Robbing Hood
Updated 2008-11-28 07:30:23
Damn the suits at ABC to Hell, this show is SO good. I open with such condemnation, because I can't get over how something so excellent could end up so abused. Do I love writing nonstop recaps of the endless twists? I only sort of love that. But do I love watching it, and listening in wonder to the wordplay so otherwise absent from modern culture as we know it? YES. And thus, am I pleased that this gem is rejected while lumps of coal such as, I don't know, [insert just about anything else currently playing on TV] remain untouched? While Chad Michael Murray remains untouched? Decidedly NOT. We begin with a brilliant example of the genius soon to be cruelly torn away: Young Ned, as we know, didn't have many friends back at the Abandoned Children's Institute. Only the fabulously orthodontic Eugene Maljandani is available for marble shooting, and though Young Ned cringes at the damage it does to his rep, he considers playing with Eugene an act of charity. Especially as, Jim Dale tells us, Eugene's only other companions are his two pets: the lethargic Indian python, Bilbo; and Akbar, a bunny. Y'all, when he said the snake's name was Bilbo, I had to just turn off the TV for a while. I could not stop laughing for hours. Tragedy strikes when one of Ned and Eugene's competitive marbles errantly flies off course, breaking both Akbar and Bilbo's cases, leading to, as Jim Dale so bluntly reports, their joint demise. The snake choked on the bunny. Harsh, JD.
However, under the guise of kindly burying Eugene's pets, Young Ned resolved to perform another act of charity: he brings them both back to life (resulting in the deaths of two nearby raccoons). As long as the benefits outweighed the costs, Jim Dale tells us, Young Ned believed an act of charity outweighed the consequences. Seeing Eugene's smile gleaming through his headgear at the return of his friends is proof enough for me.
Present Day Ned, despite all his early life lessons, is currently troubled by the potential consequences of bringing Chuck back to life. Thinking of the mysterious machinations of Dwight Dixon and how his snooping could uncover Chuck's secret, Ned stress-bakes back at the Pie Hole. "He's dating your aunt, he's going to see a picture of you," Ned rambles when Chuck comes in, "and if he doesn't have retro-grade amnesia, he's going to recognize you. That is, if he already hasn't." Ned marvels at the coincidence of this aunt-dating, not that Vivian isn't totally datable, he is quick to add.
Olive, for her part, wonders if Dwight has maybe been after Chuck all along, because he knows she "faked" her death (as Olive believes). Maybe, Olive says, he's with the IRS. "If anyone can figure out whether you're dead," she says, "it's the tax man." Oh, Internet, I tell you with a full measure of audited-after-a-devastating-housefire bitterness that that is quite true. OR, Olive postulates, maybe Dwight is some kind of paranormal investigator! "Maybe," she says creepily, "he's an old priest, and a young priest is coming." Okay, well, I'll be seeing y'all. I have it written into my TWoP contract that any reference to The Exorcist in a show I'm watching will result in a compulsory vacation of two weeks, during which my brain will be cleansed from within to make me stop thinking of it. Ned nervously says that such a thing would be a waste of religion, because Chuck's not... dead. The thought of it, however, urges him to action. They must, he says, do whatever it takes to find out who Dwight is, and what he wants. "Hmm!" Olive says. "Counter-intelligence via pie delivery, by gossiping with a purpose. My speciality." (Every time Kristin Chenowith is on screen, I renew tenfold my objection to the cancellation of this show. She is too awesome.)
Moments later, Olive arrives at Chez Aunts. "Pie time!" she calls, walking in like she owns the place. Vivian is only too happy to see her. "The second sweetest treat of my day," she says. Olive is amazed. "Something sweeter than a Pie Hole pie?" Vivian says yes -- the first sweetest was an unexpected visit from a gentleman caller, none other than Dwight. "Oh, lovely lady of the Hole," the man in question says, rising to meet Olive. Lady of the Hole is... rather a tragic moniker, don't you think? Anyway, Dwight does some fancy talking about taking Vivian for a bucolic picnic in the park, and squires her away while Olive and Lily look on with skepticism. "I don't trust that man farther than I can spit," Lily snarks. "And I can spit ." That means the opposite of what she's really saying... which is that she can't trust him. It's very funny, but if she can spit pretty far, trusting him any distance close to that would be a significant amount. Just sayin'. "Look at the way he drapes himself all over her," Lily goes on, watching the happy couple through the window. "Uggh. Makes me want to stick a fork in my eye. I need a drink." Olive: "You're holding one." Lily: "I need a stronger one. And a fork."
