The Norwegians
Updated 2008-12-18 08:41:45
Things weren't always miserable for Young Ned at Rejection Elementary. After all, he had the excellent Eugene, who was even willing to camouflage his headgear in order to play war games with Ned in the woods. This was a handy way, Jim Dale tells us, to escape from the torture of geometry. "However," JD ominously intones, "like all ill-advised troop deployments, it did not come without its share of unexpected casualties." No, in fact Eugene indicates, with official military hand signals , that some serious shit has gone down. Indeed -- a hunter, apparently dead, has fallen face down across a fence. Eugene, his emotional radar on overload, beats a hasty retreat. Young Ned, on the other hand, rationalized in mere moments that if he were to solve what looks like a murder, the resulting acclaim would bring his father back into his life. Thus, with Eugene gone, he gives the dead guy the touch. See, this was a bad idea. What's Ned like, eight years old? So he touches the guy, who has a massive hole through his chest, and it is revealed that the death was an accident. That's all well and good, but Ned touches him back to death just in time for the park ranger to come around the corner and see Ned standing there with the dead hunter's gun. Greeeat. "Waking the dead," Jim Dale says as we see Ned get put in juvie lockdown, "had landed Young Ned in jail." Thus, Young Ned learns the lesson that no, his father won't be around to help him when he needs it.
Also learning that lesson? Chuck, as we see her futile final moments from last week, chasing her father as he drives away in Ned's stolen car. I knew that dude was bad news. Chuck finds a button on the ground in the snow, and cries that her dad isn't supposed to leave her. "This is really bad," Ned says, extrapolating all the worst case scenarios. "This. Is really. Bad." Later, in their booth at the Pie Hole, it's confirmed: this is really bad. Chuck has been Dad Dumped, Ned is flipping that Charles Charles is about to reveal his secret to the world, and Emerson... well, he must bear witness to all these emotions, and y'all KNOW how that makes him feel. "What if he goes and tells people there's a piemaker who has a knack for baking and waking dead people?" Chuck asks, sorry that she ever got Ned into this. Ned sweetly forgives her: "Change of career?" he suggests as a solution. "No more waking and/or baking?" Cute, cute. "I just want to hold your hand," Chuck says, and though they WILL sit so close to each other that it causes my hair to clench in fear of them touching, they, of course, canNOT touch, and thus must hold hands using Emerson's two angry paws as surrogates as they gaze into each other's eyes. I'm sure some other mean ol' recapper with a heart hardened to stone after years of watching Chad Michael Murray and some chick with hair extensions walk on the beach would slap eyes on these two and be over their undying love in about three episodes. I mean, bad stuff keeps happening to each of them at other's hand, but they can't seem to stay mad about it. Still, I love them. "I am done with this by-proxy hand-jive," he spits, jerking his hands out of their dual grips. He asks, as we do, why they aren't squawking mad at each other. Chuck screwed up when she used Ned to bring her dad back to life and then kept it from him, Emerson rants. Ned then screwed up "by not tappin' her pops when you had the chance." Emerson goes on to blame himself for cahootin' with Chuck to cover up the subsequent dead body, which turned out to be Dwight. "And both of you ladies ought to be mad as hell at Dead Old Dead Dad," he concludes with an awesome flourish, "for stealin' your car and stealin' off into the night with a corpse face that ain't gonna do no favors for nobody."
You know, these are all good points. "Well, now that you mention it," Ned says, getting into it, "I'm mad!" He slams his fist down to add that he's furious, but Emerson's already past him. "Oh, get over it, fool," he says. Poor Ned is flabbergasted to have been shot down just as he was getting riled up, but there is no time to express this, as Olive arrives to interrupt. After being all up in the middle of stuff with Emerson last week, she's back on the back burner now, and it isn't pretty. "This is one of them need-to-know cases," Emerson snarls as she sees the angst around the table and tries to discern the facts. Unfair! "No casual case chit-chat to pass the time while we peruse the menu?" she winks, hoping to get in on the action. Emerson: "We don't chit-chat where we eat." Awesome, but mean. "But I'm your Itty-Bitty," Olive protests, reminding him of last week. "I'm helpful." In response, Emerson tersely puts in his pie order, signaling the others to do the same. At least Chuck has the good graces to look pained about it.
