Comfort Food
Updated 2008-12-04 08:45:44
Poor Ned. Even at the Academy of Sadness, he stress-baked. One night, in fact, he was caught in flagrante delicto by none other than his BFF Eugene, who immediately joined him in the act. This lead, as Jim Dale tells us, to nothing less than a booming industry in which Ned provided comfort-via-pie to his schoolmates, lifting their spirits. Of course, this service came with consequences -- Ned got in trouble with the headmaster -- and he is to learn this lesson yet again years later at the grave of his girlfriend's father. Which he has just dug up. In order to bring the desiccated corpse of her dad back to life. In front of her. As one does.
This was just slightly hard for me to watch, this scene right here. My father died unexpectedly in 2001, and I am glad I have enough perspective on it now to be able to see this and really feel the sweetness of Chuck's reaction beside the good-natured humor the show injects into all scenes like this. That being said, HOLY LORD, they WOKE UP CHUCK'S DAD. I mean, I know they prepared us for it last week, and all, but... was I the only one who thought they'd open the coffin and it would be empty somehow? I was amazed they went there, and impressed with how inoffensive it was, while still being darkly funny. Also, while his appearance is fairly alarming, sure, the man has been dead for 20-something years, right? I was expecting more... uh, you know... I was expecting his remains to not have remained in such good shape, is what I'm saying, but I suppose I am grateful that they did.
After some debate over which one of them will have the first 30-seconds of the interview, Chuck insists ("I'll hit you with a shovel") that Ned go first in order to find out the deal about Dwight. Ned lays down the touch and swiftly explains to Mr. Charles that Dwight is hanging around and seems to be a dangerous guy. "Oh, yeah," Mr. Charles confirms. Dwight's a bad guy. "Oh, no," Ned cringes. "He stole Chuck's -- I still call your daughter 'Chuck,' still, like when I was nine..." Chuck interrupts: "Fifteen!" Ned: "No, I was nine." Chuck: "Seconds!" Ned gets back to it. He explains that Dwight stole Chuck's pocket watch and is threatening to expose a very important secret of theirs. "Well, if he's got the watch, you've got nothing to worry about," Mr. Charles says. "The threat is his insurance policy -- if you don't say nothing, you've got nothing to worry about." With that, Ned says thanks and scurries away to the cemetery gates to give Chuck the final portion of the minute alone with her father.
The next morning, though clinging to Chuck through the plastic sheeting that divides their bed, Ned remains blissfully unaware when Chuck sneaks out, JD says, to see to unattended business. Hmm.
Meanwhile, at Casa Aunts, Vivian waits all sad and lonely for her gentleman caller, unaware Lily had chased him off their porch, with a shotgun, hours earlier. In fact, Lily's decided to make doubly sure this bastard gets gone, and is now hiding in Dwight's gun-filled room at the Come & Sleep Motel. Heee. The sexual frustration in the PD writer's room must be at a painful all-time high. "The way I see this," Lily says, once again sticking the barrel under his chin, "we both got something you want." Dwight plays it cool. "What would that be, my spicy cocktail?" he asks. So appropriate. Lily explains: "I got my daughter's watch; and you got your insides where you want 'em." She goes on to list her demands: she wants Dwight to dig up Charlotte's grave again and replace the watch, after he tells her what he's really doing there. Dwight begins at the very beginning, his conception in the sweat and sawdust of a traveling carnival. Ha! No, really he's just providing a distraction for the handgun he's now pulling out of the back of his trousers. Y'all, even after seeing it done in countless episodes of my eternal beloved Magnum P.I. , I will never accept that there is any level of precaution that would make it okay to stick a gun in your pants and walk around with it like that. Anyway, he whips it out, mid-sentence, and points it at Lily who promptly BLOWS HIS ASS THROUGH THE DOOR. Whoa! Ah, but wait, that's just Lily's fantasy of how it went down. In fact, he never shows up and she writes him a note. "I got it. U want it? Cemetery. L." Quick and to the point.
