PUSHING DAISIES: CORPSICLE (TV)

Summary

One in this fantasy-based dramedy series about a pie-maker whose touch can revive the dead. In this episode, in a flashback, Chuck’s father dies seemingly out of nowhere, and Ned begins to understand the dark “rules” of his gift. His own mother dies (again) later that same night, and he goes to Chuck’s aunts for comfort. In the present, Chuck has run from Ned’s apartment upon his confession that he accidentally killed her father, and he searches for her, first at Lily and Vivian’s home, where he awkwardly asks if they have seen her “ghost.” He next tries Olive’s apartment, who claims to know nothing—but it is then revealed that Chuck is hiding with her. She avoids Olive’s questions about why she “faked” her death and instead implores Olive to keep bringing pies to her aunts and gives her extra “vanilla.” Not knowing it is really a mood enhancer, Olive adds the whole vial to the pear-and-gruyere pie. Elsewhere, Ned vents his worries about Chuck on Emerson, but Emerson says to leave Chuck alone for the time being and presents Ned with a case: an Uber-Life insurance agent named Victor was found dead under mysterious circumstances. When they question his frozen corpse, he says he was killed by a bat-wielding assailant and guesses it was because of his job, as he has rejected many applicants seeking organ replacements. As Chuck hides on the roof of the apartment building, she is surprised by the presence of the sewer-dwelling scent expert Oscar Vibenius, who states that she and Digby have the same untraceable death-like smell. He requests a hair sample for further testing, but she refuses. At the Pie Hole, Ned begins to suspect that Olive knows more than she is saying about Chuck’s whereabouts, and soon discovers her at Olive’s apartment. They talk, and Ned begs her not to hate him for his inadvertent killing of her father, but she says she cannot get past it just yet and sends him away. Emerson reveals that Victor turned down fifteen potential transplant patients, and three are still alive with ample motive. He and a depressed Ned journey to the home of one Abner Newsome, a sullen teenager with a failing heart who is clearly too ill to have committed the murder. However, Emerson then finds a second body hidden in a snowman in Abner’s front yard, which turns out to be that of Bill Richter, another insurance salesman who turned down Abner’s claim and who died under the same circumstances as Victor. When they travel to the Uber-Life insurance company office, an agent named Steve says that the third agent on Abner’s case, Kevin, is missing too and presumably dead, and voices his frustration at the amorality of his company, which frequently turns down deserving patients for financial reasons. Chuck meets up with Oscar again, and he speculates that she died and came back in some capacity, and, desiring answers, she gives him a lock of hair. Emerson and Ned return to Abner’s home, where they encounter the monkey-toting “Wish-A-Wish” representative Madeline McLean, and they decide to sit outside the Newsome home to see if the killer returns with another body. In the car, Ned talks about Chuck again, and to his great surprise, Emerson reveals that he misses someone too: his long-lost daughter. They both soon pass out, however, and when Ned awakens, he realizes that someone blocked their tailpipe and tried to asphyxiate them with carbon monoxide—presumably the same person who deposited Kevin’s body in another snowman in the yard. The body is quickly determined to be un-revivable, and upon interrogating Abner’s mother, they learn that he was rejected yet again by Steve and that Madeline then requested his personal information, and they realize that she is the killer. At Lily and Vivian’s home, Olive brings them the overdosed pie, and Vivian tells Olive stories of their former adventures as Lily begins to hallucinate from the drugs. Chuck reconsiders and takes her hair back from Oscar, not wanting him to know her secrets after all. At the Uber-Life company, Madeline attacks Steve with her bat, and Emerson and Ned arrive just in time. She reveals that Abner’s only “wish” was for the insurance agents who turned him down to “drop dead,” and so she attempted to fulfill it. However, she is then run over in her car by her mischievous monkey, and Abner receives her heart. Ned finds a distraught Chuck sitting by her father’s grave, and she begs Ned to revive him for just one minute so that she may find closure, but he refuses, saying it would be too upsetting for her. And as a thoroughly intoxicated Lily chats with Olive, she unintentionally reveals that she is in fact Chuck’s biological mother. Includes commercials.

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