Meanwhile, back above the pork buns, Emerson is considering a new case. A loud-talking attorney (made so after so many courtroom battles) named Daniel has come to plead for justice in the death of his beloved and only client, the aged Gustav. He believes Gustav's young, leeching wife ruined his life and will ruin his legacy. "I smell a big ol' 'but...' headed in my direction," Emerson says, and he's right. Seems Gustav was also robbed the night he died. "It happens when you have a fortune like his," the lawyer says. Emerson is suddenly interested. "What kind of fortune we talkin' about?" he asks. Lawyer, totes deadpan: "The kind built on your tight balls." COME ON. Emerson's eyebrows hilariously shoot up, but the lawyer was merely referring to the automatic yarn-balling contraption featured in Emerson's office -- said machine was invented by none other than the Gustav in question. You want the facts? Jimmy D tells us that Gustav's mechanized baller (haaa!) not only made it possible for legions of grandmothers to more easily make unwanted gifts (heeee!), it also made him rich. However, before Gustav could make one penny more, someone arranged for his permanent retirement. A burglar broke into his home and fired a gun at the ceiling, causing a chandelier to fall upon the millionaire and kill him.
This leads to my favorite Touched in the Morgue scene in this program's history. There hangs Gustav, in his drawers, still entwined in the chandelier. I am laughing already, before Ned even wakes him, especially when I notice that one of the glass pendants from the fixture is hanging from the old man's distended earlobe like the world's most hilarious earring. Chuck explains that they would like to ask him a few questions, but only have a minute. "I presume I'm dead," he barks in his geezeriest voice. "Let's get down to business. First, the matter of my will." Yes, well, they already know about the will, which Ned tries to interrupt him to say. "Not that will," Gustav snaps. "I have a new will, and you're gonna track it down for me, roger?" Ned stutters out a "roger" while Gustav goes on, saying that Ned will need to go into the mansion's trophy room, and look behind the largest trophy. Emerson can't stand anymore chatter. "Who killed you?!" he blurts. But Gustav, dead or not, don't play like that. "Do you know who I am, Elmer?" he asks and Emerson says he's about to be the only man ever murdered twice. Gustav doesn't care about justice; he cares about his hard-earned money not going where it doesn't belong. He continues to rant about the current generation's failure to appreciate the value of a dollar until Chuck interrupts and repeats the trophy room instructions, indicating that she understands what's important. "Smartest one of the bunch," Gustav smiles, his earring swaying. "I like your moxie, Sassafras." Hee. It's hard to put into words how funny this is, really. Shelley Burns, who plays Gustav, is a classic for a reason. Plus, the word "sassafras" is basically encapsulated comedy at its finest. Anyway, Gustav only cares about his goldigger wife not getting his cash, and when Emerson finally breaks through to ask again who killed him, he shruggingly says "the bellman did it!" before Ned touches him back to death in a shower of chandelier sparks.
So, the hunt is on. Ned, Chuck and Emerson head to the moneygrubber's mansion to find the will, all the while having to listen to Ned's panicky rant about Dwight Dixon and his possible motives. Chuck appears not to be worried, especially when she is distracted by the home's beautiful wallpaper, which she notes is vintage Osborne and Little . "You could buy a small island for what this is worth!" she says. Naturally, the word "buy" instigates the appearance of the widow, Elise, played by the always funny Jennifer Cox. Elise never noticed the wallpaper, she says. "Oh my God, I'm like, the worst widow evaaar!" She is correct. Chuck and Emerson attempt small talk while Ned high tails it to the trophy room. Except, aw SNAP, the trophy room? Full of hunting trophies. As in the taxidermied carcasses of large animals. And the largest trophy? A huge polar bear. It's so clever and so funny -- every funny scene is now starting to make me almost angry, knowing the show will soon be gone. I need to get a hold of myself. "Oh, no," Ned groans, standing directly in front of a huge set of antlers, causing me to nearly wet my pants. Timidly, he winds his way through the room, careful not to touch any of the stuffed LIONS and the like, and faces the polar bear, remembering Gustav's instructions. Back in the drawing room, Elise's manservant has delivered her demanded "champagne juice drinks," and is answering Chuck's question of how he became a bellman. "Bellmen," he sneers, "wear monkey suits and work in hotel lobbies. I am a porter." Oh, well that's that. In any case, James Andrew has an alibi for the night of the murder -- he was at a key party. Whoa! Elise, for her part, was allegedly at a charity function. None of this matters, because during all this excuse-making, we hear a noises-off ROAR from the trophy room. Emerson: "Damn, y'all sure got a big dog." Poor Ned, having survived the polar bear, has opened the safe to reveal not the will, but a scrawled Latin phrase: Orbis pro vox.
