Top Five Cases: Pushing Daisies

Given the fact that its protagonist can touch dead people back to life and ask who killed them, Pushing Daisies still does a fine job coming up with intriguing, wild, visually inventive murders for the team to solve.  It’s an achievement Bryan Fuller comes by honestly – he honed his ability to come up with creative death scenarios on Dead Like Me, and he current puts it to impressive use on Hannibal.  The following five episodes contain my favorite cases solved by the Pie Hole crew.

 “The Smell of Success” (Season 1, Episode 7)

Okay, this case has it all.  Scratch ‘n’ sniff explosives?  Tension among both novelty book authors and olfactory experts?  The threat of Cannibalistic Humanoid Underground Dwellers?  Check, check, and check.  Oscar Vibenius is an awesome character (who brought some tension to a larger season arc in an unexpected way,) and Anita Gray is the sweetest charred corpse you’ve ever met.

 “Corpsicle” (Season 1, Episode 9)

I love the intrigue of this one, the dead bodies of insurance adjustors showing up frozen and occasionally hidden in snowmen.  There’s something of a vigilante justice angle, a great stake-out scene between Ned and Emerson, and the fantastic sight of Emerson using a knitting needle to chip the ice off a “freezer-burnt” corpse so Ned can make the necessary contact.

“Frescorts” (Season 2, Episode 4)

Frescorts!  Oh my gosh, I love this case.  The whole idea of friend escorts amuses me, and everything over at Frescorts HQ is fun and cheerily weird.  I also really like the double clients (especially the Kalashni-Cod scene,) along with Chuck and Olive’s undercover shenanigans and the gross-out factor of a friendly dead Frescort preserved in formaldehyde.

“Dim Sum Lose Some” (Season 2, Episode 5)

I love the noir-ishness of the shady, behind-closed-doors dealings at the dim sum restaurant, helped, of course, by the presence of Emerson’s potential squeeze Simone – I just love that cool-as-a-cucumber dog breeder.  Oh, and dim sum poker?  Creative and delicious.  If I knew someone running a dim sum poker game, I might actually have to take up poker.

“Window Dressed to Kill” (Season 2, Episode 11)

Department store window dressers turning up dead, accompanied by the lavishly-dressed windows that are decked out to look eerily, presciently similar to the death scenarios?  I’m so there.  Plus, this is a case that’s largely hands-off by Ned (literally,) so we get to see Emerson and Chuck doing old-fashioned, non-magic legwork to solve the murders.  Fun all around.