Water and Power
Updated 2009-06-08 08:53:59
Young Emerson Cod was however many years, months and days old and he was... cute as hell . And in trouble. It seems the dapperly-dressed young man could not keep himself out of the principal's office, and while his three-piece suits were impressive indeed, the authorities were less impressed with the repeated wailings he infracted on future frat boy and current lunch money extorter, Guy Baxter. Nor did they love his inappropriate but brilliantly crafted science project featuring "Rings Around Uranus! Scientists Plan Probes!" All this troubs-making confounded his teachers and the specialists they called in to examine him. He was, after all, quite smart and had previously had nothing but respect for rules and regulations. "Young Emerson's mischief was a mystery," Jim Dale says. "Because what troubled him was not parental alienation or sublimated anger. It was a heart." Seems Young Emerson was in love with his beautiful principal, Eleanor Swindle. "That year," JD wisely tells us, "Emerson learned his most important lesson: Love makes you stupid." Ain't it the TRUTH? And, to prove a point, Young Emerson doesn't get one step out of the principal's office before his love forces him to pull the fire alarm to send him right back in. Love is pain, y'all.
Speaking of love and pain, Randy Mann is back on the scene to give it a shot with Olive. He enters the Pie Hole hopeful for both a metaphorical and physical mid-winter's thaw. An awkward but cute conversation with Chuck reveals that he sleeps in the nude, and thus was pleased to find the weather turning warmer. David Arquette is basically precious. When Chuck informs Olive of her gentleman caller, Olive flashes him a smile filled with mixed messages. Speaking of mixed messages, Ned watches the couple talking in a booth and has a momentary blanche of what looks likes the jellz. He says, however, that he's happy. "Olive's been through a tough patch that I may have made tougher," he says, "and by 'may have' I mean 'definitely did.'" He wants this to work out between Olive and Randy, he says, smiling. Plus, what better place is there to nurture a new relationship than the Pie Hole? "Warmth, pie, snuggly booths," he lists. "All the right ingredients." Swinging around her straightened hair that must weigh nine pounds for all the swishing she is having to do, Chuck says that love doesn't need all the right ingredients: "It's heartier than that." At this sweet double meaning, Ned beams, but Chuck insists that she's right. It is heartier, she says. "We're like those blind fish that live in volcanoes at the bottom of the ocean," she says. "Only we're two fish that can't even touch." Ned: "'Cause normally fish are all over each other." Chuck is unabated by his sarcasm. She makes a toast to their love, with coffee, for having grown and survived through a year of rough and complicated seas. "And here's to Randy and Olive," Ned adds. "May they have smooth sailing ahead." Oh, well, let's not get ahead of ourselves, because apparently the sailing has already been un-smooth. "Why is Randy leaving?" Chuck asks, in a panic as Olive sidles back to the pie bar. "Oh, we just decided to call it quits -- too much too soon," she says, casually. "Actually it was just me. Singular. So, more accurately, I would say it was me who decided to call it quit. I'll be in the kitchen, rationalizing my panic attack." Chuck swishes her hair around to face Ned, in her own panic: "Man overboard!"
Moments later it is Chuck in the booth with Randy, having an equally intense, but less sad conversation. He said that everything seemed to have been going fine, but then "suddenly, she said 'goodbye,' and shook my hand, which was... weird." Aw. Chuck assures him that Olive has just been through a sticky swamp of emotions and doesn't want to get stuck again. Randy says he understands all about her getting stuck on Ned, but that she said she was over it. Chuck tries a new analogy, having worn out the one about the blind fish. "It's like driving a car blindfolded," she says. "You just have to relax." Randy scrunches his nose. "Relax?"