Olive, wearing an awesome long-sleeved version of her normal sleeveless uniform, has had enough. She's not a yo-yo, she says, to be jerked around on some "today, let's include her/tomorrow, let's not" whim. And if she is, she says, there are only so many knots she can tie in her yo-yo string before it snaps for good. "Please, Olive," Chuck says, plaintively, but Emerson ain't having it. "Please, Olive, my ass," he snarks. "Where's my pie?" Why Olive doesn't poor coffee all over him, I don't know, but she walks away glaring hard enough to peel paint. Chuck says that she hates this whole thing -- it's wrong to make Olive keep a bunch of secrets without letting her in on the whole story. "Why can't we just tell her everything?" she asks. Um, this was not the day to make such a suggestion, obviously. "Oh, look at that," Emerson says. "A dumb idea just found a friend." He adds that they can't go telling Little Big Mouth all their problems, as it will only create more problems for them all. Though Chuck argues that all Olive has done is help them and trust them, Ned takes Emerson's grumpy side and says they can't afford the risk.
Speaking of risks, another one soon walks in the door when later that night Vivian visits Emerson in his office as he untangles his balls. His yarn balls, I'm saying. She wants him to find Dwight Dixon, presenting as a helpful visual aid a sketch she's made of him wearing a medallion. The look Chi McBride shoots at the camera when he sees the sketch... it makes my years of recapper's elbow (soon to be a certified orthopedic disease listed in the Journal of American Medicine) worth it. But see, as Emerson (and all of us) realizes, there are facts here that the lovely Vivian does not know, and those facts are these: Dwight romanced her to get what he wanted -- Charles Charles's pocketwatch. So, you know, Dwight dug up Chuck's (empty) grave to get the watch, which Lily then stole back from him, along with Dwight's own watch. Believing Chuck and Ned to have stolen the watches, Dwight went to kill the lovebirds and was instead killed himself by the proximity rule when Chuck fandangled Ned into not rekilling her dad. He can't tell any of this to Vivian, though, and though heartbroken by her sadness, he must cruelly dismiss her worries as those of a woman scorned. I really get mad whenever Ellen Greene is onscreen because she is SO GOOD. Honestly, all these people are more than good and it's embarrassing to me as a human being that this show was cancelled. I feel terrible for all these actors -- really, this job must have almost been too good to be true. Brilliant cast, great writing, amazing costumes and sets, hilarious guest stars. Gee, sounds like a recipe for disaster, ABC! Good job on that cancellation decision. Hate! Anyway, trying to get her off the trail, Emerson really has to hit hard. "You see, men are dogs," he says. "They come sniffin' around, barkin' up your tree, but if they don't see a kitty cat up in that tree, pretty soon they just stop barkin'. Dwight ain't missin'. He's barkin' up somebody else's tree." Cruel, but so funny. Vivian gets tears in her eyes, swearing Dwight would never do that. "I'm advising you," Emerson says again, "to not look for Dwight Dixon." Vivian keeps pushing, though, and finally Emerson snaps. "Dwight Dixon's gone away," he says, his voice trembling, "now you just accept that and stop trying to bring him back." Vivian gathers up her things, seemingly defeated and Jim Dale tells us that though Emerson hated to drop the bomb on her like that, a shock and awe campaign was the only way to stop her search for Dwight.
He feels so bad, in fact, he has to head straight to the Pie Hole to comfort himself with sugar. "Slice me up a piece of something fresh and expensive," he snaps at Chuck and Ned behind the counter, "and it better be on the house, because I just saved both of yo' asses a whole pile of grief." He explains about Vivian, plunging Ned and Chuck both into horror. Ned wants to know what Emerson told the sad aunt. "I said 'no need to pay me,'" Emerson continues to snark. "'I know damn well where Dwight is -- buried in the ground where I put him.'" Ha! No, he goes on, he gave her plenty of reasons to forget Dwight. The last thing they need, he says, is somebody investigating the disappearance of Dwight Dixon. RING! As the words leave his mouth, three unknown entities enter the Pie Hole. Without even turning around, Emerson senses danger. "Hide," he tells Chuck and swivels on his stool to greet the new guys. "Hello, Magnus," he says, and is answered by a proclamation. These new guys? Have been hired to investigate the disappearance of Dwight Dixon. Oops.
You know what that was? Nine minutes of uninterrupted TV. I have never wanted so badly to see a commercial in my life, and I get less than TWO MINUTES of break time?! Sometimes I can't describe how much I hate the television... okay, I am over it. All right, so these new guys? They are The Norwegians, a crack forensic team made up of Magnus Olsdatter (Orlando Jones), Nils Nilsson (Michael Weaver) and Hedda Lillihammer (Ivana Milicevic) who used their unparalleled investigative skills for their beloved homeland until Norway, ranked 37th in the world of homicide, no longer deemed their services necessary. Actually, this chart ranks them 54th, which is quite a bit better (dude, what's happening in Kyrgyzstan?) and which surprises me a great deal. Because, I don't know if y'all know this, but Norwegians are KIND OF BADASSES. If you've never seen this documentary where this ponytailed guy goes around the world talking to heavy metal bands and fans and determining which ones of them have surpassed the others in evil, I implore you to check it out, because Norwegians, in general, are on constant alert that they may be attacked by really angry, poorly dressed musicians. It is really, really cold in Norway, okay? And they are mad about it.