Back at the Pie Hole, Ned is avoiding -- by declaring it an "emotional snow-day" -- going to the Comfort Foods Cook-off. He doesn't want to leave Chuck, who he is sure must be overwhelmed by having to say hello and then goodbye again to her father in thirty seconds. "Well, believe me, I feel plenty whelmed," Chuck says, "but not overly." In fact, she's quite sanguine. She says it was hard, no matter how well she had budgeted her seconds. "The hello-againing was wonderful," she says, "and the goodbye-againing wasn't." She insists that he go participate in the cook-off, saying maybe she needs an emotional snow day, as well. "You need an emotional snow day from me?" he asks, hurt. "Is this weird now? Are we weird now because I did 'it' with your dad?!" Awesome. No, Chuck says, they're not weird, but she has so many feelings she doesn't know how to deal with them and needs to just wait until later to talk to him. In the meantime, she really wants Ned to go to the cook-off, especially because Olive needs him. "She said two years ago she could taste that first prize blue ribbon," Chuck says, "and then that taste was replaced with the bitter tang of defeat." Ned chuckles. "Bitter tang, bitter Olive," he says. "It's a story." Chuck says that settles it, then, that he should go: "[Olive] will love you for it."
Of course she will. And so will I, especially when Ned arrives with Olive at the scene of the cook-off, both of them adorned in matching striped vests with life-like pie hats. Oh, so fantastic. Olive's vest is cut low, natch. Don't want to waste one second of cleavage time, do we? Thank you, show. The thing hasn't even started, and Olive is already fired up. "Isn't it good to be back again?" she asks, passionately. "You and me, shoulder to shoulder, eye to eye. Decorative hats placed squarely on sweaty brows. Bonding in a fiery kiln of competition that forges men's souls!" Ned tries a reality check: "We're baking pies, Olive." No, not just pies, she says. Damn. I don't know if you spend a lot of time in Monroe (Funroe), Louisiana, as I do, but if you are ever there, may I strongly recommend a href="http://www.discoverourtown.com/LA/local-46502.html" target="_blank">this restaurant ? It will make you proud to be an American. Perhaps when this show goes off the air, I will do a pilgrimage there. Anyway, Olive says what they're baking are damn great pies, and that now that she is unencumbered of the sexual tension that she once felt for Ned, she can focus on the blue ribbon goal. Yeah, it's obvs she is over that whole thing. In fact, she is sure they would have won two years ago, had they not been screwed by the hated Muffin Buffalo. "Lord in Heaven," she snarls, looking over at the enemy's booth, "how I hate the Buffalo." Arriving on the scene suddenly, a portly man on a Rascal scooter rolls up to ask if she is referring to the noble breed of bison lost forever to settler's greed, "or the upstate New York hamlet still thirsting for Superbowl glory?" Olive points her pie hat in the direction of her nemesis beneath the buffalo sign. "I mean that big phony whipping up those crap muffins over there," she says. The fat man shudders. "Marianne Marie Beetle," he says. "They call her the Pastry Slayer." Olive scoffs as the guy finally introduces himself. He is Leo Burns, the new cook-off coordinator and lover of all things foodie. It slays me not a little that Olive is barely taller than the guy while he's sitting down. Anyway, he says, this year's teams to beat are the Muffin Buffalo and the legendary Colonel Likkin', he of the chicken that might possibly sound familiar to you. Realizing that he is talking to the Pie Holers, Leo confides that, though he is not supposed to say so as the event chief, he's a big fan of theirs and is rooting for them. "Oh, what a dreamboat!" Olive says to Ned as Leo scoots away. "Well, a tugboat, but still." Heading off to set up their booth, they are confronted by none other than their mortal adversary, the Beetle of the Buffalo. "Ted," she croons, "it's so nice to see that you came back after taking a year off to lick your wounds and hide in the dank shadows of humiliating defeat! And you were so close." Since the Beetle is wearing a square dancing outfit with a stuffed buffalo stuck inside her bonnet and is played by none other than the very weird and wonderful Beth Grant , it is impossible not to love her. (Apparently this is a reprisal of the same role she played in an ep of Bryan Fuller's previous brilliant show, Wonderfalls .) Olive, however, does not love her. "It's almost like," she says, speaking of their last run-in, "someone sabotaged our ovens, Cheater McGee." The Beetle sweetly and evilly denies this. "You remember, now," she says, "losing doesn't make you a loser. Oh, wait. It does. Better get to stuffing your pie holes." With that, the challenge is renewed and Olive rages off to prepare for battle. Meanwhile, Ned's thoughts remain with Chuck. He wonders, JD says, what Chuck could possibly be so afraid to tell him.