"RELAX?" Olive says concurrently in the kitchen. Apparently Ned has been giving her similar advice -- though his was somehow about bullfighting --which he tops off with an unintentionally patronizing comment about how relationships are hard to make work. "You're telling me these things are hard to make work?" Olive asks, incredulous. "I know that, because you taught me!" Ned tries again, saying that maybe Randy scares her because she's not used to something being so easy. "Oh. My God," Olive gasps. "I'm that girl. I'm that girl in high school who's afraid of real relationships, so she's always attracted to guys in college. Or Canada. Or you." Oh, Olive. Those That Girls weren't afraid of real relationships -- they were gay. Now, if you want to finish this show off by spawning entire websites full of slash fan fiction about you and Aunt Vivian, go ahead... but please, don't email it to me. Or, wait a minute... Anyway, Ned says he just wants Olive to be happy. "So, what you're saying is, I shouldn't run away from Randy," Olive concludes. Ned says yes. In fact, she continues, Ned's saying Randy might be just what she needs right now. Ned says yes, again. "A quick fling, to heal the scars and rub ointment on the burns from us and then rip off and toss away like a used square of gauze," she says, delighted. Ned: "NOT YES!" Olive, excited, declares Randy to be "Randy Rebound" and marches away triumphantly, leaving Ned to doubt his plan to bring these lovers together.
Speaking of lovers, Simone has returned with the generally adored Bubblegum from a dog show and is clicking her way back into Emerson's heart. Simone, however, wants to be let in a bit more on Emerson's personal life. Let me put it on front street right now before I go any further: There are a lot of things going on in this episode. I mean, I know that is true of every one of them, but this time it seems overwhelming. I initially rated it higher than last week's wonderful show, and now that I have seen it again, I am having second thoughts. Still, any episode that heavily features Emerson I am going to love, so I'm not knocking it overall. The thing is, though, I only have the two hands, and my wrists are not made of titanium. Also, as much as I have loved Simone in the past, her accent is starting to grate. And there's not enough Bubblegum going on here. And I am cranky. And Simone is making a lot of animal training references, which is nice continuity, but we get it. Anyway, she is saying that she is intensely optimistic about their future, but doesn't like surprises when through the door strolls a surprise in the form of a new client. Ah, but though she may be a new client, she is not new to Emerson. She is the sister of Roland "Rollie" Stingwell, owner of the Papen County Dam. "I'd tell you more about it," he says, "except for, due to various reasons, we haven't spoken in nine years." Miss Stingwell says dramatically that those reasons are dead now, i.e. Rollie's dead. And, as she knows Emerson is the best in town, she is there to hire him to find Stingwell's killer, as well as "the Dam Ruby" which is missing. "After everything that happened all those years ago, Emerson," she adds, much to his lip-curling chagrin, "I'd say it was the least you could do." Simone is immediately on the scent. (See? I can make dog jokes, too.) "What happened between you and Rollie?" she asks. Emerson jovially tries to say that it was nothin', but Jimmy D gives us the facts. Which are these:
Rollie Stingwell, millionare builder and sole director of the Papen County Dam, was last seen by his secretary as he was getting ready to leave his office after a busy day. The next morning, however, his body was discovered in a dry riverbed, one half mile from the dam! Y'all, when my husband and I saw that Rollie Stingwell was played by blaxploitation legend Fred Williamson , we had to pause and give this show a slow clap. Total brilliance. Brother was in Three the Hard Way! He was also a Raider and a Chief! I honestly bow down to the casting department -- they have never made a misstep. Anyway, Rollie's final moments must have been quite traumatic, because when the finger-touch trio go to see him in the morgue, they find his head on backwards. Aaiieee! "Just think of him like an owl," Ned says nervously when Chuck audibly ughs. It helps when Rollie sits straight up and immediately asks "WHO?" He is, for more than the regular reason, surprised to see Emerson there. Surprised and mad -- he tells Ned and Chuck that Emerson stole away the love of his life, and that the worst part is, he paid him to do it. Emerson snarks that Rollie got his money back and plus, it isn't stealing if the thing being stolen wants to be stolen.