Anyway, the Norwegians in question abandoned their motherland when they heard that, hey, Americans kill each other all the time, especially in C'oeur de C'oeur, and they headed on over, only to be consistently trumped by none other than Emerson and his piemaking sidekick. With somewhat questionable accents, the crew gets in Emerson's face, explaining that Vivian hired them to find Dwight, and that they know he's hiding something. "I don't know diddly," Emerson drones. "Or squat." Unfortunately for Emerson, Magnus says, the facts say the opposite. Indeed, Nils is only happy to provide the facts as they see them, which are these: 1. Emerson turned down Vivian's case, which goes against his normal policy of never turning down money for any reason. 2. When discussing Dwight with Vivian, Emerson referred to him as a bad man. 3. Emerson and Dwight previously hobnobbed in the same circles. With this third fact, Emerson takes issue. "The hell I did," he says. "We didn't nob no hobs, and certainly not in no damn circle." God, that made me laugh. So dirty, yet so cute. How do they do it? Anyway, the Norwegians have proof of their nobbing -- Dwight's credit card receipts showed he was a frequent diner at the Pie Hole, establishing a reasonable connection. "Not reasonable!" Ned finally speaks up. "Unreasonable! Purely circumstantial! And a little rude." The Norwegians ignore him. They plan, they say, to prove that Emerson and Ned are hiding important facts in the case. "Yeah, how you plan to do that?" Emerson retorts. Magnus: "With help from our Mother." Y'all. "Mother" is their rolling laboratory, housed in a tricked-out, Norwegian-flag-painted RV. On the back is the helpful acronym: Mobile Investigative Lab Facility. M.I.L.F. Seriously, it's too awesome. Magnus explains that if there is a shred of evidence connecting Emerson to the case, Mother will find it. Finally, Ned can take no more. "Then run on home to your Mother," he says, shoving them all out the door, "because you're not welcome here." Magnus announces that they'll find them at the Come and Sleep Motel. Turning to Ned, Nils asks if he has any last words, and as Ned opens his mouth to speak, Nils quickly swabs his tongue with a forensic swab! But wait! He didn't see the tiny Olive sneak under the radar -- she is there in a flash to grab the swab just as quickly! BUT WAIT! As she revels in her swift maneuver, Nils uses his tweezers to pluck a hair from her head. The Norwegians seem to have won this weird round.
"We are in a crisis, people," Emerson mutters to Ned and Chuck as Olive angrily walks around with her fingers in her ears, indicating that she is not listening to their secrets. It is agreed that they need to cut these Norse fools off at the source. But, as Chuck points out, they also need to find Daddy Deadbucks pronto mundo. If the Norwegians happen upon him first, he may use that opportunity to tell the world about Ned's powers, thus eliminating Ned from Chuck's life for good. Emerson is forced to agree with that plan, but they still need someone on the job to talk Vivian into firing the rival PIs. The lightbulb goes off. "Oh, Itty Bitty," Emerson says sweetly, and Olive is back in the game. Upstairs later, Chuck tries to explain the whole thing to Olive without explaining anything at all. "All I can tell you," she says, "is if you don't convince Vivian to call off her investigation... then we are going to be in a lot of trouble." Olive: "What'd you do, kill Dwight?" Uh... She continues, smiling: "I'm just kidding! You didn't, did you?" Poor Chuck throws her hands in the air. No, she says, but she still can't tell Olive the whole story. "Oh, Hell's Bells!" Olive rants. "The least you can do is lie!" She says that no one seems to care that they keep leaving her out of the supersecret powwows. Chuck swears it's just to protect her, but Olive insists she doesn't need protection. "That's what I have several longstanding restraining orders for," she says. She needs to feel appreciated, and like she belongs, she says, and insists on receiving a full-fledged membership to the PIpalooza. Aw. I guess she means she'll accept that membership after the job is done, because she heads to Chez Aunts without getting the scoop.