Welllll, guess what it is? YEAH. Chuck's dad? NOT DEAD. This nearly caused me to flip my wig, especially when Jimmy D must painfully explain what were supposed to be Chuck's final thirty seconds with her father. "Son of a bitch," she scolds herself for bothering to tell him she misses him, "now I'm eating into my 'I love you' time." Sighing, she gives him the wallet she made for him at age eight, and overwhelmed with emotion, makes a rash decision in their final moments before Ned returns to give him the farewell touch. She makes him put on her glove, tells him to play dead when Ned touches him, and says she will be back to dig him up in an hour. Lightening flashes all around as she closes the coffin again, and we see them now, reunited where Chuck has hidden him in Ned's abandoned childhood home. Dude. Here is where I started getting sad/creeped out/morbidly fascinated/amused/creeped OUT. Mostly the creeps are due to the fact that she is wrapping his exposed face and hands in bandages like he's a movie monster. They casually discuss what his twenty absent years were like. He says it didn't feel like twenty years, just like "gliding." Chuck herself says she didn't feel gliding, herself. "What business would you have gliding?" he asks. "I died," she says simply. "And then Ned touched me, and here I am." Her dad seems skeptical. "And he never touched you again?" he asks. She says no, Ned can't touch her again. "Good," Mr. Charles interrupts rather tersely, and goes on to quiz her on how this whole thing is even possible. "Since when," he laughs, "did death get a loophole?" Chuck: "Since Ned." Cheerfully, she outlines all the awesome things about being re-alive. His dreams, she says, will be so vivid now. She tells him all about the bees she has kept since he died, and the sweetness of the honey they make. "I hate to look in a gift horse's mouth," he chuckles, "but I'm not gonna start craving human flesh am I?" Chuck says no, but everything else will taste better. Mr. Charles seems a little... I don't know, unappreciative. "What's the catch, Button?" he asks. He wants to know why she's hiding him away. "You don't want Nedly-Deadly to know that my bucket's still kickin'. Why? Is there a catch?" Chuck bows her head in shame, hems and haws, and finally admits that yes, there's a catch. "And I'm gonna catch it before I get caught." Mr. C: "Can you tell me what that catch is, Button?" Leaving, she says she'll tell him tonight. Do any of y'all sort of get the not-very-warm fuzzies from Mr. Charles? Yeah, me too.
Attempting to have a peaceful morning, Emerson is at this moment enjoying his delicious Bolivia Wara when Chuck bursts in. "I need your help," she says. Emerson: "Friend help or pay help?" Chuck looks down, full of sadness. Emerson: "That's the kind of body language you never hear with pay help." It all comes rushing out. Chuck explains how Ned brought her dad back to life, as usual, and that they gave him the re-touch within the minute, as is policy. "No biggie," she says, "but YES biggie..." She explains the thing about using her glove to block the touch, "and, Ned doesn't know, and... please help me." She tearfully says that her dad is alive because of her bad impulse control, and that that of course means someone else must be dead. "First of all, relax," Emerson says, seemingly moved by her tears. "You're not mad at me?" she asks hopefully. "HELL YEAH, I'M MAD," Emerson yells. "I'm steamed, furious, red-hot and don't think I ain't gon' yell at you later!" However, he adds in a reluctantly understanding tone, for now they just need to put their heads together and figure out what to do.
Meanwhile, back at the cook-off, Olive is in the zone. Seeing this, her arch adversary the Beetle calls across the convention floor to her that it sure seems she's spending a lot of energy toward disappointment. "I'm gonna win that blue ribbon," Olive says, smiling maniacally at Ned, "wrap it around her neck, and strangle her with it." Ned is alarmed. "Olive, you're baking with hate!" he says, and she agrees. "Rich, buttery, high in carbohydrate hate," she agrees. "You know what no one ever tells you about cooking with the dark side? The food is really good." Hee. Ned tries to counter that revenge is a dish best served cold, but she'll have none of it. "Okay, help cook or get out of the kitchen, short pants," she shoots back. The Beetle can't stay out of it. "Ah, the sweet smell of victory," she says, sniffing up her latest batch. Olive: "Not this year, turd-muffin." That almost killed me, but before Olive can really brandish that rolling pin like she wants, they hear a nearby scream. It's Colonel Likkin's wife -- she staggers out of their booth to screech that the Colonel is dead! Ned rushes in to see the nightmarish truth. Indeed, the Colonel has collapsed face-first into his giant oil vat and is not just dead, he's extra crispy.
