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Were you wondering why Chuck allowed herself to be so selfishly annoying on the occasions Ned brought the morgue residents back to life? All that quizzing them on their last wishes and stuff is basically not cool, especially since going past the sixty-second time limit would result in someone else's death, right? But see, as yet, Ned has not clued Chuck in on that one small point. As a matter of fact, he's still sort of lying to her about it, even now as she smooches him through a sheet of plastic wrap. Poor Olive, a witness to said smooch, shares her unhappiness with a new Pie Hole patron, Alfredo, erstwhile traveling herbal antidepressant salesman. Alfredo -- as any man but Ned would be -- is charmed by Olive's Chuck-inspired jealous rage. Leave them on screen together for a minute longer, and they will steal this show. Emerson's not really feeling Chuck, either. He is still sick to death (ha!) of her butting in on their biz, and it's making him hilariously bitchy. When they all meet up at the morgue to get the current dead-guy scoop, the GENIUS coroner actually gets some lines. That thrill is quickly forgotten when Emerson reveals that their new client is the brother of the funeral director, Lawrence Schatz, who died in the first episode as a result of Chuck re-living. Lawrence's brother, Louis, has hired Emerson to find out who killed the fat man. Since they already know how Lawrence died, Emerson really wants Ned to wake Lawrence up to discover where he hid all the stuff he stole off the bodies in his funeral home. Ned is reluctant, but Chuck wants to talk to Lawrence, also to thank him for dying in her place and all. She's upset about the one-minute death exchange program Ned has going, and mad that he kept it from her. So, off to the funeral home they go, where they are confronted with Louis Schatz, twin brother of the dead man. He thinks Lawrence was murdered by someone angry over their stolen heirlooms, and wants Emerson to find the stuff and find out who did it before they kill Louis, too. Ah, but when the trio wakes up Lawrence to get the goods, he claims that Louis was in on the stealing, too. While the gang is stewing over this, Louis goes and gets murdered (sort of) and stuffed into the Pie Hole freezer. Turns out, a dead-person relative, Wilford Woodruff (a Chinese-Southern-American), killed Louis (sort of) for stealing his family heirloom, a Civil War sword. He and Ned get into a Jedi battle in which Ned is ultimately triumphant, and as a result, the crew finds all the stolen goods. People, I know it barely makes sense. This shit is hard to explain. Yada yada, everyone learns a valuable lesson. Meanwhile, Aunts Lily and Vivian, preparing to go on their mermaid comeback tour, receive a delayed postcard from pre-death Chuck, mourn anew, and cancel their shows. Chuck uses some of Alfredo's samples to bake an antidepressant pie for her aunts, which Olive delivers, unaware of who they are. Once inside their house, however, she puts two and two together. Want more? The full recap starts right below!
Welcome to my third recap of Pushing Daisies, the show too weird, and too unabashed in its inconsistencies, to...recap. "It's a modern day fairy tale" covers a multitude of sins, but is that really okay? I don't know. I really like the show, obviously, so I give it a pass, but am I even supposed to be doing that? It's so difficult for me to get started, I just spent an hour looking at Craigslist furniture. Someone in the town where I live is selling not one, but two six-foot "Egyptian statues" (a nude man and nude woman holding pots over their heads) for $1,400. Guess what Wing and Glark are getting for Christmas?