Things there don't go so well, despite the presence of one truly delicious-looking pie. Vivian is steadfast in her determination to find out what's happened to Dwight. Lily is mortified, of course, and instantly sobered. When Olive informs her that the Norwegians are, at this moment, running their bright-blue body fluid lights over Dwight's motel room to determine foul play, she is even more alarmed and tries, for her own reasons, to throw Vivian off the course. But, see, Vivian won't be thrown. The Norwegians, she says, came highly recommended. "In their home country," she adds, "they're the most decorated figures since Thor Bjorklund." (To Olive Vivian explains that he was the inventor of the handheld cheese slicer and, while I was pausing to laugh at that, I discovered that this is actually true . Hey, I live to drop the knowledge.) Of course, hearing this news -- not about Thor Bjorklund, though that is titillating enough to be sure -- Lily quietly flips out. If the Norwegians are in Dwight's motel room, suspecting people of foul play, they could easily come across her note commanding Dwight to meet her at the cemetery. She therefore insists again that Vivian call off the Norwegians and leave well enough alone. This makes even more determined, even when Olive tells her that Dwight was, indeed menacing. "He even snuck into the Pie Hole once after hours," she says, "and menaced me, right to my face." Sweet Vivian is in tears. "Why on Earth would he menace you?" she asks Olive, and Olive is struck by the question. "It's on a need-to-know basis..." she mumbles, and Vivian sobs anew."Well, then," she says, "I need to know!" Vivian cries that she is tired of being a pushover, deserves the truth and doesn't need anyone to protect her from it. "YES, you DO," Lily insists, and it is just the thing to push Olive over the edge. "This gives me pause," the tiny one says. Vivian mutters that a manicure might help, heh, but Olive says no -- she's been hearing this conversation over and over about need-to-know, and she's finally getting it. She smilingly rants that she's heard enough to know that when people say that they're keeping a secret "for your own good," it really means they won't tell you because they don't trust you. Lily nearly chokes as Olive goes on and on, raging about how "when you shimmy on over to say a simple 'top of the mornin' to ya,' they clam up like you've got the Ebola." Intensely, she asks Vivian if she's tired of living her life from the outside. "You deserve to have those answers," she announces as Vivian gets teary again. "If you wanna enlist a crack team of PIs from the land of Norwegia, you go girl, because maybe then you'll finally get the respect, trust and honesty you deserve from your So-Called Best Friends!" With that, she marches out, and Jimmy D tells us that as she ponders on the breaking ranks with Lily to defend Vivian, she wonders if there aren't other alliances in her life she should be breaking. Aw, Olive. Meanwhile, the Norwegians are not resting, no sir. They have, indeed, found Lily's note and are all too quick to present it to Vivian who, with tears in her eyes once again, immediately recognizes her sister's handwriting.
Time to put the cards on the table. Vivian confronts Lily with the note, asking her what happened at the cemetery between her and Dwight. Lily half-truthfully tells her that nothing happened. "He stood me up," she says, "just like he did you." Ah, but Vivian ain't buying it. "I wasn't stood up," she says, "you ran him with both barrels cocked at his manhood, and then invited him or lured him to the cemetery for Lord knows why." She says she won't call Lily a liar. If she says Dwight never showed, she'll believe her. Lily: "He didn't show." Vivian: "I don't believe you." Aw. She says she can't protect Lily from the Norwegians if she won't tell the truth, and Lily has had enough. "What is it you think I did?" Lily asks, exasperated. Vivian says she's afraid whatever it was, it was something rash. She knows it's petty to say it, but she's afraid Lily just couldn't stand seeing Dwight making her happy. "Dwight Dixon is trouble!" Lily insists, for the hundredth time, but all Vivian can think of are his courtly blandishments and clarinet talents. She says that yes, Dwight's past may have had a criminal element, but that it's all behind him now. "It ain't behind him," Lily spits. "It's right on top of him, or maybe even inside him! His motel room had enough buckshot in it to blow C'ouer de C'ouer to Timbuktu!" Vivian wants to know what Lily was doing in Dwight's motel room. Lily is forced to produce Charles Charles's monogrammed watch. "Looking for this," she says. "Your kind Dwight stole it from Charlotte's grave, right after you told him where it was." This changes everything; Vivian is horrified. Lily admits that she stole Dwight's watch, too, and places both watches together -- CC and DD -- on the table. She says that if Dwight had showed at the cemetery, the only thing that would have happened between them was that "me and both barrels would have convinced him to dig Charlotte's grave right up again, and put that watch up exactly where he found it." Vivian: "And your intentions after that?" Exasperated, Lily says that that was gonna be up to Dwight. Slowly, Vivian places the watches in her hand. "Congratulations, Lily," she says, "I know how you like being right." Snap. Lily says she didn't WANT to be right -- "I knew I was gonna, but I didn't wanna be!" -- and that she doesn't get any satisfaction out of seeing Vivian hurt. "Now," Vivian drones, "I really don't believe you."