Understandably, Ned and Chuck are confused. "I have questions!" Ned says, in awe of these revelations about Emerson's private life. Remembering his short deadline, though, he says he'll wait to ask them. Rollie -- who scratches the front of his shoulder while his head is turned backwards, causing me to scream in terror/delight -- says he spent years angry at Emerson. "But, now, here in..." he pauses, trying to figure out exactly where he is. "A limbo-y, non-denominational way station?" Chuck fills in helpfully. This seems to satisfy Rollie, who says that the anger has gone. "I can see I spent my life living in a haze of a broken heart," he says. "I have tamed nature. I have stopped rivers from flowing. But the one thing I couldn't do was make that woman love me." Emerson sighs, impatient. "If it makes you feel any better, Stingwell," he says, "I couldn't do it, either." In fact it does make Stingwell feel better. Yes, indeed, he smiles now as he tells them that he was killed by Lila Robinson, herself, who must have come back for the Dam Ruby. Out of time, Ned thanks Rollie and applies the re-touch. He has barely hit the slab again before Chuck has to ask: "Who the heck is Lila Robinson?" Sighing again, Emerson gives it up: "She's the babymama that took my daughter."
After not NEARLY enough commercials to give my hands respite, Emerson is back at the Pie Hole, and back to his old, secret-keeping self. He doesn't want to give Ned and Chuck too many details about Lila or his daughter because "it's complicated." Chuck insists, however, that if Lila did come back to town to steal that Dam Ruby, and if she is a suspect in Stingwell's murder, they've just been hired to find her. "I've spent the last seven years, tracking down her and my kid," Emerson grimaces. (Three times I typed "Emerson grimersons." Three times.) "Lila is a wiley genius. A man-eating, shape-shifting grafter who knows how to get in and get out and vanish like heat off a blacktop." Ned and Chuck look at him with sympathy. "At least we could try," Ned says. "We need to try." Emerson sighs anew. Maybe he could give it one more shot. "I don't know your daughter's name," Chuck says, smiling a little. "Penny," Emerson says. "My daughter's name is Penny." And, before I can start tearing up from the inherent Rescuers associations, Jim Dale gives us the facts. Nine years ago, Rollie Stingwell hired a bearded (!) Emerson to tail his fiancée, Emily, who he suspected of having an affair. Ah, but she wasn't having an affair -- she was merely going off alone to the forest on furtive trips to seek solitude and ornithology. "But hiding from a birdwatcher in a Lincoln Continental is not easy," JD says of Emerson's attempts at surveillance, "and so Emily and Emerson began sharing her hours of solitude over soup and sandwiches in the woods. With each passing day, Emerson grew more blind to the fact that he was approaching "the thin line between stake-out and make-out." Hee, Jim Dale. He and Emily fall in love, despite the wrongness and despite Emily's revelation that she is, in fact, not Emily but Lila, a grifter who came to town to steal Rollie's Ruby. Emerson returned the money to Stingwell, of course, but what he could not return was his client's fiancée, or the new life growing inside her. Furious, Stingwell swears that if Lila ever grifts again, it will be her last, and she swears to stay straight. Meanwhile, Rollie builds Papen County Water & Power into a juggernaut of wealth.
The facts having been presented, Emerson takes Chuck and Ned to the Water & Power company (complete with a circa-19th century historical photo of dam workers, into which Fred Williamson has been Photoshopped), where they are met by Taylor Philbean, who introduces himself as their Dam Guide. "When there's a bigger group," he deadpans, "this is where I wait for the laugh to die down." And that was his one joke. He is cute, but why did they bother giving him a name? While they wait for Taylor to lead them to the inner sanctum of the dam company, Emerson explains to Chuck and Ned that Lila was unable to leave behind her life of crime. "People's nature is like a river," he says. "You can only keep it dammed up for so long." Apparently, one day Lila packed up the baby and went to Stingwell's looking for the ruby. When she couldn't find it, she stole $50k in cash and took off. As Emerson is admitting he was blinded by love, he is really blinded by Taylor, who sets off a big flash with the security camera. Emerson wants to know if it records every visitor to the dam. "Yes, should you be planning to blow up the dam and flood the valley," Taylor says, "one copy is kept on file and another is available for sale as a keepsake on the way out." Hee. This is both amusing and handy -- they find a photo in the files taken of Lila the day Stingwell was killed. Stingwell's secretary remembers seeing Lila, who had a private meeting with Rollie. She goes on to say that the police have already been there, asking questions about the multi-million dollar contract Rollie had been negotiating to replace all the pipes used to bring water to the city. The secretary thinks his death has nothing to do with Lila OR the pipe deal. Her theory centers around a local company she caught dumping chemicals into the dam reservoir. "And you blew the whistle?" Ned asks, impressed. "You go, girl!" The secretary, responsible citizen though she may be, is still a bit kooky, as you'd expect. "One drop of certain mind-altering drugs," she twitters, "and we'll all be zombies under the control of those secret signals on FM radio." The two guys standing there with a dead and re-alive girl look at her like she's crazy.