The team hashes it over on the way out of the mansion. The problem, Emerson says, is that their case just went from "a slam dunk" to "a badonk-a-donk." Innocently, Ned asks if a badonk-a-donk is bad. Emerson explains that it is. "Whatever happened to 'the bellman did it?'" Chuck asks. Emerson says the dude is up to something, but that his key party alibi is probably air tight. "Now what is a key party?" Ned asks, even more innocently. Chuck: "Aw, I love that you don't know that. It's a kind of raffle." Emerson: "Of the porno variety." Hee. Ned lets out a knowing "ohhh" and goes back to the case. He wonders what the Latin phrase was all about. Emerson suggests he pull back the pie crust every once in a while to watch the news: richfolk all over town have been getting robbed all month and left with that same Latin phrase. With that, he goes off to consult with his police department contacts, and Chuck and Ned head back to the Hole (I'm trying it out) to do some more Dwight-checking with Olive. Unfortch, it looks like they are coming up empty. Ned asks Olive how the aunts are reacting to Dwight. "About how you'd expect," she says. "Lily hates him, and Vivian's completely GAH." The good news is, she says, Dwight doesn't appear to be interested in Chuck. Ned dismisses her, rudely, to get more coffee before suggesting to Chuck that since Dwight seems preoccupied with Charles Charles's pocket watch, maybe they should just give it to him to make him go away. "Or," Chuck says, "we could wake my dad and ask him." Aw. This, Jim Dale says, was an act of charity the piemaker was unwilling to commit. Somehow, Ned looks into Chuck's sad eyes and explains again that he knows she wants to say goodbye to her father, but a lifetime of emotions can't be condensed into a single minute. "Even if they could," he says, "you'd have to watch him die all over again. I love you too much to make you suffer like that. You understand?" But she can't answer -- Emerson walks in with news. The police have informed him that whoever this Latin-loving robber is, he always makes a big donation the day after a burglary. Chuck jokes that maybe it was Robin Hood that killed Gustav. "Call him what you want," Emerson answers. "But I know where we can find a bellman with a charity streak."
And moments later, do they ever find one. In a house that looks... exactly like a hall I once visited in Manchester, UK, the name of which I have completely forgotten... the crew finds dozens of green-clad Robin Hood looking dudes, being lead by one even more ridiculously dressed ringleader, Rob Wright, all members of a Salvation Army-style getup called The Bellmen. Wright encourages his minions to go out and "ring for right!" and gather charitable contributions for the poor. "Orbis pro vox," Chuck says, hearing their catch phrase. Rob Wright, when confronted by the intrepid investigators, assures them that his bellmen are innocent and have nothing to hide. C, N and E are distracted by a loud voice from what appears to be a phone bank. "Yeah, well, somewhere a starving street child is chewing off his own fingers," the guy says, "'cause you're too cheap to give fifty bucks." Ned sighs. "Telemarketers," he grumbles as they approach the yeller. "I hate these guys." Emerson cuts to the chase and asks to see the guy's phone list. "What phone list?" he asks, sliding it into a folder. Chuck: "The one you just slid into a folder." Ha. "Shift change," the guy yells, and Emerson sits down to help himself to the files. "He was very suspect-ish," Ned says. Yeah, Emerson agrees, well, if the phone number list matches up to the people who were robbed, dude's gonna be more like jailbird-ish.