Olive leans over the widow providing cleavage support while the poor woman mourns. "The Colonel, gone forever," she says. "I always knew one of his many massive heart attacks would do him in." Olive offers the small comfort that "at least the Colonel left this world fryin'." Mrs. Likkin', though, finds no comfort in those words or in Olive's available bosom. She doesn't know what to do now, especially since the recipe for the Colonel's famous chicken died with him. "That was his greatest and only legacy," she says. "My husband was a fat-fryin' savant. He kept that recipe stored in his head. If only I could have him back for one minute!" Ned sees an opportunity to be the hero and pulls Olive aside. "I need your help to help the widow," he whispers. Olive: "How? Her husband's dead! What are you gonna do, bring him back to life and say 'Colonel, what's your recipe?'" Umm... He tells her to distract the crowd and the paramedics while he, er, searches the Colonel's workstation. Olive is confused, but of course she is game. Sticking her fingers in the cherry pie of a nearby onlooker, she smears the red filling under her eyes and staggers around like Oedipus, screaming that her eyes are bleeding. Wait, was it Oedipus who blinded himself? ANYWAY, as she wails, Ned sneaks back into the Colonel's booth, and gives him the touch. "I finally know what my birds felt like," the fried Colonel says. "I guess I'm dead, eh?" Ned cringes, saying it was a heart attack, and that he's brought him back because Mrs. Colonel wants to preserve the recipe. "Good woman, my bride," the Colonel says, tenaciously. "Let's do it! I got all 500 herbs and spices right up heah! Bettah pull up a chair and grab yo'self a pen!" Ned blanches saying that sounds like a long trip down a lazy river they don't have time for. The Colonel insists that you can't rush goodness, and then realizes that Ned said he died of a heart attack. "Bushwah!" he says. "Some carpetbagging coward snuck up behind, battered me in my own battah, and shoved me in the boilin' oil! That was murder, son." Ned asks if he saw who did it. "Attacked, from behind!" the Colonel says. "They were stealthy, like a snake or a yankee!" Heh. I am not sure if you know this, gentle readers, but I am from Alabama and my husband is, inexplicably, from South Jersey. I especially enjoyed this moment, as when angry, I have been known to accuse him of Northern Aggression and call him a yankee carpetbagging stooge, while shouting that I will never go hungry again. It is very effective in an argument, I promise you.
Anyway, the Colonel says that he does have one written copy of the recipe in his coat pocket. He can't reach it, of course, because the fat fryin' process has robbed him of his mobility. Ned uses tongs to try to get the recipe out and finds it missing. The Colonel is outraged, and as his minute draws to a close, Ned swears to find it along with the person who killed him. "I hate to go," the Colonel says. "But at least I'm goin' delicious." With that, he takes a chomp OUT OF HIS OWN HAND, causing Ned to scream, and Ned gives him the goodbye touch.
Meanwhile, Emerson continues to counsel Chuck on her impulsive decision. She is still crying, saying she doesn't regret bringing back her dad, but that maybe the worst part is that she lied to Ned. Oh, yeah, and the whole thing about how her actions resulted in someone else being "less alive." Emerson: "Nice euphemism, Killer." Chuck suddenly has the idea that since they were in the cemetery at the dead of night, maybe no one else was around and thus no one died. Emerson quickly puts paid to that foolishness. "You think this is a 'sometimes' rule?" he asks, incredulous. "No. It's an EVERY TIME rule. There's some sucker out there dead in the leaves." Chuck cries with renewed vigor. What if it was some sweet old lady with insomnia visiting her husband's grave? It could have been anyone! Any innocent bystander! When she grows hysterical, Emerson must interject. "All right," he says. "We got another body to find. A body that was deaded by Ned, only he don't know it because you never told him, which is the wrong I'm correcting." She says she knows what she did was wrong and that if Emerson helps her clean it up, all she and Ned will have to deal with is each other. "And your daddy," Emerson reminds her, wagging his finger. "You can't keep that from him." Chuck tearfully nods her agreement and kisses his cheek. "Uh uh! Don't be peckin' me!" he says. "That's the peck of cahoots, which we are definitely not in!" Chuck sniffs and thanks him anyway.