Across the street, Ned and Chuck are snooping around in Ned's old house, trying to find clues as to the whereabouts of Chuck's dad. They find nothing but a brass button placed, Chuck thinks, conspicuously on the windowsill. Maybe it's a sign, she says, that her dad is... thinking of her? Because he always called her Button? This part is a little loose. She thinks the button means he's keeping a safe distance to protect her. "I feel it deep down inside of me that he wouldn't abandon me," she says. "He's here somewhere." Ned tells her she can't hang all that on this button she found. "Yes, I can," she insists. "I'm his Button Button."
Back in town, the Norwegians are dealing with evidence of their own, keeping their eye on Emerson who is, in turn, keeping his eye on them. Using his sneakoscope or whatever they call those little dentist mirrors that can be used to spy on people when stuck with gum on the end of a stick, Emerson spies on the inside of Mother where he finds the Norwegians, gathered around... Olive, dressed in the uniform of her new countrymen. "Shut yo' mouth," she's telling Magnus and the gang, "I can't believe you guys think my former friends are up to no good, too." Snap! Or, as Jimmy D can't help but put it: "OH, HELL NO." When I am done rewinding it for the 80th time, we hear Olive continuing to rip on the Pie Holers. She can't count the number of secrets they flaunt in her face, she says. Furthermore, Dwight Dixon did used to hang out at the Pie Hole, "until he didn't." And FURTHERmore, she's brought that saliva sample they took from Ned. "Because they have things in their mouths and in their hands that they do not want spread around," she adds, and sips her Norwegian tea with smug satisfaction. Nils wonders if these "things" would lead them to kill Dwight Dixon. "Well, that's why I'm here," Olive says, all business. "You tell me. There's plenty of sumpin'-sumpin' going on with those dirty birds, and since you're all about getting answers and so am I, I figured it was about time I joined the A-Team." Oh, the magical delights my mind concocts when I imagine Kristin Chenoweth alongside Mr. T...
In fact, the Norwegians are glad to have her. The DNA analysis they performed on her hair, Nils says, told them everything they needed to know. "Oh," Olive squirms. "I was under the impression that penicillin would clear that up." Hee. No, what they mean, the lusty Hedda says, is that Olive is "of good, strong, shapely Norwegian stock. Skol!" Hee. Olive swigs down her Norwegian booze with uncomfortable gusto, even trying a little Minnesotia "doncha know" on for size as she grins awkwardly at Hedda's suggestive eyebrow. She compliments Mother, their seriously pimped-out forensicmobile. "Mudder is the heart and soul of vat ve do," Nils says. "Widdout her, we'd be just anudder..." Olive: "Emerson Clod?!" Oh, how they laugh. Olive asks her new team what they really think happened to Dwight. They believe, they say, that he was a dangerous man with a destructive agenda. He, Nils says, "most likely met with a wiolent end." Ha! Using all their available tools aboard Mother, they've tracked Dwight's last movements to the cemetery. What he was doing by Chuck's and her dad's graves, Hedda says, pointedly, they can't say. That is, for now -- oh, yes, people, they have exhumation orders!
"NO!" Chuck says, back at the Pie Hole with the downtrodden Emerson who has obvs spilled the beans on Olive's new life. "Olive's a Norwegian!" Ned says. Chuck, in the best line of the night: "Maybe it's Stockholm Syndrome !" Emerson: "Chitty-chatty Boo-hoo knew exactly was she was doing. She was sufficiently lubed and ready to spit tacks." Individually, they each start blaming themselves: Chuck thinks it's her fault for pushing Olive away and pushing her to talk to Vivian. "You're not that pushy, and you're not to blame," Ned says. He goes on that Olive betrayed them because they couldn't let her in on the whole story, and they couldn't do that because of his magic finger. "It always comes back," he says, "to my magic finger." That may well be, Emerson gripes, but in about five minutes it's not going to matter because the graves will be dug up. "They gonna find [Chuck's] empty, and D-wight's dead ass in the other one," he says. "And enough forensic evidence to lead them right back here to us." Stunned, Chuck and Ned prepare for the worst. Meanwhile, at the graveyard, the Norwegians do their thing. They, however, weren't prepared for what they found. Yes, Emerson's prediction was only half right: both coffins are empty. DANG!
