[PDS] Circus Circus

TV Programme: Pushing Daisies
Season: 2
Episode: 2
Date I watched this episode: 09/09/2009
Time since I last watched this programme: 7 days.

Quite fitting for a show with quite so much silliness in it to end up at a circus. There is silliness galore there, and some of it (like the mimes) were bordering on imaginative, while most of them (like the poem he wrote) were just plain stupid. Actually, the show manages to find silliness everywhere, even in a nunnery, with the stupid names for prayer times, meant to be funny but it just isn't.

The story was just a bit overcomplicated, and not in a good way. It felt a bit like a list - Ned and co moving through different suspects and locations until they ended up at the right place. Contrasted with similar detective-type shows like Damages, Prison Break etc, it just pales into utter insignificance. To make matters worse, Olive is completely cut off from the rest of the world, and she really can't carry a storyline on her own.

The character storylines in this episode were variable. The main story was Ned and Chuck coping with living apart. They gave quite a reasonable explanation for this - namely Chuck's lack of change in her "first life", leading to her wanting to beat that fear now - but the relationship between Ned and Chuck is just worsened even more. It's like Chuck goes weak at the knees like a little girl and there is no hint of real attraction there. Okay so it's interesting from a character point of view to see how they react, but this situation was dealt with so much better in Cold Feet with David and Karen starting over again (not that it worked out!)

Other story elements, such as Emerson's longing to see his own daughter, just didn't add anything. It was a pretty lame attempt to give Emerson a more fleshed-out backstory, but I think that character is a lost cause to be honest. Also, the starting sequence with young Ned added absolutely nothing to the episode, as usual.

There were a couple of touching scenes, like the one between Vivian and Chuck (by far the best scene of the episode) and the mother and daughter finally finding out what love is at the end. However even the scene editing wasn't good in a lot of places. This show overuses flashbacks - not that it even does so as much as Damages, but it does so for irrelevant reasons. For example Chuck's "improvisation" with Nikki's friend, or the flashback showing why Chuck was left at the Pie Hole. What was the point?

I have to say that the music is one of the redeeming features about this show. It is quite fitting for the general quirky style of the show, overemphasis on supposedly "shocking" moments, in a similar style to early films and their attempts to grab you with the soundtrack.

All in all though I thought this episode was pretty bad. I didn't come away smiling, but I did think it was quite relaxing, especially the colours as previously commented on. I think unless it gets better soon, it's going to take a long time til I motivate myself to finish this season.