Are y'all up for a little Meanwhile action? Yes? Good. Because, meanwhile, in the park, Dwight Dixon is charming Aunt Vivian with his clarinet. I almost wish it was a euphemism, people, but it just isn't. Wait a minute... clarinet... woodwind... wood? Huh? HUH? Now I feel dirty. Having dug up Chuck's grave to find Charles Charles's pocket watch and finding neither Chuck nor the watch, Dwight is determined to use musical means to discover what Vivian really knew of the watch's final resting place. The sad part is that his wiles are effective -- Vivian loves his attentions and does not catch on that he is only there for one reason (and not that one reason for which men with reed instruments are normally there.) He gets her talking about Chuck's memorial service, thinking he will learn of someone else who was there who may have coveted the buried watch. In fact, Vivian tells the horrible tale of Mary Sudberry who leaned into the coffin to make sure Chuck's corneas were in place, as there was apparently a large black market trade in them. Eeek. All this talk of corneas makes Vivian quite emotional. "Poor Charlotte," she says. "I encouraged her to take the pleasure cruise that ended so unpleasantly." She cries (so convincingly that it makes me cry), that she was so tired of being a shut-in, and thus pushed Charlotte to go on the cruise in order to live vicariously through her. The evil Dwight is moved by Vivian's heart of gold, but his softening is not to last. To remind herself to always live a full life, Vivian now carries a laminated newspaper account, including a photo, of the story of Chuck's death. "You've probably seen her face before," she says, handing him the card. "It was all over the news after she died." Daaaaamn. "Oh," Dwight says, mega-creepily. "I've definitely seen her face before."
Back at the Pie Hole, Ned, Chuck and Emerson meet with Emerson's client, Daniel, Gustav's lawyer. Daniel has never heard of The Bellmen, and is especially alarmed to hear that everyone who has been robbed was on the call list of the nasty, telemarketing bellman, Tam Phong. "So, it wasn't Elise?!" Daniel shouts. "This Tam Phong robbed Gustav?! Well, WHERE IS HE?! I'm gonna FIND that malfease-ass and SLAM him down...!!" Emerson, interrupting, implores him to use his inside voice. "And I'm not talking about the gavel of justice..." Daniel whispers, too quietly. Ned: "Outside voice!" Daniel: "I'm talkin' about Southern-style, BACK ALLEY SCORE SETTLING, doled out by ME and a couple of HOMELESS GUYS!" Chuck, covering her ears: "Conversational patio voice?" Hee. Chuck's hair looks amazing, by the way.
Emerson says that before Daniel goes around handing out blind justice, they need to first discover if Tam Phong is the guilty party. They also tell him about Gustav's second will. "I'm his lawyer," Daniel says. "If there were a second will, I would have drafted it, drawn it up and drawn a tidy, twenty percent commission for my troubles. So how would you know differently?" Emerson: "Let's just say our procedures would not be admissible in court." Daniel is, again, most concerned about Gustav's terrible widow not getting his money. He says if they find the will, he'll double the fee. "Oh, we'll find that will," Emerson and Chuck say in unison. Daniel departs and the three of them debate their next move. Ned suggests they put their names on Tam's call list, to tempt the robber to show up at their homes. "No burglar worth his burgles would take the bait if they saw your tiny-ass apartments," Emerson says, and Chuck suggests that as an alternative, they use the aunts' house. Olive slides in the booth upon hearing this, smelling a sting operation. "I wanna sting!" she says, but Ned thinks the whole thing is a bad idea. Au contraire, Chuck assures him, it's a good idea. While Olive, Emerson and Ned are setting up the sting, she says, she can search upstairs, unseen, in her old room for clues in her dad's old cigar box. It's full of letters that may give some clue to Dwight's identity. "The piemaker considered the wooden box in her old room," Jim Dale says, "a better alternative to the wooden box that contained her father. So, a sting was set."