Now our intrepid Pie Holers are really flipping. Emerson made friendly with the groundskeeper, by way of a few Benjamins, and it's true, both coffins are empty. "But how can my dad's coffin be empty when it's supposed to be full of Dwight Dixon?" Chuck asks desperately. "Oh, God, we buried him alive!" Ned, in a panic, wonders if he should feel worse about burying Dwight alive "or him! getting! out!" In frustration, Emerson assures them that Dwight was dead as a doornail when they threw him in the grave. Chuck, for her part, is convinced Dwight's removal was at the hands of Dead Dad. "Button Button, don't you see?" she says. "He moved the body to protect us." And though her hair is beautiful, I must admit this is gibberish. "What a good dad," Emerson snarks. "You don't suppose he wiped down both the caskets with industrial bleach, do you? Because that's the only way there isn't gonna be some trace of some forensic tiddlybit that's gonna lead everybody back to every somebody at this table!" Ned freaks: "They've got my DNA! I should've worn a hairnet!" Hee! Chuck points out the extreme longshot of Ned being able to pass off that his DNA got around the gravesite at Chuck's dad's funeral. Twenty-five years ago, or something? Okay. Do these people not watch CSI? The real problem, though, is that Emerson doesn't even have a longshot, and really it's his DNA that's going to be all over the grave. "With no real reason to be there," Ned says, sadly, "you're gonna look guilty." Emerson: "I am guilty." He says it wasn't his hand that touched Charles Charles and put Dwight Dixon in the grave (well, technically it was on that one, right?), but that if it wasn't for him, Ned would just be a piemaker with weird powers, and Chuck would be grass fertilizer. Harsh, but okay. He says he brought them into the PI life, and it was his job to keep them in line, and he didn't. "So, if anybody deserves to face the Norwegian firing squad," he concludes, "it's me." Man, Emerson, in Norway, they don't bother with guns! No. That is for those wussy Danes! Instead, they put you in a room and make you referee arguments about who is more evil, Hellhammer or Darkthrone, and please do not think I am joking about these band names , because to make a joke about DoomDevil would be a joke at my own peril. All right, I made the last one up. Anyway, as Emerson mopes about this inevitable date with fate, Ned suddenly has a brainwave. "Don't put on a blindfold or smoke your last stogie, yet, because I got a plan," he says, energized. "You're gonna tell the Norwegians everything you know."
Moments later Emerson sits in his office facing his enemies. "Let me tell you everything I know," he starts, but Nils interrupts. "There is nothing you can tell us that Mother can't," he says, "once she finishes her analysis." Hedda twists the knife. "Although... ve don' weesh to look a geefthor' in the mouth, Meester Cod," she adds, hilariously. "Vy vould you tell us everyting you know?" Emerson: "Because confession is good for the soul?" Ha. He continues to blather on a bit windily. "Detective work is a lot like money; it don't really come with instructions," he says. "I learned that from the greatest detective in the world. 'Course I'm talkin' 'bout Shaft ... you can dig it." The genius of Chi McBride; there's no putting it into words.
Ah, but if you're wondering why Emerson is presenting his facts to the Norwegians, Jim Dale explains: while all this is going on, Ned and Chuck prepare to enter Mother's empty nest. Chuck is excited all prepared with her sexy, plan-making man to hotwire this Norwegian RV. "Shall we?" she asks but, no, they shan't. "I shall steal Mother alone," Ned says, "and you shall stay here as a lookout." Chuck ain't having it. "I shan't do any such thing!" she protests, adding that they're in this jam because she brought her dad back and let him live. But the thing is, Ned doesn't blame her for that -- how could he when he kept her alive out of love, too. Emerson didn't have to force him to join the PI team, he did it of his own free will. If there's anyone to blame for this whole crazy mess, he says, it's him. Thus, he's going to take the risks, if they are to be taken, and he heads into the RV and gets to work. Immediately, he is come upon by none other than Olive! "YOU!" they say in unison, and Ned swears this isn't what it looks like. "You're not trying to hotwire Mother so you can drive away with the truckload of evidence they have on you?" Olive asks. Well, okay then, Ned says, it IS what it looks like. As he works on the hotwiring, he says he's sorry they've had to keep secrets from her. "The last thing I wanted to do was shut you out of my life and open you up to the Norwegians," he says. Olive sighs. "Is that what you think this is about?" she asks. Ned: "You gave them my swab!" Olive: "Pig spit!" Ned is flabbergasted. "Don't deny it!" he whisper-yells. "Emerson saw you!" Olive sighs again. No, dummy, she tells him -- that wasn't his swab, it was really pig spit! From Pigby! She would never turncoat on them -- she's more of a reversible jacket, she says -- she went Norwegian so she could bring down this operation from the inside. She knows they have dirt on Ned, she says, but she can't figure out what they did to make him look SO dirty. "I think I got myself dirty," Ned admits, chagrined. "Well, allow me to soap up those hard to reach places," Olive offers, all innocence. She says this Itty Bitty is always on his side, no questions asked. Ned looks relieved, until she suggests maybe she could guess the answers to the secrets! Ha! "Olive..." he starts, but she jumps back in and asks if he can answer yes or no if she asks the right questions. "Can you ask the questions while we steal the RV?" Ned asks. Ah, that's a yes or no question and Olive has an answer: yes. Not only that, she has the key to Mother and producing it from her cleavage, they are off, much to the dejection of the Norwegians who spy their escape from Emerson's office, and race after them in vain.