Back at the cook-off, the Colonel's widow declares that the event should continue, despite her husband's tragic "heart attack," as the Colonel would have wanted it that way. "I know it's a tragedy, obviously," Olive whispers to Ned. "But you know what they say, 'when God closes a door, He opens an oven.'" Ned: "They don't say that, and if they do, they don't have much sympathy for a dead Colonel." Anyway, he says, he knows the Colonel was murdered for his secret recipe. Olive, pulled from her competitive focus, asks how he could possibly know that just from looking at the body. "I... I'm an investigator," Ned says, insulted. "Working with Emerson Cod has taught me things! Deductive and inductive reasoning... evidence gathering... a dead body can say a lot to the, uh, trained professional." Anyway, he says, his hunches tell him there's a murder to solve. Olive is unmoved. Turning on her heel, she points out that Ned's never solved a murder alone before. "I'm not alone," he says to her back as she walks away, and she stops, smiling. "Me?" she asks, thrilled. "Oh! I just got all tingly, and not just in the nether regions!" Hee. Ned grins sheepishly, which I love. Of course, Lee Pace is a championship sheepish grinner, but what I love is that they have not written Ned to be repulsed by Olive's love for him. "How do we go about this whole P.I. thing?" she asks. "Do we just jam the gun in the suspect's mouth and say 'sing, canary, or I'm gonna decorate this wallpaper with your guts?'" Hmm, maybe now Ned is a little repulsed? He points out that technically you cannot blow someone's guts out their mouth, but Olive is undeterred. Before they can make a plan, though, they walk into their booth and find their oven smoking. "Sabotaged!" Olive whispers. "I bet it was the Beetle!" Ned: "I bet it was the Colonel's killer!"
At the cemetery, Chuck is rambling about how she brought some cash with her so that when they find the body they can sneak it over to a funeral home with the money and a note saying "every human body deserves dignity; please bury this one." It will be just like leaving a baby on a doorstep, she says. "except... the tail end of things." Man, of all the black humor we have heard in this show, that has got to be the blackest. This will give them, Chuck goes on, the benefit of closure. They wander the cemetery looking for the body until Emerson pauses, suggesting that the body they find? Might give them anything but closure. You know why? BECAUSE THE BODY IS DWIGHT. Dun dun DUUUUUUHHHHNNN! The number of "WHOA!"s this show has provoked from our lips over the past two weeks is really racking up. Chuck is totally flabbergasted. "What was Dwight Dixon doing here?" she asks, on the verge. Are you ready for another whoa? He was there with a rifle pointed at her dad's grave -- to KILL HER. "Why would he want us dead?!" she wonders desperately, and Jim Dale has to break it down for us. Seems that upon discovering that the watch he stole from Chuck had been stolen from him, he of course assumed that Chuck had taken it and set out to reclaim it. Again. He followed her to the graveyard, assuming Chuck was trying to return the watch to her father's grave. Ready to pull the trigger, he is shocked and appalled to look through his sights and see Chuck and Ned appearing to desecrate Charles Charles's grave. "And, as is traditional," JD says, "he decided to put an end to the thing he did not understand." However, as all his reeling and unbelieving had taken exactly 61 seconds, he lost that opportunity and his life, as well. Chuck feels a little less guilty now that she realizes that if she hadn't kept her dad alive, she would have been murdered twice. "Yeah," Emerson says, "once was enough." She says as Ned would have been dead, too, accidentally killing Dwight lights up three points on their side of the cosmic scoreboard. Specious reasoning, but I support it. Emerson says that they're also going to save that bundle they would have left at a funeral home by burying Dwight's body in Charles Charles's grave. "We'll get him under the dirt before the pay-your-respects-at-lunch crowd shows up," he says, adding that by the time the grass grows back over the plot, it will be like none of this ever happened. Obvs, Emerson has forgotten about Decaying Dad all alive and shit back in town! "I can't wait 'til it's like none of this ever happened," Chuck says as Emerson runs away for shovels. "But it did happen," Dwight's dead body says from the ground. Chuck's eyes go huge, and my household lets out a simultaneous WHOA.
