Pushing Daisies took a week off and so did I – but that does not mean the show has let up – it has just gotten more intense.

Episode 5, the Halloween episode follows a ghost who kills Olive’s old friends and her past comes to light as the team tries to find the murder before Ned has to save Olive like he saved Chuck. In episode 6, the Dog Show episode – a dog breeder is found stabbed to death, but the real murder weapon was poison. The team knows it’s his wife – but which of the FOUR did it?

Both of the cases were a lot of fun – the Halloween episode because it showed so much back-story on Olive, as well as lots of action (the unfortunate result meaning more people die. The dog case was intriguing because it dealt with polygamy – and that is totally crazy. Throw in intense characters who look like the walked out of the pages of Christopher Guest’s Dog Show, and you have some hilarious scenes.

More importantly, there were three new developments for three of the main characters that both involved that organ in our chest that beats us up, keeps us going, and breaks every so often. Ned and Chuck are torn by their increasingly incomplete relationship with each other. Olive finally locks lips with her love but is crushed by Ned’s nonchalance over the incident. Emerson tries to keep his head in the game while he falls for a suspect.

Ned and Chuck cannot touch, for if Ned touches Chuck, she will return to her blue-dead state. The first few episodes have included inventive ways to cope with this quandary, such as Ned’s glass-divided-rubber-glove-outfitted-car, saran wrap, and bee HAZMAT suits. For any other guy, and most gals, these compromises would be grossly inadequate. And until now, Ned and Chuck have been enjoying their newly rekindled, innocent love, without any complaints. But now they seem to both want more and there are obvious hints that they each want to, and will, look to other alternatives. Alternatives they each can have skin-contact with. Will that be the end for the two childhood sweethearts? Will physical hunger drive them apart? Even if those two macro-issue questions won't be resolved, it appears like the show is moving in that direction.

In a moment of gratitude and emotion Olive finally plays some serious tonsil hockey with the man of her dreams, the Piemaker. Although Ned pulls away when Chuck steps into the clearing, and tries to brush off the kiss, even going so far as to share a cruel exchange with Olive, Olive holds out hope. And she keeps pushing Ned and Chuck toward that inevitable “we-have-to-see-other-people” phase with thinly veiled comments amounting to: “I just want you to be happy – but you should realize Olive wants you.” As each show passes I think it becomes more and more likely that Olive will get what she want, and that Ned may find that he is getting what he wants too. What do you think?

Emerson’s plot development will likely amount to anything, but he does share some heavy chemistry with a suspect, a confident, driven businesswoman Emerson has eyes for. Will she make it into another episode? Unclear. But the narrator did use words like “love.” And the show usually doesn’t throw the L word around carelessly.