All right, so how tired is Jim Dale of having to explain the damn rules of Ned's power? Because here he goes again -- we board the wayback machine to see the supercute Young Ned back in the day, testing his one-minute deadline on a bunch of fireflies. It is a lovely little scene, all the re-living fireflies glowing under glass -- but, Jim Dale, WE GET IT. Thank you. He can bring the dead back to life, yes, and only for sixty seconds or someone else dies. Is this all for viewers who are only now tuning in? If so, they have these recaps to read, Jim Dale. We here at TWoP perform this valuable public service for just this reason. You need not beat yourself down with these same details each week. I'm just looking out for you, JD. Don't want you to start raging around the sound booth, throwing teacups around and whacking people with scones. Speaking of scones, did y'all realize Anna Friel was English? Somehow, that had completely escaped my notice. I thought her accent was funny, but I assumed she was smearing on the sweetness, marmalade-style, and just trying to make herself extra-cute. Not that she could get cuter, really, as we see when she and Ned work together in the Pie Hole kitchen, carving up peaches Ned is reviving and putting them in pies. Of course, as Chuck rambles on about how she now has two birthdays to celebrate, the consequences of this peach rebirth come when the a flowerbox full of mums bites the dust. First of all, I don't like this fruit thing. What, does he go out to the market each day and buy dead fruit? That makes no sense, even within the larger, nonsensical premise. And, if so, does he replant those flowers every day? Come on, people. Throw me a bone in the midst of this whimsy.
Digby, on his dog bed by the stove, throws Ned a worried look about those flowers. Meanwhile, Chuck reminisces about birthdays past. Remember, she says, when Ned gave her a t-shirt for her eighth birthday? "It had a beaver on it," she says, "with little lipstick kisses, and it said 'Be kind to animals; Kiss a beaver.'" Ned cringes at his lack of subtlety as a pre-adolescent, and Digby most likely puts his head in the oven to avoid having to hear more.
Chuck is in a good mood today, celebrating the fact that with this new life, she can be anyone she wants. Ned is relieved, Jim Dale tells us, and happy that she's happy, as long as it doesn't occur to her to ask..."Why is it only a minute?" Oops. Well, there. She asked. She wants to know why the people he brings back can only stay alive again for sixty seconds. Ned's eyebrows ramp into high gear -- he's never explained to Chuck the one-minute re-deadline, owing to that unfortunate incident where he caused her father's death before he learned that awkward rule. He starts jabbering about how, you know, the longer someone stays alive, the more dangerous it is, and someone could see, blahsie blah, butterfly wings cause hurricanes. "Oh, right," Chuck says, getting her flirt on. "Am I a hurricane?" Ned starts to say that yeah, she is, sort of, but that he likes hurricanes, when Chuck suddenly pushes a piece of saran wrap into his face and lays a big smooch on his lips. I know that sounds like something out of Law & Order, SVU, where some creepy germophobe dude puts women's heads in Ziploc, but in fact it's quite sweet.
However, when Ned says "you really shouldn't do that," I have to agree. Chuck, let's discuss. You are recently back from the dead as a result of a reunion with this, albeit hot, guy you haven't seen in twenty years and yes, he is awesome, but if your elbow brushes his shoulder during one of these plastic-covered encounters, you will be dead again forever. So why not take your reborn ass to, say, Italy, and bang everything in sight? This is the ONE guy who can literally kill you with his love. Of course, if you keep mashing the Saran into his face, you'll kill him with your love.
While all this clean kissing is going on, Jim Dale warns us of another low-pressure storm brewing -- Hurricane Olive. She stands in the dining room in her green waitress smock, frozen to the spot with rage, watching the kiss go down. "Olive stopped breathing," JD says, in a worried tone. "It was as if all the oxygen had left the room." She sighs, and a nearby customer asks for espresso. She informs him, waving her duel coffee carafes in his face, that the Pie Hole does not serve espresso. "You have an espresso machine..." the guy says, taking his life into his hands, but Olive just sighs louder. "It's broken," she says. "It sits there being pretty, but nobody touches it." Aw, Olive. Somehow, this three-piece-suited customer is not inspired to sweep her into his arms. "No flavors? Hazelnut, French vanilla?" he asks. Olive slams the coffee down on the table. "Why can't sugar be enough?!" she yells, before collapsing into the customer's booth. "Ever feel like all the oxygen left the room?" she asks him, to his great surprise. "Oh my, yes," the customer answers. Apparently, Olive has said the magic words, for her customer, Alfredo Aldarisio, knows exactly how that feels. Evidently, he understands it all too well and has some kind of problem where he is pathologically afraid that the Earth will lose its atmosphere. A common problem, no doubt. He manages it, as you do, by self-medicating with the herbal depression remedies he sells. Of course, now that he has met Olive Snook, he's going to be needing a lot less of them, because in her, he seems to have found a kindred spirit. At least, that is, according to Jim Dale. And, frankly, what does he know? (Everything.)