On the snowy backroads of... wherever they are... Olive fires off the questions as Ned swerves along the highway. Does he know why Charles Charles's grave is empty? Yes. Was it robbed? No. They what did he do, just get up and walk away? Uh, yes. Whoa! Olive is shocked. "Chuck's father's alive?" she asks and Ned takes a mighty swerve. Olive continues unabated. If Chuck and her father faked their deaths, was Dwight Dixon onto them? Yes. Okay, well, did Ned have anything to do with Dwight's subsequent disappearance? Ned admits that yes, he did, though he did not mean to. "Okay, when you inadvertently, unintentionally and without malice aforethought disappeared Dwight," she asks, "did you disappear him in a permanent sense?" Ned swerves and says he doesn't understand the question. Olive: "Did you kill him?!" Ned: "DEAD END!" Olive gasps. "Is that an admission?" she asks. But um, no, it's not. It's more like an announcement -- because Mother has come to the literal end of the road and is going off a cliff.
I am telling you, there is no friend to the recapper like the commercial. I hate them at all other times, but when I am recapping, I think to myself often how I'd like to see at least five more minutes of this Lexus commercial where they try to convince us that people give each other cars for Christmas.
Back on the cliffside (for that is where we are now, Ned and Olive having somehow escaped the falling RV and to save themselves on the proverbial branch jutting from the doomed rock) the future literally hangs in the balance. Well, Ned hangs in the balance, and Olive hangs off him. "Thank God for my naturally clingy nature!" she says. Sensing the end, Ned apologizes to Olive for getting her into all this. "I'm sorry you felt you had to prove yourself," he tells her, meaningfully. "I'm sorry about... so many things." Olive says she's not sorry. "Well, maybe for one thing," she admits. "I'm sorry you never looked at me the same way you look at Chuck." Sniff! Wait, it gets even better. Check it. Ned: "I wouldn't say 'never.'" Y'all. So sweet. Jim Dale tells us that of all the secrets untold, this was the one Olive most wanted to hear. She is so full of bliss, it almost doesn't matter when the branch begins to break and they start their descent into the sea. But wait! What's this? A masked man comes to their rescue, grabbing Ned's arm at the last minute and hauling both of them to safety.
Back in his office, Emerson is having regrets. He's called Vivian to meet him there, against her better judgment she says, "considering the callous braggadocio with which you previously gave me the heave-ho." Emerson: "Well, if I did do any ho-heavin', it was for your own good." Hee. He says there is a time to for callous braggadocio, and a time for sensitivity, and to the Norwegians that second time is never. Vivian says she supposes it's a holdover from their Viking ancestry. "It would be difficult to rape and pillage," she says, "with the subtlety of a humanist." Er, yeah. I guess maybe we don't need to say "rape" on television for no reason? Just a suggestion. I mean, she could have used DoomDevil as an example, instead, is all I'm saying. Anyway, Emerson has called her there to do her the great courtesy of breaking the bad news: when the Norwegians opened the coffins of Charles and Charlotte, their coffins were empty. Vivian is devastated. "Our Charlotte?" she cries. "Dwight stole her?!" Emerson sweetly tells her that yes, Charlotte wasn't there, but the truth is that Charlotte is always with her, in her heart. "Thank you, Mr. Cod," Vivian says. "It seems my sister was right. Dwight was indeed a bad man. Oh, my sweet, sweet Charlotte. Knowing this will surely shatter Lily's heart."