OH, and WHAT a STING it IS. Employing Olive's prodigious talents at being awesome, the team sends her in to The Bellmen HQ in the most glorious Green Acres send up... in sight, sound and spirit, she is the dead ringer for the beautiful Eva Gabor , accompanied by Pigby, who plays a mean Arnold. I really have no words -- Kristin Chenoweth should win every Emmy there is. She kills it in every scene. "Mr. Phong, I am so sorry to interuuupt," she says, and introduces herself as Tessa Carville, "vife of Clarence Carville, who I am sure you are avare owns Carville Steel." Wearing a fluffy, pink outfit and dripping with diamonds, she loudly proclaims her hatred of phone solicitations, "almost as much as I hate beggars and panhandlers." Furzermore, she goes on, eef she is not eemediately removed from zee call list, she will take a tiny fraction of her considerable vealth, buy the Bellman building, knock it down, and build a glue factory so large, "the whole city vill be smelling haaaaoorse." It is so glorious. Adding at great volume that she is about to take a hover craft on a trip to Saint Tropez, she flings a pink card bearing the aunts' address in Tam Phong's face and twitches out.
The trap set, the team goes to the aunts to wait. Of course, breaking it to Lily that they are using her home as a target for theft and violence is... delicate. While Chuck remains upstairs where she has snuck into her bedroom-cum-cheese locker, she listens to the drama unfold on her old string-telephone contraption she set up in childhood to spy on the aunts. Alone, she also goes through the mementos in her cigar box. Downstairs, though, things aren't going so well. Swoosie Kurtz might be giving the Chenoweth a run for the money, here. "You must be outta your damn MINDS!" Lily yells. "There is no way in Tinkerbell's tiny buttcheeks that you are gonna roll out the welcome mat on my front porch for a buncha thieves!" Ned cringes that he knows it's an imposition. "An IMpoSITion is ordering clams at a Kosher deli!" Lily screams. "Robbers nowadays are multi-hyphenate hoodlums! They don't just rob! No, they strip you naked, lather you in lard, slide you into the walls and leave you! THEN they rob you!" So great. In the background, Ned and Emerson set up the room, turning off various lights, while Lily and Vivian argue back and forth on the couch, with Olive between them. Vivian thinks Lily is jealous of the attention Dwight is paying her. "Vivian," Lily says with extreme chagrin, "I love you. I don't want to see this fetish you have for raffish men hurt you like it has in the past." Ned tries to interject: "On the topic of Dwight..." Lily: "KEEP OUTTA THIS!" Olive here takes a shot at breaking the tension, but is once again silenced by Lily. "Do I have my patch on the wrong eye," she snarks, "or did it suddenly get very dark in here?" Ah, it all abruptly becomes clear. She realizes that Olive, Ned and Emerson are trying to set the house up to look vacant. "Wait a MINUTE!" she shouts anew. "We're being robbed TONIGHT!" Vivian, alternately, is titillated.
Upstairs, Chuck is finding no information about Dwight in her father's letters. The secrets, she realizes, must remain with her father in his grave. A grave, JD reminds us, right next to her own grave. A grave, we realize as we see an ominous shadow in the bedroom window, to which she may soon return. The door bursts open. "Fear not, madameOOAAWW!" Rob Wright starts, but is soon thwarted when Chuck flings a well-aimed cigar box into his midsection. She warns him, to be fair, that she has a gun, though he must also be fair and say he doesn't believe her. She threatens to call for help, but he notices she hasn't yet, perhaps because she feels, as he does, that society has a responsibility to protect its lowest ranks. "I am no killer," he says, "merely a soldier of fortune. Other people's fortunes." Hee. Chuck suggests that Gustav would have felt otherwise, since Rob Wright and Tam Phong so obviously robbed him and killed him. Ah, but no -- Rob says that first of all, Tam is but another unwitting victim of his schemes. And secondly, yeah, he robbed Gustav, but only because Gustav asked him to. "I know how this must sound," he says, "but the facts are these." Chuck: "Huh?" Rob: "These, are the facts." Awesome.
