Pushing Daisies season 2 episode 8 review

Sorry I’ve been a bit busy recently with various other shows, so I’ve slipped up on my Daisies intake. Which is a shame because, despite being terminated, the standard of writing in this show remains remarkably high. Comfort Food is the eighth outing for season two, and fits the now-familiar criminal investigation based on what someone can say in sixty seconds. In this case it’s the untimely death of Colonel Likkin, an odd nod to Colonel Sanders who’s ironically battered and then dipped in hot oil. This show does irony very well, considering it’s not the primary staple of American humour. I realised this myself when I was living in Kentucky when the previously-mentioned chicken-branding icon died. My local KFC insisted on putting black bands around their bargain buckets, amazingly. But I digress…

This fatality and other curious happenings are all taking place at the Comfort Food Cook-off, which Ned and Olive are attending to represent the culinary skills of the Pie Hole. Much of the bitchiness between the contestants is very funny, but actually this isn’t the real meat the sandwich of this moveable feast. It’s what goes on away from the Cook-off that really puts the fat in the fire.

At the very start, we have Chuck and Ned digging up her father for a sixty second goodbye. All good and well until we discover that Chuck puts a leather glove on her father’s hand that Ned then touches for the second time! If you’ve watched this show the consequences of this are obvious: Charles Charles doesn’t die again and someone else does!

Chuck admits this to Emerson and they return to the graveyard to find out who she indirectly killed! Actually he first has a brilliant rant about how breaking this rule always has consequences, and isn’t a ‘sometimes’ rule. When they get there they find the very dead Dwight Dixon, who had set himself up with a high-powered rifle to kill Chuck before mysteriously dropping dead. Chuck feels bad, and even hallucinates a conversation between herself and Dwight where they debate what happened, but he still ends up buried in Charles Charles’ grave.

I won’t reveal all the silliness surrounding the death of Colonel Likkin, but my money was on the Waffle Nazi and I’m happy to admit I was entirely wrong.

Almost as wrong as Chuck is made to feel in the final scene. When Ned notices that someone else is in her apartment and goes to investigate, to find her and her long dead father, who is wrapped up in bandages like the invisible man.

I’m now really curious to know where this all ends up going in the final four episodes, and if there is any ultimate resolution. Daisies was probably the show that least deserved to be axed, but ABC makes some curious choices at times.

The next story up is The Legend of Merle McQuoddy, which I’ve been assured, has salt water running through its veins.

Check out Mark’s review of the previous episode here.

18 December 2008