Emerson comes in for a little ice cream and gets accosted by Olive, who wonders, figuratively speaking, if it's wrong to want to set someone on fire. Emerson regards her suspiciously. "You thinkin' of setting someone on fire?" he asks. No, no, Olive assures him, it's all figurative. "But," she adds, "figuratively speaking, someone ought to set you on fire for throwing my heart under the bus when you told me he didn't want me!" Emerson retorts that that bus was the Truth Bus. Olive disagrees. "That wasn't the Truth Bus," she pouts. "That was the Bitchy Crosstown Express." Aw! I take that bus every morning to work! 410 Bus to Lindbergh Station represent! Shouts out to Hair Curlers Lady, Sociopathic Driver, and The Guy Who Smells Like Chicken Broth, Always. When Emerson claims he was just being frank and honest, Olive snits that she, in fact, never wants to hear anything frank and honest, "so let's just take it off the docket." But, frankly and honestly, she adds, she doesn't like Chuck. Emerson, JD drones, likes Chuck even less. Cut to the reason why: Chuck is once again horning in on Emerson's Dead Person of the Week meeting with Ned.
It seems Emerson has come upon a new and mysterious death, but since he cannot get the details out over Chuck's interrupting, and because he wants to keep it private from her anyway, Chuck fills time by postulating on the many ways this unknown person could have died. Did he drown in his bed but the sheets were all dry? With a noose around his neck? Was it a four-stage poison where he had to touch four things before the poison worked? All of this is charming, of course, but Ned's eyebrows are alarmed. "You're obsessed," he tells her. Chuck: "Really? Do you think dying has made me morbid?" I am not loving Chuck right now, and neither is Emerson. When Ned asks again how the person died, Emerson suggests he take a coupon for this conversation and redeem it for another date. "I want to use my coupon now," Ned says, but Emerson won't go for it. "There's someone in the county fridge I need you to talk to," he snarks, and shoving Chuck out of the booth, he leaves, saying most definitely that Chuck had better not come. I rewound this nine times to watch Chi McBride get all bitchy. He is excellent.
The day, at the morgue, our beloved coroner discusses the importance of hand moisturizer with Emerson. "No one wants the last thing they've been touched with," he says, "to be ashy and dry." He holds his hands out. "Take a gander," he says, before making Emerson lube up his own hands. Where the hell has this coroner been all our lives? The guy is so brilliant, it is painful. Suddenly, Ned and Chuck appear in the doorway. "I thought you just came by to say hello," the coroner says accusingly. Somehow, however, the team gets past him, and now they stand before the sheeted body of Today's Dead Person. "You won't even know I'm here," Chuck tells the angry Emerson. He snorts. "'Cause you leavin?" he asks. No, she's not leaving, Ned says, because participating in these activities makes her happy. (It also makes her terribly cute with her little retro wardrobe of gorgeous dresses.) Emerson smirks, again. "You remember what that happiness looks like," he says, nodding toward the corpse under the sheet. "Redeem your coupon." Smiling, Ned steps toward the body. "Oh," Emerson says. "Now you're gonna listen to me." Suddenly, Ned is worried. He hesitates. "I ain't gonna say another word," Emerson says, when Ned looks suspiciously around at him. "Future Me is gonna I-told-you-so up one side and down the other; but Now Me is just gonna sit back and watch."
