''Pushing Daisies'': Chuck cheats, a little

”Pushing Daisies”: Chuck cheats, a little

So we got our answer, after last week’s tuneless episode — the song lives on! In this case, They Might Be Giants’ “Birdhouse in Your Soul,” as sung by Olive and the Aunts. (Isn’t that even better than Adam and the Ants? We’ve named a band. You’re welcome!) Anyway, the episode began, as we’ve become accustomed to, with Young Ned, this time reunited at boarding school with faithful canine Digby, who seemed to know as well as his master that touching is verboten. Which raises a question: Is Digby immortal or just super, super old? Assuming Ned is maybe in his late twenties, early thirties, that would make his furry friend…48,975 in dog years, approximately.

Soon enough, we were distracted by the idea of a romantic competitor for the grown-up Chuck’s affections — in this case, a semi-dashing young man in a nice apartment into which a small plane had just crashed. Mr. Semi-Dashing can catch Chuck when she trips, unlike poor Ned. Meanwhile, Olive continued in her quest to get to know the aunts, Lily and Vivian, and ultimately reveal what she believes to be Chuck’s fake-death trickery, by delivering pies Chuck had laced with herbal Prozac and delicious cheeses.

Chuck, of course, was too busy holding hands with the mysterious apartment owner [thanks for the catch, readers!], actually a one-armed hardened criminal (but we didn’t know that yet!), using him as a Ned surrogate for G-rated physical intimacy. We sort of followed the tale of prison inmates, and contraband diamonds, and a one-winged pigeon with a taxidermied parrot wing, but the gist is, they were all brought together by a saucy, copper-haired windmill keeper (Charlie from Ugly Betty!) and a star-crossed love affair, and suddenly Olive was forced to choose between revealing Chuck’s supposed crime and saving the aunts’ delicate sensibilities from the shock of confronting their undead niece. We knew well enough to guess that she would choose the high road, but how much longer can this French farce of near-misses continue? Right now, we’re patient. And enjoying the little things, like the police’s one-armed cuffing of our wayward thief, and the fade-out on rooftop beekeeper booty between a properly shielded Ned and Chuck. Ah, romance — even between the living and the artificially reanimated, it’s still sweet.

Don’t you agree?