At the cook-off, Olive bitterly throws away the remains of their prize pies as Ned investigates the oven. It's been sabotaged all right -- the flame won't shut off. "Let it burn," Olive says. "Maybe it will destroy this building and all its memories of almost-winning with the cleansing power of flame!" Have I mentioned how much I adore Olive? Yes? Okay. Ned assures her that they are staying in the contest -- they have to in order to find the saboteur and the Colonel's killer who Ned believes to be one and the same. "Winning would make an excellent cover," Olive says, and is about to formulate a pie-baking plan when they are interrupted by Vivian, in tears. She went by the Pie Hole, she says, but it was closed, and didn't know where else to turn. Ned is silently concerned that the Pie Hole is closed -- where is Chuck? -- but Olive is all sympathy. "It's man trouble," Olive says, taking her hands. "I can tell. I knew that Dwight Dixon was heartbreak waiting to pop." Vivian says it's all Lily's fault. "She aimed a shotgun at Dwight's privates and told him to stay away from us," Vivian says. "But half of us is me, and I don't want him away. I want him close." Olive leads her away to speak privately, and pulling herself together, Vivian apologizes. "Forgive me. I'm so wrapped up in my man," she says, "I'm thoughtlessly keeping you from yours." Olive is confused. "Who, Ned?" she asks, and goes out of her way to explain that, no, they are partners only in the contest sense, not in a romantic sense. "Like a brother and sister," she says. "Like an asexual, androgynous brother and sister." She laughs uncomfortably until Vivian moves on. When Dwight didn't show up for their date, she says, she tried to laugh, too. "But lying to yourself about love, never works," she says. "Damn," Olive sighs quietly, thinking of Ned. "I know," Vivian says with such sweetness. "But still I keep lying and looking all the same. If you see Dwight at the Pie Hole, will you tell him about the looking part? I'd like to see him." Olive is moved, as anyone would be who had to stand in front of the genius Ellen Greene as she acts -- wow, this cast... there is not a better one on any show. "I understand," Olive says, hugging her goodbye and, turning back to see Ned who has continued trying to fix the oven, adds a quiet "boy, do I understand."
This poignant moment is interrupted when Ned pulls a wad of burning... something... from the oven, declaring it evidence. It's batter of some kind, sweet, woodsy, like a Berkshire forest on a crisp, autumn morning. "Ah, caramelized sugar," Olive adds, taking a bite. "Only one chef here uses pure maple syrup..." In unison they accuse: THE WAFFLE NAZI. Whoa!
Back at the cemetery, Jim Dale explains that Dead Dwight Dixon talking is the result of Chuck's guilty mind this time, not some supernatural mojo as is usually the case when dead people talk to her. "Doesn't change the fact that you have royally screwed up," Dwight's body says. "Was it worth it?" he goes on. "Sure, fine, I'm a bad man. You saved three good people by putting me down -- a three-for-one sale on the grandest scale." Calling for Emerson to hurry with the shovels, Chuck snarkily asks the body what he would have done. "Same thing," Dwight says, "but here's the difference. I would have told Ned by now." Emerson returns, just in time (he is wearing a glorious knitted sweater vest, by the way), and Chuck begins the shoveling, making sure to throw the grave dirt on Dwight's face.
Chuck and Ned are on the trail of the Waffle Nazi, whose booth is named the Waffle Iron, which means... they call him the Waffle Nazi because they think he is German which is a bit insulting, but... well, we'll move on. Anyway, despite the fact that their snooping goes against all the rules of the cook-off and will result in their immediate disqualification if discovered, they sneak in and start poking around. "Find the saboteur, find the killer," Olive chants to herself, as she nervously sneaks. "You know what I love about Vivian," she whispers to Ned as they creep through the Waffle Iron booth, "her imagination. She thought you and I were a couple now. It's crazy! It's like imagining us as Hobbits! Or, on jet packs. Or, Hobbits on jet packs!" Hilarious, yes, but... I must say it is not that much of a stretch to imagine Chenoweth as a Hobbit. She is less than five feet tall. And cuter than all cute things on Earth rolled into one. "Isn't the idea of us together a panic? A scream? A four-hour heart attack of complete impossibility?" Ned is busy snooping around, tasting waffle batter, but at this moment declares that it all makes sense. "It does?" Olive asks, sweetly hopeful. Yeah, Ned says, tasting the batter again. "This batter is better than batter!" he says. "It's the evidence we need to wrap up this case." Olive is deflated. "Great," she says. "What is it?" It fact, it is the Colonel's secret chicken batter! Suddenly they are interrupted by none other than the Waffle Nazi and the Beetle! Busted. Ned starts to angrily accuse the Waffle Nazi of murder, but is beaten to the punch by the WN accusing Ned first of sabotaging his waffle irons. "We didn't do that!" Ned says, but the Beetle steps in. "Don't cry, mein herr," she tells the WN. "Look, it's Justice O'Clock. I'm telling." The Nazi says that ven Leo Burns tootles up on his scooter and sees how many rules Ned and Olive have broken, their dreams of comfort food glory will be kaput. Ned objects, saying they're not the saboteurs, because their own ovens have been ruined as well. "Liars roast in Hell," the Beetle says sweetly. "Just sayin'." Olive says that when they present their evidence, the WN can kiss the cook-off auf wiedersehen. "Hmm?" the WN asks. "Goodbye, in German?" Olive clarifies. "I do not speak a word of German," the Nazi retorts. "I speak English, mit a German accent... pageantry!" Heee.
