Pushing Daisies: “Circus, Circus” (Recap)

By Tom Rose
Fancast.com

As we found out last week, now that Chuck has moved into her own place, Ned has less to fear, right? No more worrying about accidentally laying a hand on her and sending her to the great beyond forever. Well, in Ned’s case, absence does not make the heart grow fonder.

Last night on Pushing Daisies we found out that Ned is getting a little jealous of Chuck’s new found freedom. And Chuck doesn’t like filling in for the hum-drum waitress life Olive left behind with her flight to the convent hoping to forget her beloved pie baker. It gets in the way of solving tricky murders.

The Case this time centers around the missing teen “Sweet Nikki” Heaps. Mom Georgeann (played by a barely recognizable Rachael Harris) pays a visit to Emerson at his office. Mrs. Heaps is a cold fish, but the story of her missing daughter gets to Cod. “Are you a parent or a guardian?” she asks. Despite the brightly lit telephone signalling frantic potential customers, Emerson takes the case. He knows a little about missing girls.

Emerson starts with Nikki’s best friend, but he gets nowhere with her. The generation gap is way too wide. But Chuck has better luck, slyly getting her to reveal that Nikki ran away with her boyfriend and is living in a van down by the river. That’s always the first rung on the show biz ladder.

A trip to the van yields a dead mime, but no trace of Nikki. When Ned gives him his last minute, he launches into a Marcelle Marceau by way of filling in the details of Nikki’s disappearance. But Cod hates mimes. A pistol gets the guy talking finally but he’s not much help. He thinks someone poisoned his face paint on the job at “The Circus Of Fun” but can’t fill in the gaps otherwise. Who would want to kill a mime? Before he finishes Chuck’s request for the “trapped inside a glass box” trick Ned mercifully dispatches him to the hereafter.

Before the trip to the circus Chuck complains that she’s stuck at the Pie Hole ever since Olive left and has no chance for sleuthing anymore. Ned plays the Boss for the first time, telling her she’s got to stay at the shop in order to keep the business going. But he’s secretly thrilled with his new found power over Chuck.

At the circus, the boys encounter the usual retinue of outlanders, including a Parisian acrobat who blocks their entrance to the manager’s office by hanging upside down in front of the door. They get inside to find Bailey, the Ring Master (Lee Arenberg) who can barely be bothered with “stubs” (rubes with tickets to the show) and maybe Nikki might have been looking for a job. The secretary who overhears the conversation has a nervous tic reaction to the questioning and after Bailey leaves, Ned goes back in for another try. It turns out Nikki is not as sweet as her nickname suggests, since she was two-timing the mime and getting close to the head clown in the show. According to the secretary Nikki “deserves what she gets.” What does she get? asks Ned. “What she deserves” Don’t we all.

Back at the shop Chuck is just closing up when Vivian arrives, craving her usual. Chuck has to throw herself behind the counter since Vivian can’t know she’s still alive. Chuck manages to pull off the trick to getting her pie boxed up and ready to go by feigning shyness and a deep voice. Vivian takes the pie, but not without pining for her sister Lillian, mysteriously missing herself. It gives Chuck the chance to watch her walk away, a tear in the eye. How long can this go on? (Watch the Clip)

On the way back to the Pie Hole Ned spots a clown mask in some bushes on the side of the road. They make their way to a pond with some floating debris: wigs, big red noses and a rainbow clown’s mask. The sheriff is called in to discover a clown car at the bottom of the pond and when they pull it out they find a dead clown at the wheel but no Nikki. In fact, upon further examination there’s a truckload of clowns to be pulled out of the water in a reverse of the old clown in the Volkswagen gag.

At the morgue, Ned and Emerson find the head clown and wake him up, pond scum, face paint and all. He tells them that his car, with all the clowns inside was run off the road, but Nikki was never with them. As apprentice she got the dirty job of hosing down a patron (Mr. von Deenis) who was used in one of their tricks against his will at the last show. In front of the whole circus audience he was smeared with chocalate pie and ridiculed with a rather unfortunate limerick based on his last name. Fill in the blanks. The last time he saw Nikki she was racing in her own car to catch up with the insane clown posse. So Nikki killed the clowns?

I didn’t believe it and neither did Emerson. Remember, he’s got a soft spot for missing daughters. When Chuck produces a flyer calling for new clowns to join the circus, they realize it was printed well before all the clowns had met their demise. So it’s back to the Ring Master.

Seeing the writing on the wall, Bailey spills the beans. He hired Nikki to spy on the clowns because they were thinking of forming a union. That’s why he fired them and put out the flyer. He’s not the killer after all. Suddenly, Emerson looks out the window and sees “The Human Cannonball” headed straight for them. Dodging the man-missile just in time, they realize that somebody’s trying to keep them from a secret.

Emerson realizes that Nikki figured out the safest place to be was back at the circus so they search and find her in the booby prize tent, dressed as a pink gorilla in a tutu. As they all make their way to the big top, the acrobat grabs Nikki and hoists her up to the top of a trapeze platform.

It turns out that Frenchie was enraged by the clown union plan. How can you have an accident-free workplace when you’re job is getting into accidents? The circus would be financially ruined and he’d be out of a job. As he lists his demands before he’ll let Nikki go free, Ned uncorks one of those trick baseballs and hits the acrobat right in the milk jug, causing him to topple and Nikki is set free.

Back at Emerson’s office, frosty Mrs. Heaps warms up to Nikki’s demand for attention and puts her arms around her for the first time in who knows how long. Emerson plays with his pop-up book and pines for his little girl.

Ned has reconciled himself to Chuck’s new found freedom by realizing she will be a better person if he let’s go… a little. And Chuck has a similar epiphany when she realizes she likes to be cared about… a lot.

As they exit their respective apartment doors above the shop to face a new morning, their love affair has a new edge. There’s always a little give and take if you want the perfect union.

Just don’t send in the clowns.