'Pushing Daisies': The falling nun

Pushing Daisies hasn't been bad in its first two episodes this season -- far from it, in fact. But for the way it integrated all the principal characters, the crime of the week and the larger emotional story, Wednesday's episode really knocked it out of the park.

I have dug up some spoilers, and I didn't need a pig to help me.

The week's case takes Emerson, Ned and Chuck to the convent of the Sisters of the Divine Magnatum, where one of Olive's fellow nuns takes a header off the convent's bell tower and Olive, fearing that sweet Sister LaRue has committed suicide and therefore is hellbound, turns to Emerson to prove that she didn't kill herself.

After Emerson stops laughing at the sight of Olive in her habit -- it takes a little while, and rightfully so -- he's on the case. But, Olive tells him, he has to go incognito, and by the way leave Ned and Chuck at home. He follows the first part of her request, showing up at the Blue Nunnery as Father Dowling of the Vatican police.

The second part, not so much. Father Dowling brings his associates Father Mulcahy and Sister Christian with him. And after I stopped laughing and hit "play" again, proceeded to watch the falsely frocked gumshoes discover that Sister LaRue was maybe not so sweet after all. The former crack mycologist and head of the convent's truffle-harvesting program (the Latin name for a white truffle is Tuber magnatum) has been running contraband to the other nuns and seeing a restaurant chef outside the convent (thanks to a secret passage that leads to his kitchen) and all the while working on a test-tube white truffle that could pass for the "diamonds of the table" that come only from Italy.

And, by the way, she swears like a longshoreman, as Ned and Emerson discover when they revive her. Sister LaRue says she didn't jump from the bell tower -- she was pushed. Suspicion falls first on Mother Mary Mary, who had found out about Sister LaRue's relationship with the chef, and then on Father Eduardo de Donde, who had scuffled with Sister LaRue after discovering the truffle lab in the bell tower. It turns out, though, that no person killed Sister LaRue; instead, it was Olive's porcine pal Pigby, who got the scent of the sister's tubers and tried to dig them up. And then, as Emerson puts it, "It's raining nuns."

Given that the case brought Olive back into contact with her Pie Hole cohorts, naturally Olive is in danger of spilling her secrets. "I get lured into a sense of familiarity and my lips loosen, and I just blurt," she tells Ned -- after blurting that she knows a secret about Chuck. Ned says he won't stop digging, and neither will Chuck -- who at the top of the episode had employed a genealogist to research her family tree (more on that shortly). So maybe he could guess at the secret?

What followed should be Kristin Chenoweth's Emmy reel for the coming season, as she quietly, then not so quietly, went apoplectic over Ned's denseness at first not recognizing Aunt Lily in the old photo and wondering if it's a number puzzle or Freemasons are involved, then not putting together that Chuck was born around the same time Lily was pregnant -- "You're killin' me!" Nothing short of comic beauty.

Chuck, meanwhile, is feeling at a loss when the genealogist can't uncover anything more about her family history -- "There's nothing about my mom, no past ... because of how I am. I'm just stuck -- stuck and absolutely alone and I don't know if I can go on." It was kind of a heartbreaking moment, well played by Anna Friel. And Ned, to his credit, finally gets it through his head (with an assist from Emerson) that just because his past sucked, he shouldn't stand in the way of Chuck finding out about hers.

Which leads us to a pair of touching scenes: his apology to Olive for shutting her off after she expressed her feelings for him and the final one, with Chuck reacting to the news that Lily is her biological mother. Way to stand up, Ned.

More good stuff from "Bad Habits":

• So, about that family tree: Lily and Vivian are actually Chuck's step-aunts. Charles Charles' dad married Lily and Vivian's mother when Charles was in his 20s. That clears things up a little, I think, or at least removes a little of the potential ickiness from Chuck's back story.
• I'm a little surprised that The Todd hasn't already thought of this, but Chuck and Ned (via Emerson) exchange a by proxy high-five after a breakthrough in the case. Emerson, unsurprisingly, is not pleased: "Git, before I by proxy vomit."
• Several contenders for the Emerson Line of the Night tonight. My favorite, though, was probably his pep talk to Ned after he frets about un-deading Sister LaRue in the presence of icons of Mary and Jesus: "It's not like he never did it. Remember Lazarus?"
• Then there was this exchange, when Mother Mary Mary called them out on their fake names: "... and 'Sister Christian' is nothing but a heavy-petting power ballad." Emerson: "We're motorin'."
• Great reaction shot from Ned after the Swiss chef tells them he and Sister LaRue made love on the table where they were eating. A repulsed Emerson puts his food down, while Ned considers the deliciousness of the meal, shrugs and continues. I'm not doing the moment justice by description, but it was fantastic.
• Finally, this. Olive: "Why is [Chuck] not minding the Pie Hole?" Emerson: "Because she's minding [Ned's]. And they got a new waitress anyway. Brandy, Candy ... I don't know, someone named after booze or food."

What did you think of "Bad Habits"? Are you glad that Olive is returning to the Pie Hole, and how do you think knowing who her mother is will affect Chuck?

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