Gustav was writing a new will and in the midst of a crisis of faith. His decision to write a new will made him really wonder if his wife loved him, or if he had any true friends at all. During this time, he happened to lock his keys in his car one day and Rob Wright, head bellman, came to his rescue. Gustav wanted to make a contribution, but Rob wouldn't let him. When Gustav insisted that he repay him for his act of charity, Rob agreed to burgle his fortune. Gustav would then appear to be an innocent victim -- if his wife stuck by him when his money was gone, his fears could be laid to rest. The plan was that Rob would return half of Gustav's fortune, and keep the other half for charity. This was all fine until Elise showed up with a musket and Rob had to matrix out of there. While Chuck is sympathetic, she can't help but point out that even if Rob didn't kill Gustav, he's still a criminal. Rob rolls out the sobstory, and rolls it out good. See, he only robs people who can afford it, and certainly doesn't rob them of their lives. And he really needs the money, he says, to do his dogoodery deeds, like to pick a for instance, save a bunch of puppies from "the big sleep" tomorrow if he can only rob enough to pay the mortgage of the shelter. Chuck is obviously swayed by this, and we see moments later when the crew returns to the Pie Hole, that she has let him go. (How this was all communicated while they were still in the house, who knows.)
Anyway, Ned and Emerson are furious. "It was an act of charity; there were puppies involved," Chuck says. "Besides, my Grueneberg ganglion wasn't activated." Ned: "Well, that sounds personal." Emerson: "Sounds like one a'them feminine conversations you need to have with yo' lady friends." Chuck explains that there is a bundle of nerves in the tip of the nose that can sniff out aggressive pheromones, and the only thing she could smell on Rob was a swashbuckling do-gooder who was in the wrong place at the wrong time. Emerson: "Smells like puppy crap to me." Ned also is totally mad that she let him go, and she accuses him of stress-baking her. She contends that maybe Rob was telling the truth, and that they did say that the bellman/porter was hiding something. He may have had an alibi, she points out, but he may also know who killed Gustav. The boys very, very begrudgingly acknowledge she may be right.
Everyone's in a bad mood when they sit in the car to stake out the bellman/porter at the mansion. Chuck feels like the long wait is a good time to discuss weighty subjects, such as Dwight telling the world that she's alive which, she says, might turn out to be the best thing for everyone. Um... how so? Emerson: "You talkin' a lot like a dead girl who wants to go back in the ground." Ned says the whole thing brings up a deep, dark, touchy subject for him -- you know, like the fear he's always had of his powers being discovered, thus relegating him to a life as a freak in a small white room where little bits are cut out of him until there's nothing left. Yes, I would call that a touchy subject. Chuck sighs, realizing the craziness of the whole thing. "If Dwight finds out about me, then he finds out about you," she moans. "And you still won't wake up my dad to find out what Dwight wants. You're putting my emotional well-being before your fears. That's so courageous and romantic." Emerson, along with us all, groans. But, hark! What's that in the window? Of course, it's the bellman and the widow, gettin' it on. All that remains now, JD says, is to confront them.
But across town, all that remained of Charles Charles was a box full of memories, and a pocket watch. Somehow he's gotten hold of Chuck's cigar box... of course, I can't figure out how the watch was in there, or how Dwight got the box, but whatever -- he's got the box, and the watch, and he intends to use them. Creepily. Into the Pie Hole he comes, looming up over poor Olive, once again left alone, while she scrubs the tables. "We're closed aaaahhhhaauuuhhh," she says, turning to find him standing there. So, he says, so creepily, you're here all by your lonesome. "No, I'm not here all by my lonesome," she stutters, backing away from him. "Manuel, the big cholo janitor is in the back. I think he used to be in one of those super-dangerous Salvadorian gangs who murder white, older men as a warning to the police to buzz off? Idn't that right, Manuel?!" Hee. Dwight merely stares at her steadily, and says he'd like to leave a message. And while she fumbles below the counter for a pen, he quietly places Chuck's laminated obituary on the counter and walks out. Olive, horrified, can only stress-binge all of Ned's stress pies, and in a major way. All the eating, though, did little to relieve the anxiety in her heart, as she waited on the return of her friends.
