Pushing Daisies Season 1 Episode 1

Ned: What if you didn't have to be dead?
Chuck: That would be preferable.

Ned: I wish I could give you an emotional Heimlich so you could cough up that fear and anxiety, but I can't.

Leo: (points to his missing right jaw area) Do I have something right here?
Ned: No, there's nothing right there.

Emerson: (About Leo's "alleged" murderer, his dog, Cantaloupe) Cantaloupe was framed; someone put a part of the victim in her mouth.
Ned: Huh.
Emerson: Hey, docile as a kitten, says the family.
Ned: Despite it being a Chow, the breed most likely to turn on its owner?
Emerson: Hey, hey! That's racial profiling.

Lily: And the food is perfectly atrocious. Unless she enjoyed vomiting and diarrhea, I can't imagine she had a good last meal.
Emerson: A good last meal can go a long way. Our penal system makes a point of it.

Emerson: I'm glad you did it. It makes the worst thing I ever did seem insignificant.
Ned: Listen to you, all judgy judge.
Emerson: "Judgy judge"?

Shiny Shoes Killer: (while holding Chuck's dead body, he finds her cabin on the ship is locked and he can't obtain the monkeys) Oh, for Pete's sake. This is a nightmare!

Emerson: You know what? We all have childhood issues, okay? Believe me, I got the full subscription, okay? Horror stories!
Ned: I kind of killed her dad when I was ten.
Emerson: Maybe not horror stories.

Ned: Hey, I think somebody's truck's on fire.
(cuts to a pickup truck in flames)
Grave Digger: Aw, jeez.

Ned: I wonder how long she's been here.
Emerson: Touch the poor bitch and ask her.

Ned: You died for a pair of plaster monkeys?
Chuck: Deedee said they weren't worth much, their only value was sentimental.
Emerson: Those must have been some emotional monkeys.

(Ned touches the recently strangled-to-death Deedee Duffield and she comes back to life.)
Deedee: Hey, Charlotte!
Chuck: Hey, Deedee.
Deedee: Now, how'd I know you'd be the first person I'd see when I got to...? Is this...? Which one is this?
Chuck: This is neither. Well, maybe it's both, but, listen, this is the deal: you get to talk for, like, a minute, we're gonna catch up, and then you're not talking anymore.
Deedee: Does everyone get to do this? 'Cause, girl, we gotta break it down.
Chuck: Did you know I was gonna get killed?
Deedee: I thought there might be the possibility, yes. I'm real sorry about that. I probably should've said something. But to be honest, and really, why not, at this point, if it were safe, I would've done it myself. God, this is fantastic! Being honest is fun!
Emerson: Ask her who killed her and you and what's with the monkeys.
Deedee: Who are those people?
Chuck: That's Emerson, I don't really know him, and this is Ned. He was my first kiss.
Deedee: (to Ned) Now, you're adorable. Look at your li... (touches Ned's cheek and becomes dead again)
Emerson: You couldn't have... scooted back a little?
Ned: I didn't know she was gonna touch my cheek. Who does that?
Chuck: Actually, she does that a lot.

Coroner: (To Chuck) You the toxicologist?
Chuck: Yes.
Coroner: (to Ned) Aren't you the dog expert?
Ned: No.
Coroner: Mmmmmm-hm.

Coroner: You the dog expert?
Ned: Uh-huh.
Coroner: We already had a dog expert.
Ned: I'm the other one.
Coroner: Mmmmmmm-hm.

Emerson: How's he look?
Ned: Fine, but my threshold's pretty high so you have to take that with a grain of salt.
Emerson: That ain't a grain of salt, that's one of them blocks they give cows to lick.

Chuck: I'll be so mad if you're lying, you'll have me scratching the drapes.
Ned: I'm not lying. Please don't attack the window treatments.

Shiny Shoes Killer: (looking at Chuck) Didn't I kill you?

(Olive sees Chuck come out of Ned's apartment in disguise and she stares at her)
Chuck: I'm a friend of Ned's.
Olive: Does he touch you?

Olive: How was your convention?
Ned: Conventional. How's Digby?
Olive: A little neurotic. He's a very needy dog. Do you pet him? Maybe if you pet him every once in a while, he wouldn't be so neurotic.
Ned: I pet him. I'm allergic, so I don't actually touch him, but I pet him.
Olive: With a stick? How do you pet him?
Ned: A stick is involved but it's more like a handle to a p-p-p-petting device.
Olive: Your dog needs to be touched. (seductively) We all need to be touched.
Ned: You touch him, other people have touched him.
Olive: (moving Ned's hands to her shoulders) He's your dog. Do you, uh, touch anything?
Ned: Of course. I touch lots of things.
Olive: With affection? When was the last time someone touched you with affection?
Ned: I get touched. Could you get Digby's leash now?
Olive: Hmmmmmmmm...
Ned: (to Digby) You don't mind that I don't touch you, do you?

Emerson: Well, who died instead?
(Ned shows Emerson the funeral director's obituary.)
Ned: It's sort of a random proximity thing.
Emerson: Bitch, I was in proximity!

