I wouldn’t say that I don’t want Pushing Daisies to go on forever -- that should be enough of a double negative to confound Olive and tickle Ned -- but I think I might rather have done without the teasing Saturday night’s episode was and the next two will be. Maybe, at this point, after leaving us hanging for almost six months and now just dangling these last few chances to revel in Daisies before it’s gone forever, ABC should have just left us to our DVDs so we could wallow in pity and misery in peace. It’s almost like ABC is actively trying to get us all riled up again, like maybe if enough people watched these final few Saturday nights, there might be the slimmest possibility of a chance that the show could get picked up again...

I know that’s not going to happen, but it seems like ABC is simply daring us to hope against hope anyway.

So:

Poor neglected Olive! Happier with her “kidnappers” as a child than she was with her parents, who never even noticed she was missing! No wonder she’s so desperate for Ned, for closeness and love and hugs and all that nice stuff. (Well, no wonder apart from the fact that Ned is so irresistibly adorable, of course.)

Poor stressed-out Ned! I never thought: Ned couldn’t eat his own pie because the fruit would turn dead in his mouth. How awful, especially when he has to see everyone else enjoying his pies all day. Yet another sensual pleasure he is denied because of his strange gift. How poignant, holding hands with Chuck only through gloves. How sweet, that he at least gets a real, warm, moist, not-through-Saran-Wrap kiss from Olive... even if it is pretend.

“I’m not gonna pretend to be something I’m not,” Ned says early on, as he’s getting used to the idea that he’s just gonna be Clark Kent from now on, no more Superman. “It’s stressful,” he concludes. How much of a relief must he be feeling, at that moment, at what he believes is the “normal” life ahead of him, not to realize that being only Clark Kent is the pretending?

Poor lovestruck Randy! I never thought David Arquette was sweet before, and that he’s a weird taxidermist and still sweet anyway is even better. Oo, and now Ned is jealous! Of Randy? Is Ned suddenly realizing that he does, indeed, all double negatives aside, feel something more than friendship for Olive? Or is Ned merely lamenting his inability to ever touch the woman he does love? Cuz, man, if Ned and Chuck are having any physical fun at all, it’d have to be the safest sex ever invented in the history of humanity...

Will Ned ever tell? Or will he keep his jealousy a secret, just another of the many, many secrets and lies everyone here is keeping just to keep the people they love happy?

Random thoughts:

• Was it just my local ABC station screwing up, or was the last segment of the episode suddenly not in HD for everyone?

• How often does our pop culture allow a man to say to a woman, “You’re my hero”? And not as a joke? Gosh, could Ned possibly be any more wonderful?

• My god, the colors of this show! Dickers’ department store and all its characters look like the coolest vintage clothing shop ever exploded.

• “There’s a trunkful of Charles Charles’ old clothes upstairs in the cheese room.” What other show allows for a line like that?

• Get the escaped cons “across the border”? What border? What imaginary country lies just beyond the confines of Papin County?

• I was so sure that Coco Juniper was gonna be dead in the unveiled window, part of the memorial window for her ex-partner. That would’ve been cool... and might have put the suspicion right on Denny-who-was-doing-all-the-work. Though the escalator thing was pretty cool, in a disgusting gory way, too. I’m constantly amazed at the terrible things this show gets away with without ever losing that feeling of light, bright fluffiness.

(Watch full episodes at ABC’s official site for the show.)

(next: Episode 12: “Water and Power”)