Having acquired (somehow?) the pocket watch, Dwight returns to the scene of the crime where he's set his sights on Vivian's heart of gold. "But sister Lily was not about to let that treasure go so easily," JD drones. Oh, no, she isn't. Wow, Swoosie Kurtz + Stephen Root is a dream come true. "You can turn your fanny right around, and walk away, mister," she says as he approaches the house. She goes on to say that they are done buying the lies he's so obviously peddling. "I didn't think you were so concerned about lies," he says, pointedly. "Shouldn't you be more concerned about the truth?" Lily: "It's time to nip you in the budding romance, before Vivian convinces herself you really are the second coming." He assumes correctly that she's referring to his friend and her former lover, Charles Charles. "You are nothing like Charles," she snarls. He says that no, they are more similar than she thinks -- that they had similar ambitions. Lily snarks that Charles made bad decisions, while Dwight IS a bad decision. "My bad decisions landed me in prison," he growls. "His landed him a baby girl." Lily swallows hard as he reveals that he knows more than she thought. He cruelly teases her about burying the watch with Charles Charles's daughter. "You've got your thumb on a big red button you definitely don't want to push," Lily says through her teeth, but he keeps pushing. "You are such thoughtful women," he says, "who have loved and lost so much." That's enough. Lily stands swiftly and points a previously unseen shotgun at his face. "We're gonna lose you right now," she says, "before you get one inch closer to my little sister's heart. Get gone, and stay gone." Placing his hat back on his head, Dwight slowly leaves.
Lily's encounter with Dwight, tough as she was, had truly stirred the pot of her sentimental soup, JD says, one spoonful of which gave her a terrible case of the yearns to visit her daughter's grave. She goes that very night, and is alarmed to find the dirt newly turned over. "What in hell's kitchen...?" she asks aloud, but immediately thinks of the pocket watch and how obsessed Dwight was with finding out its whereabouts. She wondered," Jim Dale says, whether Dwight had unearthed more than Vivian's buried emotion.
Back at the mansion, the team is getting into the faces of Elise and James Andrew, the porter. The widow swears she didn't DO anything, except James Andrew. "Who do you think got his key?" she says, sexily. "Oh!" Ned exclaims. "I was still really wrong about what I thought that was." Emerson can take no more: "You were canoodling and cahooting and you were cahootin' to kill." Hee. Look, can we cut to the chase, here? The killer really WAS Ron Wright. The real story this week is the Chuck/Dwight mystery. The Dead Guy of the Week? While all the players are incredibly, seriously great, the mystery was just meh. The thing is solved when Rob admits he did shoot the chandelier, but that it was an accident. Emerson, Ned and Chuck are really mad about it, they get the second will from Rob, and Emerson finally gets to pull his own gun from his sweatervest and bring Rob to justice. Whatever -- they get the will, and find that Gustav, realizing what a good friend his lawyer was, had left everything to Daniel.
While Emerson collects the double fee, Lily does some detective work of her own and finds double trouble in Dwight's hotel room where she goes in search of the pocket watch to prove that Dwight robbed Chuck's grave. Dudes, it's complicated. And I haven't even told you that Dwight's hotel room? FULL OF GUNS. I know! Anyway, Lily gets the watch, hears Dwight coming back to his room, and escapes just in time. But, see, Dwight, finding the watch gone? Thinks Chuck came in and stole it back from him. Complexities like the mind has never known! Jim Dale can barely deal with it. Grabbing up a sizable gun, he heads off to get the stolen stolen property. Damn! But wait, there's more. Finally returning to the Pie Hole after bringing the burglar to justice, Chuck and Ned hear from a very worried Olive about Dwight's visit. This leaves Ned no choice. They have to know now who Dwight is and what he wants, and the only way to unearth that mystery is to unearth Chuck's father. Now, who's responsible for security in this cemetery, I don't know, but they head over there to dig up a second grave in as many days, and my terror as to what they will find mounts with the second. So does Chuck's anxiety and sadness. She's just now realizing how terribly hard this will be, and now it's too late to turn back. "It's gonna be an awkward hello, a tender acceptance and a rushed goodbye," Ned says. "It's not too late... we could leave town. If I knew the consequences, I never would have alive-agained my mother, and I had her for seven hours. I'd rather take my chances with Dwight than watch you go through this." Chuck tearfully says that when Ned lost his mother, he was alone. She, on the other hand, has him. "You're the real swashbuckling do-gooder, she says. "And I love you." Ned sighs. "I hope you still feel that way when this is over." And with a few final tosses of the shovel, they hit the coffin, and now must confront what is inside.
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