Trembling, Ned pulls back the sheet. Aw, snap -- it's the funeral director. He that died so that Chuck could live. Pardon me going all Biblical on your ass there, for a second. JD breaks it down for us, reminding everyone that Lawrence Schatz (haaa!) was a big, fat bastard who stole the last possessions of the dead to sell them for profit. Two days before he died, his nefarious ways were found out, but before any of it could come to light, he found himself in the wrong place at the wrong time -- namely in proximity to Chuck's renewed life. Also, I know you think I'm not listening anymore, Jim Dale, but even I noticed when you said he was 44 years, 17 months, something something days old. All right, I didn't listen to that last part. But also, stop saying "close proximity." Being in proximity at all means you're close, right? Come on, JD.
Confronted with this fat man for whose death he is responsible, Ned wigs. Racing from the building as Emerson chuckles, he tells Chuck that he had vertigo, possibly from tight shoes, and had to get out. Emerson is, naturally, highly amused and can't wait to hear how Ned will answer Chuck's questions about how this dead guy died and who killed him. Ned's eye begins to twitch as he contemplates the lies he will have to tell to escape telling Chuck the truth about the one-minute rule. "Who killed him?" Chuck asks again. Finally, the pressure becomes too much. Ned tells the truth. "Me," he says.
Naturally, Chuck is surprised that her hero, who brings people back to life, is also a killer. Emerson decides to rip off the Band-Aid. "You need a ticket to ride this ride," he snaps at Chuck. "And if your ticket gets punched, then you gotta take somebody else's ticket." Ned is freaking out, telling him to shut it, but Emerson insists. Chuck, her eyes hidden behind huge sunglasses for this entire scene, still looks terribly upset as Ned fumbles through an explanation. "I had one thought in my head, and it was of you," he says, and that is why he couldn't touch her again to kill her. Confronted with the truth, Chuck is no longer grateful for her new life. Every moment she's been celebrating, she says, has not even been hers to celebrate.
Meanwhile, back at the Pie Hole, Alfredo and Olive go full-on Gilmore with the chatter. I truly do like Kristin Chenoweth. And this other guy is awesome, as well, but I can't tell you what they're talking about, because they are just using too many words. Not big words -- words that are strung together too closely, which causes my Palladinitis Elbow to flare up and makes it impossible for me to understand. Upshot: Alfredo hawks his wares to our favorite waitress. "Don't go bothering the customers with this," she says, when he makes his claims about how his tinctures will cure her unhappiness. "This is a pie house, not some herbal crack den." Olive, as a matter of fact, does not need such interventions, especially when she sees Chuck rage through the back door at this moment, bitching about how her life is not her own. Poor Ned tries to go after her, but I guess is hampered by that whole thing where he can't grab her arm -- on pain of death -- in the traditional television way to get her to stop.
Ned swings on Emerson. "I feel violated," he says. "That was my information. There's your information and there's my information!" Au contraire, Emerson says, it was their mutual information. The dead guy, he reminds Ned, was a business associate of his. "Who do you think," he asks, gesturing after the retreating Chuck, "hooked us up with corpse bride?" Ned tries that old chestnut about how Schatz stole from dead people and thus, deserved his fate, but Emerson won't buy it especially, he says, because Ned made him an accomplice to Schatz's murder. Ned nervously argues he didn't murder anyone -- "maybe... accidental, involuntary manslaughter." Emerson rolls his eyes. "Oh," he says, "you accidentally, involuntarily let Dead Girl live?" Anyway, Emerson goes on, Lawrence Schatz's death was weird enough that his brother hired Emerson to find out who killed him. He took the case to make sure no one else finds out how Schatz really died. Nice of him, sure, but how in hell would anyone ever find out? Yes, yes, I can see the guys from The Wire now, combing Couers de Couers, piecing together the clues that...there's a guy who can touch people and bring them back to life for a minute, and if they live longer than that, someone else dies. Ipso facto, Ned killed the funeral home director!
