Pushing Daisies season 2 episode 2 review

It’s precisely 7 days, four hours, sixteen minutes and twelve seconds since we last reviewed Pushing Daisies.

Episode two is entitled ‘Circus Circus’, and attempts to parallel an actual Big Top experience with the less flamboyant chaos that encompasses the Pie Maker’s life. Chuck, the love of his life has moved out into Olive Snooks apartment, while Olivia is now resident in a Nunnery.

Emerson Cod and Ned go to the Circus of Fun in search of a runway girl, ‘sweet Nikki’, while Chuck is left in charge of the Pie Hole. She was last seen with a Clown, and as a Circus acrobat tells them, by their very nature Clown’s can only make balloon animals and enemies. How true, it transpires.

More clever word plays come when they interrogate the Circus Master, who tells them that Clowns travel in packs. Like wolves?’ Ted enquires, ‘more like cigarettes’ comes the answer. In typical Daisies fashion, they follow a lead given by his curiously snorting secretary.

Meanwhile more chaos ensues when Aunt Vivian turns up at the Pie Hole, who’s still under the impression Chuck is dead. She manages to duck that emotional bullet, but how much longer can all these secrets be kept? What with the ones Lilly has about Chuck’s origins, and the ones Ned keeps, and Olive knows…and Emerson reveals to Ned. They’re living at super-secret central, and it can’t go on, can it?

The Clown’s enemy catches up with them before Ned and Emerson, when they find their Mini Cooper in a lake filled with an entirely implausible number of clowns. Eight was my count and one even on stilts, but later we are told it was fifteen! Chief suspect was the brunt of especially cruel jokes at the Clown’s last performance. Bryce Von Deenis. And as you might have guessed with that name, they improvised a limerick for all but his amusement. Actually they did worse than that, but I’m feeling too delicate to describeit  today.

I’ll take that as a sign not to spoil it all, but the resolution involves a plot to unionise the Circus and the use of a midget fired from a canon as a deadly weapon. It’s certifiably crazy, but enjoyably so.

This show makes me laugh out loud, ranging as it does so effortlessly from mild quirkiness to the comes-with-a-certificate-proving-authenticity bizarre. In this week’s episode my hilarity switch was thrown by the colour coordinated eyepatch that Lilly was wearing to her Nuns disguise. A small gag, but finely crafted.

This is a small show, that’s beautifully crafted, so watch it. Please.

Check out our review of the second season opener here.

Kristin Chenoweth (Olive Snook in Pushing Daisies), is appearing on The Ellen DeGeneres Show on Tuesday October 21st.