They see a heavily-sealed iron door in the wall, and the secretary tells them it was Rollie's private exit that leads through the inside of the dam to a private stairwell. Emerson immediately opens it and takes off through the door leaving Chuck and Ned to listen intently to the secretary's toxic chemical theory. Within the innards of the dam, Emerson runs into police Detective Puget. "Who didn't want to knock off Stingwell?" Puget says, and lists off various suspects: the companies up for the re-piping contracts; a bunch of farmers bitter over their water supply being dammed up; and anyone interested in stealing the Dam Ruby that Rollie "flaunted like a trophy wife at a high school reunion." Emerson offers a lead and suggests Puget get on the trail of Lila, turning over the photo of her taken at the dam. "Never known you to share, Cod," Puget points out. "What's your angle?" Emerson says maybe he wouldn't mind a little help bringing down the hammer of justice on whatever lowlife committed the crime. "Doesn't matter to me if that hammer's public or private, as long as the nail gets hit on the head," he says. "Catch my drift?" Puget pauses, furrowing his brow. "I... do not," he says. Emerson puts it in terms he can understand: "Catch. The. Bitch." HAAA! He tells Puget to use all his resources and use them quickly. "'Cause I guaran-damn-tee you, she movin' fast, and the trail's gettin' cold."
Back at his office, Emerson finds Simone waiting for him. "There's something I've got to tell you," she says, but he interrupts, saying there's something he needs to tell her, too. "And I really hate to tell you, now," he says, "because now it looks like I'm just tellin' you because I have to, not 'cause I want to." He starts trying to explain about the pop-up "L'il Gumshoe" book she found, but she cuts him off. "May I go first?" she asks, tersely. "I'm sorry." He is confused. "What are you sorry about?" he asks, and to answer, Simone merely nods toward a dark corner of the office from which Lila, her dam(n) self, emerges.
Bitch got a gun. "Lila," Emerson snarls. "Lila?!" Simone says. "She told me her name was Priscilla Saltpeter! Said she'd shoot me if I let on she was here." Emerson says yeah, Lila's told a lot of people a lot of things. He asks her pointedly if she's in town to steal a ruby from a dead guy, a crime which she denies committing. "Where's Penny?" he wants to know, but it's a no-go. After an ill-advised slam on the badass Simone, hilariously calling her riff-ruff, Lila says she'll make Emerson a deal. If he clears her from this Stingwell death, she'll let him see Penny. She tells him to hang a red lantern in his window when he's got it all sewn up, but the moment she gets a whiff the cops are closing in on her, she's taking Penny somewhere he'll never find her.
Finally, Simone can take no more. "Who's Penny?" she asks. Lila: "Penny's the price I paid for thinking with my heart and not my head." Emerson admits that Penny's his daughter. "That's what I was just about to tell you," he grumbles to Simone. "Surprise." Lila gives him a 48-hour deadline. "What's to stop me from takin' away that little toy gun of yours, and pushin' yo' delicate frame through my wall?" he asks. Her answer is simple: "Xylozine." And with that, she blows a powdered blast of the knock-out drug into the faces of Simone and Emerson, who do a duet of beautifully choreographed falls to the floor.
Later at the Pie Hole, Simone tells the whole story to Chuck and Ned. When they came to in the office, Emerson had taken off in search of the real killer. "But we know who the real killer is," Ned says. "The dead man told us so." Chuck's eyes go big as Simone's narrow. "Insofar as a dead man can tell us anything," Ned backtracks, "by way of some very strong leads acquired in a normal and straightforward way." Simone offers some of her dog-training expertise, saying that Lila is playing Emerson, dominating him to go against his instincts. Ned says, however, that there is no way Emerson is being dominated -- he wouldn't run off interviewing suspects he knows are innocent or following faulty leads. "That's not who he is," Ned says, but Chuck thinks Emerson is so strongly yearning for his daughter, it may be affecting his detecting. "Instead of analyzing him," she argues, "we should be out there helping him!" Simone's mad, though, that they'd help Emerson try to track down any possible suspect other than the one she is convinced is guilty: Lila. "When someone backs you into a corner," she says, leaving, "you don't get obedient. You bite back." She says all she asked of Emerson in their relationship was that they were honest and had no surprises. "I would say," she says, holding back tears, "this qualifies as a surprise."
