Pushing Daisies: “Bad Habits” (Recap)

By Tom Rose
Fancast.com

Last night on Pushing Daisies Olive Snook (Kristin Chenoweth) paid her pennance in full at the nunnery and returns to her former life at the Pie Hole. Halelujah! Because PD is much more lively Chenoweth than Chenowethout.

The episode opens with young Olive pining for a pony. Her father refuses her so she resolves to dig to Arabia and get one herself. Her shoveling reveals rare dinosaur bones which are traded for an Arabian pony by a rich Prince. Olive learns that digging may be dirty, but it’s the only way to find buried treasure. The lesson will serve her well later in life.

She uses the knowledge in her exile at the nunnery by digging for truffles in the backyard with pet porker Pigby and Sister LaRue (a fabulous Mo Collins - where has she been?… haven’t seen her since her turn on Curb Your Enthusiasm when it was revealed she had a giant… well… it’s nice to see her again). Anyway, Sister LaRue is a truffles expert and Olive is an eager student.

Back at the Pie Hole Ned (Lee Pace) is dropping off breakfast for Chuck (Anna Friel) when a strange man emerges from the apartment. Mr. Pennebaker is a genealogist. It seems Chuck has decided to fill in the holes from her past and finish her 3rd grade homework assignment - growing the family tree. In Chuck’s case, there are some bare branches. Ned struggles to accept her decision, despite his own role in making her an orphan, but it’s yet another indication that Chuck is slipping from his untouchable grasp.

At the nunnery, Olive prays to God for a sign from the heavens that she is meant to remain there and pine for her pie baker ’til the end of days. She gets one as Sister LaRue splats in front of her, having fallen from the bell tower. At the funeral Olive is mortified to learn that her new friend has apparently committed suicide and as such, will be going to her great reward… in Hell. It’s too much for Olive to bear so she makes an unauthorized visit to an old friend - Emerson Cod (Chi McBride) in his office.

It’s closing time when she arrives but Emerson is strangely still at his desk. Probably putting some finishing touches on his pop up book, Lil Gum Shoe. One look at Olive in her veil and he forgets the book - he’s laughing too hard. Olive has no luck in pleading for him to take the Larue murder case until she promises as payment endless prayer. Cod accepts. He needs all the prayers he can get if he’s to find his missing daughter.

Olive needs something too. She asks that Emerson solve the murder on his own as she can’t bear to see Ned and is guilty over Chuck’s ignorance of her love for him. Plus the inconvenient fact that she’s hiding a secret: she knows who Chuck’s real mother is and Chuck is no orphan. Cod agrees but immediately breaks his word by bringing Ned and Chuck into the case anyway. Without Ned, he’s a second rate PI at best. I like this guy. They disguise themselves as Vatican investigators looking into the circumstances of Sister LaRue’s “suicide.”

In the morgue, Ned has an uneasy moment before raising the dead, queasy about the statues of Mary and Jesus surrounding Sister LaRue’s lifeless remains. “Well, it ain’t like He never done it before,” Emerson says, pointing to the crucufix. “Remember Lazarus?” Ned takes the moment to vent to Cod about Chuck’s decision to open the past but a disinterested Emerson tells him to let her dig. Lots of digging in this episode.

When Ned pokes LaRue she awakes believing she’s gone off to her reward in Heaven but quickly decides she’s in Hell… “where are my diamonds?” Diamonds? Doesn’t sound like a penniless nun to me. Ned asked who killed her and she says she was shoved by someone she couldn’t see. She becomes frantic for her diamonds and tries to run off but Ned catches her just in time, dispatching her for good.

Chuck distracts the Mother Superior pretending to look at LaRue’s file. She finds out the Sister was a fungi specialist in her former life, hence her prodigous knowledge of truffle trivia. But the ruse also gives her a look at Olive’s file. Her former life history is left blank. Chuck is consumed by guilt, believing she is the cause for Olive’s flight. True. Sort of.

Being an old church there are plenty of hidden doors and secret passages and the team find several. One leads to a stash of forbidden items from the outside world, hidden in LaRue’s closet. So that’s why she was killed. Sweet Sister LaRue was running her own little black market and Ma Superior wanted to put an end to it. But where are the diamonds LaRue was frantically trying to recover in her last minute of life?