Ned presents the Colonel's batter as proof of the WN's wrongdoing, but the Nazi has an excuse. Seems he and the Colonel were about to go into business together. "Chicken and waffles?" Ned asks, incredulous. I don't know why -- as I have pointed out at TWoP before, there are few tastier combos. "Would've caught Popeye's with their pants down," the Nazi says, dropping the accent altogether, and they are immediately interrupted by Leo, scooting in. "What in the name of Julia Child is going on here?" he asks, and instantly sides with the Nazi-Beetle team, declaring Ned and Olive disqualified.
Back at the cemetery, Emerson and Chuck -- who should just go on and open up a grave digging business, as she has now dug one three times in 24 hours -- have finished their duty. Chuck thinks that, though he was a bad man, Dwight deserves a few final words of dignity spoken over his grave. "Fine, I got buttloads of dignity to sprinkle on the ground," Emerson snarks. "Come on, get holy." Chuck reverently closes her eyes as Emerson begins: "Here lies D-wight. Here lies his gun. He was bad, and now he's done. Let's go." With that, he turns and walks away but Chuck remains, mortified. "All this," she cries, "and I still have to deal with my mother?!" Emerson turns back to ask doesn't she mean "father," but shuts up as he sees Chuck dive behind a headstone in order to not be seen by LILY. Seeing her, Emerson slings his shovel away so fast he beans a nearby cat. He goes all jovial, saying hello to Lily like they're meeting by chance in a grocery store. "Can the crap and sell it to the tourists," she says. "What are you doing here, Cod?" Declining to answer, he asks what the hell she's doing there. "Waiting for Dwight Dixon," she says, propping her foot on Mr. Charles's headstone and the shotgun on her knee. Watching Chuck dart between the headstones behind her, Emerson mutters that Dwight may disappoint -- "men do that." Hee. Lily says no matter, she plans to give Charles a military salute, and you know, if she happens to blow the head off Dwight Dixon in the act, her lawyers can sort it out, later. "Uh, so lovely catching up," Emerson says, and beats a hasty retreat.
Forlorn, Olive and Ned pack up their kitchen supplies to make a retreat of their own. "There's no trunk big enough to carry home my busted dreams of blue ribbon victory," Olive says. Ned sighs. "Back to the Pie Hole," he says. "Which is empty. Which is strange because Chuck should be there." He sighs again, looking across the hall to the Colonel's chicken booth. "An empty nest, full of clues," Olive says. Ned points out that a really bold detective team would maybe sneak over for one last bit of recon before packing it in for good. Olive raises an eyebrow, and the game is afoot. "Memorize the scene," Ned says as they step in the chicken booth, still uncleaned from when the Colonel was removed. "The prints in the batter, the footprints, the gurney tracks..." Looking down he sees what appear to be little bits of candy in the batter. "Oh, sprinkles!" Olive says, picking one up. "I love sprinkles! And you love clues! Two great tastes that go great together!" Except, not this time -- they aren't sprinkles, which Olive discovers upon putting one in her mouth. It's little bits of cheap plastic jewelry. "Left here," Olive determines by their placement in the flour, "before the Colonel was killed." Ned uses his deductive reasoning: "Which means," he says, "that they belong to the killer." Before they can deduct any further, however, they are both clanged over the heads with frying pans! The Beetle, having struck, strolls from the chicken booth humming a happy tune!