At another table, Olive thanks Randy for coming back to talk with her again. She says she's sorry for sending him mixed signals, although signals are like nuts: "mixed is better." She matter-of-factly says that what's important is that they have a fresh start. Randy wants some clarification. "You're not just planning on using me to get over Ned, are you?" he asks just as she's taking a sip of coffee, causing her to fountain-spit it back out into her cup. "No, no," she insists, laughing nervously. "Sometimes things are so absurd, that I can't even hear them. Like, you just blew a dog-whistle full of crazy, and I'm not a dog." Randy sweetly says that if she's not ready for a new relationship, he gets it. He just doesn't want to be her rebound guy. Olive denies again that this is what she's doing, but as soon as she's done, she slides into Ned's booth to prattle away about how Randy's going to be just the trick to wipe her emotional slate clean. Ned is admittedly distract-y, thinking about Emerson's current quest and asks his tiny friend if she thinks love can make a person do something crazy. Poor Olive. "I went," she says flatly, " to a nunnery ." With that, she leaves, and Ned goes in search of Chuck. "You're right," he says. "If Emerson's desperate enough not to see the truth [that Lila really is the killer], he's desperate enough to do anything. Let's go."
I'm really sorry y'all don't live in Georgia and are thus not graced by the endless commercials for the Georgia Lottery that clog and choke the TV and radio and billboards until you can almost think of nothing else. But Al, you say. It funds education. Yes, in G-A, we fund the education of rich kids by providing legalized gambling to the poor. Good luck, kids.
Emerson has dragged Chuck and Ned through a series of interviews with various angry farmers with grudges against Stingwell, and have now come to the last one at the end of their long day. Of course, Chuck and Ned consider it all futile, anyway, but Emerson is determined to prove Lila's innocence to be given a chance to see his kid. This last farmer, flower grower Michael Brunt, who had more than 200 acres of riverfront farm land before Stingwell stopped the river, is understandably ticked, but says he has been trying to make the best of it. He politely asks Chuck when her birthday is, and is surprised when she says December. "I would have bet you had an autumn birthday," he says, yammering about umber and amber and how they make her skin tone glow. Chuck yammers back that she actually has two birthdays, the second one being in autumn. "Your jibberish is sweet, honey," he says, and bestows on her an autumn bouquet. It's such a perfect line to use on Chuck, I'd like to see it on a t-shirt. Anyway, he says, if he had killed Stingwell, he would have done it years ago when his anger was fresh-cut. However, nothing ever changes, he adds -- whoever has the water, has the power.
Defeated, Emerson mopes back to the car. Ned and Chuck try to cheer him up by postulating that a bidder on the pipe job could have been the killer. Emerson says no, that one doesn't make sense. Chuck cringingly brings up the big-business polluter angle offered by the secretary. Emerson snarks at them not to humor him. He knows that theory is crackpot, he says, and that they have no suspects. As it's all they have left, he grudgingly decides to check it out as last-ditch effort. Thus, back at the Pie Hole they make the ultimate sacrifice, and meet with the attorneys representing the alleged chemical dumping company, the Fitz & Giggles Novelty Company. Heee! The lawyers nervously deny and then flusteringly confirm the allegations. Seems this is a firm of Mennonite lawyers, unable to lie. And, yes, F & G "inadvertently allowed" the dumping of chemicals into the reservoir, um, last Tuesday. "It was only the chemicals we use to make things glow in the dark," one lawyer says, "which are nearly identical to pure drinking water." Lawyer 2: "Pure drinking water with chemicals in it." Heee. I like these guys. "They're polluters," Ned says as they leave, "but they're no killers." Chuck says every road they've been down has been a dead end. "Except one road," Ned points out, meaning Lila, "but we can't go down that road." Emerson snarls: "No, we can't."
