Pushing Daisies: Oh Oh Oh It's Magic (Episode 207)

Magic dad security scarf It's clear this week that whatever gift Ned has of bringing people back from the dead, I have the reverse on shows I recap. Dirty Sexy Money, Eli Stone, and my beloved Pushing Daisies all getting the for-all-intents-and-purposes-cancellation-non-pick-up in one week--I feel like I have some sort of recapping hand of death, and if I'd known that, I'd have taken whatever Ned-and-Chuck precaution to keep this show going. But we still have episodes left, so let's get on with this thing. This is an episode that goes round and round and round.

So, when Ned was a boy, before he discovered his terrible touch, his father entertained him with magic tricks. And then his dad, as we all know, abandoned him and did magic tricks for his new kids, and Ned stopped beleiving in magic altogether. Not so for Ralston and Maurice, the magicking duo of "Two for the Show," who  still love magic, which they think is as magical as you want it to be. They perform now at the Conjurer's Castle, thanks to the patriarchal attentions of The Great Herrmann, who, after their dad "had to leave," was the next best thing. Ned's like, "had to leave?" and "another magic daddy?" The boys just want Frere Piemaker to come to their show. Olive and Chuck are there, already loud and applauding, and Emerson's in if only to hone his PI skills, like with brain teasers or Where's Waldo. And even though magic gives Ned anxiety-induced acid reflux, he goes.

The Great Herrmann's opening act is The Geek, who... eats things. Live things. I'd rather not discuss it. While he's performing, The Great Herrmann (Fred Willard!) introduces himself to Emerson Cod and Ned--he's glad Ralston and Maurice have Ned now, but he warns him to go slow, since the boys are needy. He then forces Emerson to volunteer for his greatest trick, Cementia, in which he hides in a box that's then filled with cement. While he's disappeared, he sneaks up underneath the Pie Hole crew's table and tells Emerson he needs a PI, because his assistants are all mysteriously dying.

His animal assistants, however, not the people kind. Emerson's not really enthused to take on puddy-tat and wabbit chasing, but he follows the green as always, and while the Great Herrmann does his second show, the crew does a summary sweep of his dressing room. Ned takes a quick moment with the magic dad and gets the story on how he knows Maurice and Ralston. Herrmann explains that he was doing the Sunday matinee and the boys' dad just abandoned them there. He told the boys that "Their dad was an important man with important man matters to attend to." And then he could never really get rid of them; they showed up after school to learn magic from him, so he taught them. Ned thanks him and returns to the team. He takes one look around and declares these creatures ain't talking, and Olive reminds him that they're animals, so they don't, plus, they are dead, so they really won't. But there are clues nonetheless, all pointing towards animals as collateral damage: someone's trying to kill the Great Herrmann, but his aim is a little left of center, and the animals are all getting it instead. Out on stage, Herrmann announces, "Now you see me..." and steps into his Cementia box. And does not reappear, because he is buried in cement.

After the mistake's been discovered, Olive laments all the dead animals and the Great Herrmann, and Ned reminds her that she's still got Pigby and Digby to make her feel better. She calls out to the twins that she's sorry about their next-best-thing-magic-dad, and Ned's too. Ned stutters to Chuck that he didn't have that with Herrmann, but the man did touch his shoulder and call him son, which gave him a feeling like a jolt of static electricity to his heart. It straightens his shoulders, and he tells his brothers that he's going to avenge this murder. Not in a violent way, because that's a bad example, but in a seeking justice, go to jail kind of way. Like, kick someone's ass? Ned says yes, he's going to kick someone's ass.

First, they question Herrmann's assistant Alexandria, who doesn't know any of Herrmann's tricks. She's only stayed with him the last eight years because he's always promised her an act of her own, but he never followed through. But she swears she didn't kill him. Then they question the Geek, who talks about how he reguritates live animals, having trained his body to do the extraordinary. Herrmann gave him his first job: a plant in the audience who ate a bottle of beer. He says they were like a father and son act. While Herrmann was disappearing, he'd gone around picking people's pockets and eating their valuables to spit up later in the show. He invites Chuck to listen, and her necklace swings towards his chest, as to a magnet. He thinks someone must have had it in their pocket with their stuff that he stole and then ate. I could not be more grossed out. Also not pleased? Emerson Cod. At the morgue, the coroner cracks open Herrmann's cement coffin only to discover there's no body inside, just a note: "...now you don't!"

While the team interrogates the other magicians, Olive's back at the Pie Hole. And this is as good a time to give you the B story as any: the mysterious Dwight Dixon pays a visit to Lily and Vivian. Turns out, Dwight was a UN peacekeeper with Chuck's and Ned's dads, before one dropped dead and the other turned deadbeat. He regales the aunts with stories that prove he knew Charles, and that Charles told him everything. EVERYTHING. Vivian remains, of course, oblivious, and laments that Charles broke her heart. Lily knows that Dwight knows, and he knows that she knows. He's after a brass pocketwatch that Charles had monogrammed with his initials, CC, which has a match in his own monogrammed pocketwatch, DD. Lily claims not to recall it and says Vivian doesn't remember either. While Vivian fetches Dwight's coat and slips a "meet me at the piehole for a date" note in the pocket, Dwight and Lily face off. Lily tells him not to come for her, because she fights dirty. He's not done, yet, though. He meets Vivian as she requests, to Olive's dismay, since Chuck could arrive at the Piehole at any moment. Dwight tells her that he and Charles and Ned's dad had a pact: whoever was the last one left standing would take the pocketwatches back to the desert and let the sands claim it. He'd have come for it sooner, but he's been in prison for twenty two years. Vivian asks if he means emotional or federal and he says both. She can only claim one, but she always knew what kind of man Charles was. She explains that they buried Charles' pocketwatch with Chuck, but she doesn't know why Lily would lie about it. Olive listens to this and nearly has a seizure, especially when Dwight slips and says that Lily's sensitive about it because she lost a daughter. He amends that Vivian and Lily both did, having raised Chuck. But now he knows where to find the watch. Except for how there's nothing in Chuck's grave except an empty coffin.

