Episode Report Card Al Lowe: B- | Grade It Now! YOU GRADE IT Sniff It Good
By Al Lowe | Season 1 | Episode 7 | Aired on 11.20.2007
In a hurry? Read the recaplet for a nutshell description! Finished? Click here to close.We learn that poor, abandoned Young Ned, to remember his poor, dead mom, used to sneak around his mean ol' school late at night to revive rotted fruit and make pies out of it. This comforted him, and to make Chuck feel just as comforted since she can no longer be with her aunts, he hauls plants up and down multiple stairs for her honeybee enterprise. Everybody's comforting everybody this week, apparently: Chuck is still sneaking the homeopathic meds into her aunts' pies, and Olive continues to deliver them, hoping to encourage the aunts back to synchronized swimming. All of that happened in the first minute. Siiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiigh. So, as Emerson comforts himself with the latest issue of Knit Wit magazine, he gets a call about a case. The mother of a dead woman (first dead chick since Chuck) hires the gang to sniff out the baddie who made a scratch-and-sniff bomb that killed her daughter. The intended victim had been Napoleon LeNez, olfactory expert. LeNez figures that it's his old friend and current enemy, Oscar (played by none other than Pee-wee Herman), who haunts the city's sewers, collecting its worst odors. Indeed, Oscar appears to be pretty evil; I mean, he blows up Napoleon's AMC Pacer! Come on! No! I am not making any of this up! So, the trio of detectors has to get all up in it, and while Ned and Emerson are testifying on the news about the case, Oscar walks into the Pie Hole, where Chuck and Olive wait unprotected. Under the threat of stabbing by Olive, Oscar remains cool -- he's being framed, he says. Napoleon is the real bomber of the dead girl and the Pacer, trying to get publicity for his new book, Smell Of Success. Emerson and Ned discover this truth one minute too late, and as a result, Napoleon locks them in his decontamination windchamber. Ah, but before disaster strikes, Chuck, Olive, and Oscar show up to save the day. But, though he is very helpful in making sure that Emerson and Ned don't get blown up, Oscar may prove to be nefarious after all; he smells something...off...about Chuck. Meanwhile, the aunts, encouraged by Olive via Chuck, return to their true comfort, letting the smell of chlorine wash over them as they get back in the pool. Want more? The full recap starts right below!
OH MY GOD, Jim Dale. Please tell somebody that you shouldn't have to explain to me again how Ned can bring people back to life. PLEASE. Because, what is this? Episode two zillion? It's like opening every episode of M*A*S*H with a detailed synopsis of the escalating conflict between North and South Korea between 1948 and 1950. We get it; it has been covered; we're not going to forget; thanks.
There's some dude standing over our beloved JD with a taser, I just know it, because once again, we are back at the School of Sadness, where Young Ned is so sad and lonely, he wakes up in the middle of the night just to sneak around and bake pies in memory of his mother. Thus, yadda, he grew up to be The Pie Maker, who at this very moment is dragging pots of flowers up onto the roof in order to bulk up Chuck's bee enterprise. Remember that? He was so excited to bust out the bees all romantical-style a few weeks back, but now the bees are on Ned's nerves. He doesn't want to haul flowers up to every roof in the downtown skyline. He sort of testily asks Chuck why they need so much honey, anyway. "It's a surprise!" she says, cutely, but Ned's in a mood. "Surprise," he says, "has never been a good word for me." Ned needs to get laid, my friends. And not through a sheet of Saran.
See? Here he is crashing into Olive in the kitchen of the Pie Hole while her cups -- and I refer here to the brassiere she may or may not even be wearing -- runneth over. "This is what it is, isn't it?" Olive breathes. "Unless that's not a rolling pin under your apron." Ned hastily validates that it is, indeed, a rolling pin, and Olive attempts to break the awkwardness by making things ten thousand times more awkward: "Oh, isn't it great we can joke?" she says, adding that these sorts of romantic mixed messages must happen all the time between adults. "In no time," she says, "we'll be looking back and laughing 'til we wet the rug." Seeing Ned's eyebrows of deep concern, she quickly adds that, you know, at that point, they'll need to shampoo the rug, possibly a few times, depending on what they'd been drinking. Hee! With a final awkward snap of her towel, she turns away, horrified, just as Chuck comes out of the kitchen carrying some pies and almost collides with Ned. "Maybe I should wear a bell," Chuck jokes. Ned: "Actually..." Chuck: "I'm not wearing a bell."