Ned tries to reason with him. The police, he says, are already going down that road, since Emerson tipped them off before he saw Lila. They'll probably find Lila and Penny and put an end to all of this. "Yeah," Emerson says sadly, "and what if you're wrong." He says Penny's the only leverage Lila has, and the minute she sees the police are after her, she'll probably be on the phone to some accomplice putting Penny on a bus to Mexico. "Yeah, maybe my love for my daughter has made me stupid," he says, angry. "But Lila doesn't seem to have that problem, so I'm gonna continue to jump through whatever hoop I have to, to get my little girl." Chuck asks the obvious, painful, painfully obvious question: What if Lila doesn't even have Penny? Emerson: "Well, then I guess I'm a chump. But at least I'm not a chump just sittin' around here doing nothing." With that he walks out the door. "Poor Emerson," says Olive to Chuck and Ned, swooping in after he's gone. "We can't just sit here, we've got to do somethin'! Quit gawking at each other and let's go!" Ah, but across town, a signal has been set. The red lantern has been placed in the window of Emerson's office into which Olive now innocently walks, looking for him. Out of the shadows once again comes Lila. "Who are you?" she asks. "Did you hang the lantern in the window?" Olive trembles in fear, but not for long. Through the door now comes Simone, gun in hand. "I hung the lantern, bitch," she says. Olive edges to the exit, but is stopped by Lila. "Sit tight, sister," she says. "You're in the jam, now." Olive: "I should have stepped out of it when I had the chance!"
Poor Olive is stuck there as these two fine ladies fight over Emerson. "[He] always was a sucker for a tricky dame," Lila snarks at Simone, who ain't having it. The only reason Emerson fell for Lila's tricks, Simone says, is because Emerson thinks Lila has him "by the collar." She was ready to leave him when she realized Emerson wasn't showing her all his cards, but now that she realizes the card he was stuck holding was the lying queen of empty hearts, she's back to deal again. Simone thinks Penny is a bluff. "A two-bit grifter like you wouldn't let herself get saddled with a child," she points out. Simone thinks she ditched Penny a long time ago, then when she ran out of money she came back to try again for the Dam Ruby and rubbed Stingwell out in the process. " Witch ," Olive hisses, still in the background. Lila shoots her a look and then faces Simone again. She says she did come back to see Stingwell, and although he thought she had come back to kill him, she was really there to give him back the money she stole. "So we're to believe that somehow along the way," Simone snaps, "you suddenly grew a conscience?" Lila says she did, yes, and that this "conscience" is sitting in a hotel in town watching television and eating string cheese. "She has my eyes," Lila says, "and Emerson's big heart." Olive is overcome. "That's so sweet," she says, before catching Simone's angry eye and adding "and evil, right?" Seeing Simone is distracted by Olive, Lila makes her move, wrestling for the gun which flies into Olive's hand. The day seems won until Olive holds up the gun and all the bullets fall out. Oops. Lila fumbles for her handy horse-tranquilizing blow-pipe, but Simone is too fast for her and has picked it from Lila's pocket. Aha! However, before she can use it, Lila runs out. "Get her!" Olive cries dramatically, but when Lila is gone, she and Simone look at each other and laugh. It was a trap! They wanted Lila to get away so they could follow her, which they do now as Randy Mann slides into the room ready for the pursuit. Olive: "This is so much more fun than dinner and a movie!" Outside, Lila makes it to her car, not realizing Chuck and Ned are hiding in her trunk. Awesome, except... well, if the one person who could kill you with the merest glance of his hand asked you to get in a car trunk... I mean, it bothers me when they stand so close together, but this is pushing it. He couldn't have climbed in the trunk with Randy? Well, maybe not.