In Chuck and Olive's apartment, Chuck bandages Ned's wounds while Olive gives her the scoop on their masked savior. "We think... it was your pops," Olive says, to Chuck's surprise. Ned quickly tells her that oh, yeah, he told Olive all about how Mr. Charles "faked" his death. "Oh!" Chuck smiles. Yeah, Olive says, the guy that saved them was covered head to toe. "He has a very, uh, delicate skin condition," Chuck says. Olive: "Like your allergy to Ned!" Yes, exactly like that. Ned apologizes to Chuck for doubting her -- in his reality, disappeared dads don't come back, but obviously, the guy that saved them must have been her dad. "Like a guardian angel," Chuck sighs. Olive: "What's he guarding you from?" Ned and Chuck resume the silent treatment. "Oh, Jimminy Jehosephat!" Olive yells. "I went out on a limb for you people! A tree limb! Jutting from a cliff! With my limbs dangling over certain death!" So don't, she says, leave her hanging on the whole Dwight thing, unless he was, you know, murdered or something. Ding! "Olive," Chuck says, seeing her notice their grimaces, "murder is a very big word." Olive: "Did he die of natural causes?" Ned and Chuck: "Yes!" Olive: "Are either of you referring to murder as a natural cause?" Ned declares that they are officially non-referential, starting now. What's stopping now, he says, are the questions. "So, that's how it is," Olive says. "You wanna roll Army-style. Don't ask, don't tell. Well, guess what works in the foxhole, works in the Pie Hole." Poor Olive.
Unfortunately, JD tells us, what works in the Pie Hole, does not work for the Norwegians, who adhered to a strict "do ask, do tell" policy. They swoop on Olive as the Pie Hole counter. "Hello, Hedda," Olive gulps at her one-time admirer. "You're looking lovely tonight." But they're having none of it. "You," Nils accosts her, "killed our Mudder!" Olive thinks fast. "I was Mother-jacked!" she says. She can't identify the perps, though, just their fists from when they uh, pummeled her eyes. "Then they beat me with a blue and yellow sock," she says, "as they got high on ABBA and tiny little meatballs!" The Norwegians gasp: SWEDES ! Hedda, sensing that she is lying, is putting on the pressure when Ned, Chuck and Emerson burst in, just in time. Hiding Chuck immediately, Ned and Emerson are there to hear that Nils's remote Mother alert has told him that there has just been activity on Dwight Dixon's credit card! He's not dead after all? He's just checked back in to the Come and Sleep Motel.
Racing to the scene, everyone jams up in the doorway at once. "Listen, we're all professionals, people" Emerson groans as they fight their way through. "This doesn't have to get ugly." Nils: "Your shirt suggests otherwise." Heeeee. Finally, Hedda wrenches her way inside. "Once we find Dwight," she says, flipping on the room's lightswitch, "all will be illuminated." Uh, yeah, because Dwight? Is dead on the bed. Whoa! "We will soon get to the bottom of this," the Norwegians announce, and in and aside to Emerson, Ned can't help pointing out that the bottom of this keeps dropping. "Well, when they get to the bottom," Emerson whispers, "what exactly are they gonna be scrapin'? Cause dead men don't run up their credit cards checkin' back in to motels they never checked out of." Good point. Ned wonders if Chuck's dad could have done all this, but they are interrupted by Nils. Whatever they're talking about, he says, will be moot when the mighty Norwegians discover all the details the scene has to offer. Oh, yes, Jim Dale says, there are many details to be found in this room, but they all fit together to tell a story that was a lie. The facts, he says, were NOT these: every clue presented here was specially crafted to show that Dwight Dixon had simply died of natural causes. Hidden booty found under the mattress pointed to his life as a seasoned grave robber. A can of gasoline indicated that he had burned the two missing Charles bodies. "In the end, all the evidence pointed to Dwight acting and dying alone, with nobody else responsible," JD says. "Because that's what they were supposed to find." Emerson smugly accepts a grudging handshake from Magnus as the Norwegians wrap up their case, and he and Ned can finally breathe after this messed up ordeal.
At the aunts' house, Vivian comforts a devastated Lily as they deal with the news that Chuck's body is really gone. The next day, Ned works out his own issues in the kitchen. He's decided to retire the magic finger. No more using it to revive dead fruit, no more using it to re-alive dead people. He's done. From now on, he tells Chuck, crimefighting is Emerson's business, and baking pies is his. Chuck is distraught and says that since her dad fixed everything, Ned shouldn't give up detecting. "I don't want your dad, or anyone else's to fight my battles," he says, "or clean up my messes. That's it." But, you know, that's not really it. For, as Jim Dale tells us, though Ned had taken responsibility for his own actions, he was wrong about who was responsible for other stuff. It wasn't Chuck's dad who fixed this particular mess. It was his own.