Ned tells his brothers that Herrmann played a disappearing trick, but at least he's not dead. One asks why he'd do that, and Ned says he was an important man with important man matters to attend to... oh. The other asks if Herrmann said anything about their dad's departure, and we get treated to the whole sad affair: the boys' dad volunteered to disappear in Herrmann's magic box and never reappeared, much to Herrmann's shock and dismay. He told the boys what they needed to hear and they chose to believe it. Ned breaks that illusion right, though, saying that their dad wasn't important and had nowhere to go, he was just a man abandoning his kids at a Sunday matinee. They're like, thanks for breaking it so GENTLY. Ned's like, look, he left three sons, and there's no excuse for that. Maurice tells Ned that Ralston used to wet his pants when they did disappearing tricks. Ned confesses his acid reflux and commisserates over having dad-related body fluid issues. Ralston's like, yeah, I'm over that by now. Ned says he knows the acid reflux is just heart burn. The boys have heart burn, too, and he can tell by the way they're clutching the half of Herrmann's scarf they found in the block of cement. The scarf, it is a symbol of their dad, and they need to let go. Ned realizes they only have half and asks where the rest is. They thought with the note, which it should have been.

Ned realizes that Herrmann is dead, and he died on stage in Cementia with the other half of the scarf around his neck. Which he tells Emerson, who is just so not having that. Ned explains it was a shell game, just like the one his dad used to play, with the cement blocks hiding the card and the body, and they found only the one the killer wanted them too. TWo performances, two cement blocks. The twins explain that someone forklifted out the fake block in the place of the killer block that night when no one was looking.

Everyone goes back to the Conjurer's Castle to find Herrmann. Ned, Emerson, and Chuck find the cement block with the help of metal detectors, which is right under the floor. They're contemplating the why of it when overhead, they hear the cement mixer go into action. Olive and the twins join the sleuthing trio, and when the boys catch sight of a shadow crossing the curtain, they take off, metal detectors held aloft. Emerson gives chase, with his gun, and Olive follows because chuck and Ned, they don't have guns. In chasing the twins, olive finds the Geek, passed out on the floor with a wooden spike in his nose. Olive determines that he's dead. Again, with the gross. Ralston and Maurice then find Olive, Emerson, and the prone Geek, and they have Alexandria in their clutches, who's returned to the scene of the crime to pack her things and go.

Chuck and Ned have dug out Herrmann to wake him up. Ned tells him it was with magic, which Herrmann is cool with. They ask the secret to Cementia, and Herrmann asks Chuck to plug his ears so he can tell Ned magic man to magic man. Herrmann had always escaped through a series of trap doors activated somehow by a magnet in his shoe. When the cement came down the last time, the magnets were missing. Chuck asks for last words or requests or messages for Ralston and Maurice. Herrmann bequeaths the kids his book of magic secrets, hidden in the false bottom of a freezer.

Ned explains it all to Emerson, Maurice, Ralston, and Alexandria onstage, and Chuck realizes that the Geek had eaten magnets. Emerson says the Geek's not the killer but the killee. He's left Olive to guard the body, which is not so much dead as alive and taking her hostage, using the wooden stake from his nose as a weapon with which to keep her in a chokehold.

The Geek hauls Olive onto the stage, where everyone tries to talk him down. The Narrator gives us the facts, which are these: the Geek, who had a new trick of shoving bolts up his nose (yeeeesh), looked on Herrmann as a father figure, but Herrmann was tired of the novelty act and rather looked on Maurice and Ralston as his successors. So the Geek ate the magnets from Herrmann's shoes and set it up so that the block of cement would fall from beneath the stage onto a slide and into the floor. He tells Ned that he would have eaten anything for Herrmann, but he broke his promises and turned his back on the Geek, abandoned him. Ned, doing that thing where he talks super fast and says something cute and profound, tells the Geek that his father abandoned him, and when he was a kid, he wrote his future self letters, telling future Ned never to forgive his dad. They are little angry time capsules. But the anger never helped, and Ned still loved his dad and wanted him back. "Now!" he shouts. In the background, Maurice and Ralston flip the trap door switch just as Olive elbows the Geek in the stomach and leaps into Ned's arms. The Geek slides down the slide he set up and into Herrmann's open hands. "Ta da!" the boys proclaim.

The Geek is arrested, the twins find the book, and they give a copy of it to Alexandria, the new headliner at the Conjurer's Castle.

And Ned? Ned's rediscovered magic with the knowledge that some things disappear and then some things reappear. He takes all the warm fuzzies that Chuck's been throwing his way, the prodding and sympathizing and the wanting to know about his family, that weird pain she's sharing with him, and throws it back at her. She's been prank calling Lily, hoping to hear from Lily herself that she was a mother, that she had a baby, that she had a Chuck once. She wants to dive right into that family weirdness and know everything. So Ned? Sends Olive into the aunts' house, bee lapel pin with mic in place and her ear transmitter solidly nestled in her ear, and Olive asks all the questions Chuck has ever wanted answered, starting with the story of the day she was born. And while Sister Mary Mary might have been expecting a demon, the moment Chuck was born, Lily knew she was an angel. Chuck listens outside, sitting in Ned's car, her hand pressed to his with a plastic divider between.