Across town, Emerson has returned one last time to the water company in search for more dam evidence. He's surprised to also find Detective Puget there. "Looking for more pictures of your girlfriend, Cod?" the guy smarms. "I think I've found your angle." Puget has discovered Lila's past identity, and believes she came to town again to steal the ruby and kill Stingwell. Of course, this is what Emerson originally wanted him to think, but is now trying to trick him out of thinking because he wants to clear Lila and see his daughter. Thus, they have a confusing conversation in which Puget thanks him for the tip that Emerson now wants to retract. Puget also has a photo taken of Lila, in profile, leaving the building a half hour after Stingwell disappeared. He can't yet figure how Lila got the body half a mile away in a dry gulley, but says they'll figure it out when they take her into custody, which he thinks will be before morning. "At that moment," Jim Dale says with emotion, "Emerson Cod was overcome with 100 percent certainty that he would never see his daughter again. And, then, he was un -overcome by an idea that had a one percent chance of being correct." He looks up at the map of pipes on the wall and is in the midst of an epiphany about them when Simone shows up. "I knew you'd come back to the scene of the crime," she says, contrite. "I'm sorry I bolted on you." Emerson says it's okay, because she's there now. As they go off to test his new theory for leaks, JD says, Lila continues to drive unaware of the untouchable cargo in the trunk. "If love does make you stupid," Ned says to the blanketed lump that is Chuck, "then we must really love Emerson." AW. Chuck answers that it will all be worth it if they find Penny. "Ned? When I said that our love was hardy," she says, "it was just another way of saying it's hard." She adds, though, that if Emerson wasn't blinded by love there would never have been a Penny, and he wouldn't have had anything to lose, which would be so much easier. "Do you want us to be easier?" Ned asks, sadly. Chuck reluctantly says no, but wonders why anyone loves anything -- it just gives you more to lose. "Why love something?" Ned repeats. "Because we can." Awww, Chuck says, along with the rest of us, as they hear the brakes. Um, yeah -- Lila says it best as she raises the trunk -- when you're hiding out from someone in their own car, it's best to keep the philosophical chatting to a minimum.
Olive and Randy have returned to the Pie Hole invigorated, though they did lose Lila's car in the chase. They figure their cohorts are okay, seeing as how Olive disarmed "that crazy-ass She-Wolf." Randy asks if it's insensitive of him to say that all this detective work is fun. "Only if they're dead," Olive says, sitting down. "But they're not, right? They're fine." Switching subjects, she admits to Randy that she had intended to use him to squeeze Ned out of her head, but she doesn't think she can do that, now. He's glad, he says, because he likes spending time with her. "That's the problem," she insists. "I don't want this to make you muddle-headed so you make a bad decision. I've been through a lot, Randy. I'm gonna be difficult." Olive's so cute. Randy says he's willing to take the chance of being the rebound guy, because he believes that in time, she'll forget she ever bounced. Olive is charmed. Sweetly, she starts to say that if they are very careful, there might be away to not... but Randy interrupts her with a kiss, to which I say a hearty YAAY! Totally adorbs. "How was that?" he asks a breathless Olive when he's done. "For the first time in a very long time," she says, spinning on her stool, "the thought I had for Ned went right out of my head!" Weirdly, though, they're standing right outside the door. Ned and Chuck, not the thoughts. And, hee, they're in their underwear. Lila put them out on the side of the road without their clothes, Chuck cries, and they had to run all the way back. "We have to help Emerson!" she says, "Who knows what she's going to do!" Throwing his coat around Chuck, Randy follows Ned's orders and heads out to pull his car around while they get dressed to run out again to catch Lila. But as Ned turns and flips off the lights, they see that the beautiful bouquet of flowers Chuck received earlier from the farmer are on the counter, glowing in the dark.
Meanwhile, Emerson and Simone are looking at glowing flowers of their own, on the desk in Stingwell's office. Emerson's one percent chance theory paid off. The flowers, he discovers are from Michael Brunt's farm and had been delivered the same day Stingwell was murdered. They put it all together in a convo that makes my head spin. Brunt's flowers are glowing because he's been watering them from the leaky pipes that go under his farm. Leaky pipes in this guy's case translating into free water he really needs. But then Brunt hears that Stingwell is now going to replace the pipes, effectively cutting him off AGAIN from the water. He goes to Stingwell's office to discuss it, flowers in hand as a peace offering, and overhears Stingwell accusing Lila of coming back to kill him for the Dam Ruby. Thus, Brunt formulates a plan to kill Stingwell using Lila as a scapegoat and steal the Dam Ruby for himself. A HA! Simone, however, asks the obvs question. If Brunt did it, what about the pictures of Lila leaving the building after Stingwell's murder. Emerson raises a brow. "Follow me," he says and steps through Stingwell's private side door. The way he sees it, Stingwell is walking through the pipes, hears a noise and decides to investigate. Excited, Emerson goes on reeling out his theory of Brunt's murder preparations before finally sighing. "This is crazy," he says, turning away from Simone. "I'm fooling myself." Simone: "It's Lila." Emerson says he knows, he knows, but actually, wait a second -- Simone is talking about the actual Lila who appears to be locking them in the pipe.
