to thank him for dying in her place and all. She's upset about the one-minute death exchange program Ned has going, and mad that he kept it from her. So, off to the funeral home they go, where they are confronted with Louis Schatz, twin brother of the dead man. He thinks Lawrence was murdered by someone angry over their stolen heirlooms, and wants Emerson to find the stuff and find out who did it before they kill Louis, too. Ah, but when the trio wakes up Lawrence to get the goods, he claims that Louis was in on the stealing, too. While the gang is stewing over this, Louis goes and gets murdered (sort of) and stuffed into the Pie Hole freezer. Turns out, a dead-person relative, Wilford Woodruff (a Chinese-Southern-American), killed Louis (sort of) for stealing his family heirloom, a Civil War sword. He and Ned get into a Jedi battle in which Ned is ultimately triumphant, and as a result, the crew finds all the stolen goods. People, I know it barely makes sense. This shit is hard to explain. Yada yada, everyone learns a valuable lesson. Meanwhile, Aunts Lily and Vivian, preparing to go on their mermaid comeback tour, receive a delayed postcard from pre-death Chuck, mourn anew, and cancel their shows. Chuck uses some of Alfredo's samples to bake an antidepressant pie for her aunts, which Olive delivers, unaware of who they are. Once inside their house, however, she puts two and two together. Want more? The full recap starts right below!
Welcome to my third recap of Pushing Daisies, the show too weird, and too unabashed in its inconsistencies, to...recap. "It's a modern day fairy tale" covers a multitude of sins, but is that really okay? I don't know. I really like the show, obviously, so I give it a pass, but am I even supposed to be doing that? It's so difficult for me to get started, I just spent an hour looking at Craigslist furniture. Someone in the town where I live is selling not one, but two six-foot "Egyptian statues" (a nude man and nude woman holding pots over their heads) for $1,400. Guess what Wing and Glark are getting for Christmas?
All right, so how tired is Jim Dale of having to explain the damn rules of Ned's power? Because here he goes again -- we board the wayback machine to see the supercute Young Ned back in the day, testing his one-minute deadline on a bunch of fireflies. It is a lovely little scene, all the re-living fireflies glowing under glass -- but, Jim Dale, WE GET IT. Thank you. He can bring the dead back to life, yes, and only for sixty seconds or someone else dies. Is this all for viewers who are only now tuning in? If so, they have these recaps to read, Jim Dale. We here at TWoP perform this valuable public service for just this reason. You need not beat yourself down with these same details each week. I'm just looking out for you, JD. Don't want you to start raging around the sound booth, throwing teacups around and whacking people with scones. Speaking of scones, did y'all realize Anna Friel was English? Somehow, that had completely escaped my notice. I thought her accent was funny, but I assumed she was smearing on the sweetness, marmalade-style, and just trying to make herself extra-cute. Not that she could get cuter, really, as we see when she and Ned work together in the Pie Hole kitchen, carving up peaches Ned is reviving and putting them in pies. Of course, as Chuck rambles on about how she now has two birthdays to celebrate, the consequences of this peach rebirth come when the a flowerbox full of mums bites the dust. First of all, I don't like this fruit thing. What, does he go out to the market each day and buy dead fruit? That makes no sense, even within the larger, nonsensical premise. And, if so, does he replant those flowers every day? Come on, people. Throw me a bone in the midst of this whimsy.
Digby, on his dog bed by the stove, throws Ned a worried look about those flowers. Meanwhile, Chuck reminisces about birthdays past. Remember, she says, when Ned gave her a t-shirt for her eighth birthday? "It had a beaver on it," she says, "with little lipstick kisses, and it said 'Be kind to animals; Kiss a beaver.'" Ned cringes at his lack of subtlety as a pre-adolescent, and Digby most likely puts his head in the oven to avoid having to hear more.