Chuck: Thanks for calling me "Chuck." Do you know no one's called me Chuck since...since you.
Ned: I used to, when I lived next door to you, I had a cr... I was in...You were my first kiss.
Chuck Yeah? You were my first kiss, too. Do you wanna be my last kiss? First and last? Or is that weird?
Ned: That's not weird; it's magical.

Lily Charlotte was a firecracker. Always trying to get us out of the house, threatened to bake antidepressants into our food. Got to the point I was scared to eat anything she cooked.

Narrator: She read about people she could never be, on adventures she would never have. Life was good enough until one day it wasn't. Chuck wanted more. But at Boutique Travel Travel Boutique she got more than she bargained for.

Ned: I hate to be a bad host, but I'm sort of exhausted from chasing your coffin.

Emerson: Are you in love with her? 'Cause it's that level of stupid.

Chuck: I've been ruminating and by ruminating I mean pondering, not chewing cud. How about we solve my murder and collect the reward? Wouldn't that be poetic? Certainly an anecdote.
Emerson: (to Ned)She's supposed to be in the ground.
Ned: (to Chuck)I thought you didn't want the reward.
Chuck:No, I wanted you not to want the reward. $50,000-—that's a lot of money. Three way split 30-30-40? It's only fair I get more. I did die for it.

Chuck: Was this really an act of kindness? Me. Here. Were you really trying to do something good for no other reason then to help me?
Ned: I was being selfish. I'd love to tell myself I was being unselfish, but I know deep down in my primal sweet spot I was being unselfish for selfish reasons. I just thought my world would be a better place if you were in it.

Ned: This is pushing your luck.
Chuck: Yeah, well, luck pushed me first.

Chuck: You can't just touch somebody's life and be done with it.
Ned: Yes I can, that's how I roll.

Vivian: Charlotte was a nice girl.
Lily: With the exception of puberty.
Vivian: Which was when Lily was going through a change of life.
Lily: Impolite to discuss a person's menopause in mixed company.
Vivian: It nearly killed me.

Chuck: Do you believe in reincarnation?
Emerson: Hell no. The planet's falling apart. Right now, it's the children's problem. We reincarnate, it's our problem.

(regarding Chuck)
Ned: I haven't thought of her since I was ten.
Emerson: Think of her a lot when you were ten?
Ned: I don't remember anything when I was ten.
Narrator: The pie maker remembers everything.

Chuck: I suppose dying's as good an excuse as any to start living.

Chuck: You said you wanted to know who killed me so that justice could be served. See, I don't think that "Justice" was on the menu. Maybe as a side dish, but not as an entrée.
Ned: It was most definitely an entrée. It was a Special of the Day. Could we drop the metaphor? I wouldn't have known you had died if it wasn't for the reward.
Chuck: When were you going to tell me?
Ned: In the morning or whenever it came up--whichever didn't come first.

Chuck: (after Ned falls asleep) I'd kiss you if it wouldn't kill me.

Chuck: I can't even hug you? What if you need a hug? A hug can turn your day around.
Ned: I'm not a fan of the hug.
Chuck: Then you haven't been hugged properly. It's like an emotional Heimlich. Someone puts their arms around you and they give you a squeeze and all your fear and anxiety come shooting out of your mouth in a big wet wad and you can breath again.
Ned: That's fine for someone else to do if I'm choking on something other than emotion, but you can't touch me.
Chuck: So a kiss is out of the question?
Ned: I've lost my train of thought.

Narrator: As he stared at her, he reached around his back and held his own hand, pretending he was holding hers. And at that very moment, she was pretending to be holding his.

Chuck: I'm not who you think I am.
Emerson: Who does he think you are?
Chuck: The small town girl who never saw the world who would have the first time out be her last... well, that is who I am but... I was hoisted by my own pitard.
Ned: What's a pitard?
Chuck: In my case, the pitard was that Tahitian getaway. It was a devil's bargain.
Emerson: Who's the devil?
Chuck: Deedee Duffield, manager of Boutique Travel Travel Boutique. She offered me a high seas adventure at no cost. All I had to do was pick up a package.
Ned: Are you a drug mule?
Chuck: No, I'm a... monkey mule.

Emerson: Sounds like you're a narcoleptic.
Ned: I suffer from sudden and uncontrollable attacks of deep sleep?
Emerson: What's the other one?
Ned: Necrophiliac.
Emerson: Words that sound alike get mixed up in my head.
Olive: Me, too. I used to think "masturbation" meant chewing your food. (awkward silence) I don't think that anymore.

Ned: I asked you not to use the word "zombie." It's disrespectful. Stumbling around squawking for brains? It's not how they do. And "undead"? Nobody wants to be "un"-anything. Why begin a statement with a negative? It's like saying "I don't disagree." Just say you agree.
Emerson: Are you comfortable with "living dead"?
Ned: You're either living or your dead. When you're living, you're alive. When you're dead, that's what you are. But when you're dead and then you're not, you're alive again. Can't we say "alive again"?