"It's Lila," she says again, as the figure traps them in, but Emerson sees it all clearly now. "No, it ain't!" he says, "and he's right." It's Brunt, dressed as Lila, come back for one last look through the pipes for the Dam Ruby. As he turns a huge valve to release tons of water to kill them, Emerson spies the ruby in a crevice. "Hey," he says, thrilled and heedless of their impending doom. "Looks like he went the wrong way!" Feeling the breeze from the rushing water, Simone can only say she disagrees. They take off for the end of the pipe and are just about to go over the edge into an explosive waterfall when Simone pulls Emerson to safety on a tiny ledge outside the pipe. Saved, Emerson yells to her that he thinks he realizes now how Stingwell ended up a half a mile away. "He didn't have you!" he tells Simone, and they share a triumphant smooch. Jimmy D gives us the facts, but hell, we've already figured it out: Stingwell was cornered by Brunt, and thinking it was Lila, hid the ruby in the dam where he had found it. As he heard the water racing toward him, he was struck by the irony that he was about to be killed by the power he had, himself, created. Then he was struck by the water (hee!) and was blasted out of the pipe, finally ending up where he was found. After flushing Stingwell, still disguised as Lila, Brunt allowed the photobooth to document his exit. And, after attempting to flush Emerson and Simone, JD adds, Brunt tried to leave the same way. This time, we see as the photobooth captures Ned and Chuck catching the perp, it was Brunt who was flushed out.
Murder solved, Stingwell's sister hands over Emerson's cash and he hands over the Dam Ruby. Hooray! But, what about Lila? Well, the terms of his meeting with her were simple. Lila makes him meet her in the woods alone. A deal's a deal, she tells him, and says Emerson can go catch up with Penny in the car. "Thank you, Emerson," she adds. "No one else could do what you did." Emerson says that no one else would have been stupid enough to even try. He says her life is crazy and that Penny surely deserves some normalcy. "You'd be shocked how normal her life is," Lila answers. "School, homework, braces..." Emerson is moved. "She has braces?" he says, smiling a little. Lila laughs, saying that her life may not always be on the straight and narrow, but Penny's is. "Emerson Cod looked into the eyes that had lied to him so many times before," Jim Dale says, with an ominous tone, "and decided they were lying to him, again." Emerson abruptly changes the tone of the meeting. He doesn't just want to see Penny for 10 minutes, he says, he wants a lot more. "It's my turn to parent, now," he says. (JD: "Surprise.") Lila resignedly says she thought he might want something like this. "Don't worry," Emerson assure her. "I'll take care of her." Sighing, she says she knows he will, it's just that she doesn't know how she'll take care of herself. She's broke, she says, and her car is on its last legs. Emerson considers this. "Take mine," he says, handing her the keys. "Penny and I can find something else." Finally, she accepts and turns to leave. "I always could count on your big heart," she says. "Maybe I was a fool to leave you." Triumphant, Emerson walks toward her old car and Penny, saying over his shoulder that yeah, people do stupid things when they're in love.
Yeah, like you just did, Emerson. "Surprise," JD says again. Because, y'all, Penny ain't in the car. It's a dummy. The real Penny is in Emerson's old car, now being driven away by the evil Lila. Once again, Emerson's been duped but, as he watches the car drive away, waving to the beautiful little brace-face in the back seat, he realizes that despite her many flaws, Lila does love and take care of Penny. "One way or another, he'd find her," Jim Dale says, and as we see Emerson later in his office opening a congratulatory letter telling him that "L'il Gumshoe" will finally be going to press, "maybe it would only be a matter of time before she found him."
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