Moments later, we see that our daring duo were more than clanged. Apparently they were knocked out and thrown together in a trunk. "The most important thing is to keep our wits about us and our nerves stead," Olive says, as she lies beneath him, nose to nose. "There's no good in freaking out, so don't go crazy and, I don't know, start kissing me or something, just because we're locked in a trunk and could die at any minute... what are you doing?" Yeah, what IS he doing? Because uh, it looks like there is some pelvic thrusting happening here, and Ned is like, groaning and stuff and heeee, good night, this show is hilarious. While Olive half-heartedly insists he maintain clean thoughts, he quickly thrusts (ha!) his back against the top of the trunk until he is able to push it open. The Beetle, sitting atop it in order to keep them inside, is thrown overboard. "Don't make me whip up another batch of beatdown!" she yells, springing back up with her pans. Olive immediately notices her broken plastic earrings. "You're the killer!" Ned screams, but no, Beetle turns it right back on him. "You're the killer," she says. "You deep fried the Colonel. I suppose you were going to bake me in my own oven." Ned: "Nobody's baking anybody!" The Beetle says she thought the Colonel died of a heart attack -- she was really only in the chicken booth to... "You're the saboteur!" Olive says. "Sabotage is a disqualifying offense. HA!" The Beetle attempts to appeal to their better natures. "I need that blue ribbon prize if Muffin Buffalo is to roam again!" she says. "You see before you a desperate woman, not a killer!" But it's too late -- at that moment, Leo rolls in on his scooter, finds them all in violation of the rules, disqualifies the Beetle and bans the Pie Holers for life. Except, wait a minute. Ned's putting things together. The tracks in the batter? Not gurney tracks, as they first assumed. They're scooter tracks! AND he has the Colonel's recipe! "You're busted, Tubby!" Olive says, and Jimmy D breaks out the facts. Seems a year ago, Leo Burns was a fit, healthy man. Then one day he tasted the Colonel's delicious chicken and all was lost. He gained enormous amounts of weight and his life was ruined. "Diabetes, obesity and night blindness were quick to follow the coated volumes of wings, breasts and thighs Leo ate," JD says. Leo volunteered at the Comfort Foods Cook-Off in order to seek his revenge on the man made him a human balloon. He could not bring himself to destroy the beloved secret recipe, and that was his undoing.
As Leo is stuffed into the back of a police car, Olive, Ned and the Beetle hear an announcement over the loudspeaker that all contestants have 30 seconds to place their entries on the judges' table. Suddenly, Olive realizes that Leo never reported their disqualifications, which means they are still in the game. "What can we do in 30 seconds?" Ned asks, sadly. "We have nothing and our oven is broken." Olive smiles. "Revenge IS a dish best served cold," she says. "Which is why I brought one of your killer icebox lemon pies, stored it in our fridge and called it 'Plan B.'" Brilliant! Of course the Beetle has to point out that it don't mean squat if it's not on the table in... Loudspeaker: "Twenty seconds!" Thus introduces a gorgeous slow-motion race between Olive and the Beetle as they lunge through the hall for their contest entries, Matrix-style. The crowd cheers as they come down the final stretch and Olive takes the lead, having commandeered Leo's abandoned scooter! She edges out a victory, turning a power slide right in front of the table and sliding the pie down over her shoulder. Beautiful. With a triumphant point at her nemesis, Olive goes to await the awarding of the prizes. At least on one level, the Colonel's widow has a victory -- now that she has the recipe in hand, she plans to go into business with the contest's donut man. "Finger lickin' donut holes," she says, winking. Ned: "Sounds delicious. And filthy." Moments later the judges are ready, and none other the Pie Hole takes the prize. Standing in front of the crowd, Ned stretches out his arm to take Olive's hand. Her heartbreaking smile brings me nearly to tears until she actually does take his hand, which launches into a gorgeous musical number of "Eternal Flame," a song I hated until I saw Kristen Chenoweth sing it. This does bring me to tears. Damn you, ABC. There's a beautiful moment when she is interrupted right at the line where she sings "say my name..." by Ned running in and saying "it's Chuck!" Hee. "Um, it's Olive," Olive says, but no, Ned means Chuck should be at the Pie Hole and isn't and he's worried. "Maybe she's stepping out," Olive says, "um, stepped out."
Ned says he's just worried because you know, maybe Vivian's news about Dwight being missing has something to do with Chuck being missing and he's going to look for her. "Sorry to leave you with the mess," he says. Olive: "I'm used to the mess." Tears! Especially when she starts singing again, which is gorgeous. "Say my name..." she sings again, and again Ned interrupts, actually saying her name. "Olive," he says, "congratulations, partner." So sweet, and so beautifully performed.
Ned's search seems to be coming up dry, and he ends up at Chez Aunts asking if they know where Dwight Dixon is. "Ninth circle of Hell, if there's any justices," Lily spits and, looking over his shoulder, asks if someone is crashing in his old house. Terrified that Dwight is somehow holding Chuck hostage there, Ned says he'll check and dashes across the street and up the stairs to, yes, find Chuck, but not with Dwight. She's with her dad. Seeing Ned's face in total disbelief, Chuck can only sadly, lamely offer: "I was gonna tell you."
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