Another secret door leads to the kitchen of a restaurant next to the church. There they meet with a Swiss chef who tries to carve them up, but the news that LaRue is dead changes his mind.

As Jim Dale would say - The facts were these: Sister LaRue accidentally discovered the passageway to the restaurant and she struck a deal with the chef. He would supply contraband and she would supply him with delicious truffles from the garden.

Eventually their intercourse lead to the real thing and they fell in love. The last time he saw her she presented him with a rare Italian white truffle, the finest of the breed and known as “the diamond of the table.” Diamond? OK. Now we’re getting somewhere.

Ned and Emerson think the chef must have killed LaRue. Despite his love, he was consumed by greed for the rare truffle. But Olive points out that the truffle could only be grown in Italy, so the chef is out of the picture. Ned confronts Olive in an effort to say he’s sorry for not loving her more than Chuck. But that’s not the reason she is at the nunnery. The secret of Chuck’s lineage drove her mad. And she promised Lillian she would never reveal the secrat that Vivian is Chuck’s real mother to anyone. But she never mentioned charades when she made her promise, did she? Ned and Olive play an exasperating version of the game and Ned finally figures out that Vivian is Chuck’s real mother. He will carry the secret himself for awhile, relieving Olive of the burden.

Meanwhile Chuck has a new burden herself. The genealogist Pennebaker has found nothing. Chuck decries the fact that she is stuck in space and time, without a past and without a future. Ned holds his tongue.

Meanwhile Olive is doing her pennance locked in the laundry room when a priest at the church, Father Eduardo opens the door with his dirty vestments. They’ve got guano all over them. Holy Bat sh*t! (as George Carlin used to say.) They’ve got bats in the belfry! So it was Father Ed who killed Sister LaRue! But why?

Father Ed chases Olive to the bell tower, but Chuck is already there trying to commune with the spirit of Sister LaRue. Maybe she is stuck in the portal of time as well. Instead of salvation, Chuck stumbles over a secret trove of Italian white truffles. LaRue was actually cultivating them in an effort to corner the market. Her background as a fungi scientist gave her the means and her disguise as a penitent nun gave her the opportunity.

When Chuck hears Olive’s scream as she’s being chased by Father Ed she looks over the side of the bell tower and slips. Will Chuck die a second death? Will Ned be able to bring her back again? After all, it’s not at his hand that she dies again. But first we hear a word from their sponsors.

After the break Chuck is hanging on to the belfry ledge by the sliver of a handhold. Olive rushes to help her back into the belfry when she notices that Pigby is snuffling around the now exposed truffle treasure trove. And the bells are swinging for she and her gal. So LaRue wasn’t murdered and she didn’t commit suicide after all. She tripped on a pig and was bumped off by a bell. Makes perfect sense.

Olive manages to grab Chuck just in time but before she can congratulate herself, Pigby and the bell knock her over the side as well. OSHA really needs to take a look at the unsafe work place habits in that belfry. On the way to her demise Olive has a moment of peace. This is a death she can live with. But Ned manages to pull an oxcart piled with hay into her downward spiral just in time, saving her from Sister LaRue’s cruel fate. Case solved.

The facts were these: Sister LaRue was hired by a nefarious corporation to create a test tube Italian white truffle. After many failures the corporate funding was pulled. She fled to the nunnery to work in secret and eventually came up with the successful formula, guaranteeing her place as Queen of the ‘Shrooms. When Mother Superior and Father Ed discovered her treachery, they banish her from the convent. Gathering up her prize inventions Pigby and the bells launched her over the side.

When Mother Superior takes over the truffle enterprise the church’s financial situation improves immediately. Olive turns down the offer to be the CFO. It’s time to go back home. Pigby comes along as a memento.

At home is where Ned decides to spill the beans on Chuck’s secret past. Instead of being devastated, she’s blissful to learn that Vivian is not her Aunt, but rather her real mother. She has a place in the universe after all. Tears of joy stream down her cheeks.

As the episode closes, they are both happily filling in the empty branches of her family tree. The leaves are no longer bare and the roots have never been more firmly planted. The digging can stop… for now.