Putting such pesky details aside, however, we return to the kitchen. Emerson insists that Ned go with him to the funeral home, where Schatz's body is now in state. "To ask him WHAT?" Ned asks. Seems Emerson wants to know, he says, where Lawrence hid all the goodies he got off the deadies. Ned is disgusted. "So... you...can...return it to the families and...help heal the grieving?" he says. "Yyyyeah," Emerson says. Ned continues to try to get out of it, saying he's too fragile. "Okay," Emerson says, "killer."
But, you know, we're not even halfway through this damn episode, so of course they go to the funeral home. Chuck wants to go, she says, to say thank you to Lawrence Schatz. The day, the arrive en masse to pay their respects, Chuck wearing a red dress I would pay out the nose for. I'd steal that dress off a dead body!
Before they can even open the coffin, however, Lawrence Schatz walks in! Or, it appears to be him. It's his sweaty twin, wearing a Darling Mermaid Darlings tour tee. "Yeah," he says, when Chuck exclaims over it. "We just buried their niece, Lonely Tourist Charlotte Charles." Chuck, though sad to hear she is still being referred to as the Lonely Tourist, is so happy to see the tour shirt. Except, unfortunately, as Louis the Schatz Twin points out, the tour was recently cancelled due to her aunts' grief relapse. Seems they had almost made it out the door when they received a delayed postcard from Chuck's cruise. It sets them back, even causing Aunt Lily to have to grudgingly adjust her eye patch to pour out the collected tears. Swoosie Kurtz, please come live at my house.
Back in the present, Louis Schatz is going over the circumstances of Lawrence's death, which came, he points out, on the same day as the burial of Charlotte Charles. "It's not often," he adds, "that we bury a celebrity." Emerson can't help rolling his eyes about this, but Chuck is mildly gratified, saying that burying such a celebrity must have been a coup for the funeral home. Louis said it would have been, if not for Lawrence's grave-robbing scandal. As a result of the resulting bad press, he's locked Lawrence's body in a side room so no one can come in and defile the body. "Are you sure he was murdered?" Ned asks, hopefully. Louis is thoughtful. "I've been putting it all together," he says, "and boy, do I have a tale to tell."
Jim Dale presents the facts, as Louis sees them: when word of the grave-robbing scandal got out, hate mail began arriving in bulk. According to Louis, Lawrence confessed his crime to his brother, but did not reveal where he buried the stolen goods. That secret, JD tells us, Lawrence took to his grave. However, when Lawrence died and the angry relatives of the dead began raging on his doorstep, Louis began to wonder about all that threatening hate mail. What if one of those hundreds of people who said they'd kill Lawrence actually did it? So, he hired Emerson to investigate the possible murder of his brother and thus, the possible future murder of himself. Did they ever feel, Louis asks the team as they stand over his brother's casket, like they could drop dead at any second, because of something somebody else did? Uh...yeah. Emerson identifies so strongly, he says he could easily smoke a brotherly cigar with Louis. The living Schatz, not getting it, says Lawrence was the one who smoked, not him, and pulls a burial cigar out of his dead brother's breast pocket. Isn't it funny how we treat the dead? I mean, not funny ha-ha. No. When my grandfather died, we sent him off with an Alabama football program and a box of toothpicks in his casket. And my beloved father, who had always expressed his wish to be cremated? Well, he never said what he'd like done with his ashes, and none of us could bear the idea of letting him go, so...he's in a box in my mother's storage room. Every year, on the anniversary of his death (October 23, as a matter of fact, may the day live in infamy), she calls me to say, "Al, maybe your daddy wants to come out of the closet." Maybe he does, yeah. I can't do it, though.
Louis rambles on about how his life, because he shared it with his twin, is now tainted by Lawrence's badness. Chuck, feeling as she does that she and Lawrence traded lives, is moved. "I would love to get back what he took," Louis starts to say, but Emerson cuts him off, asking if the three of them can have a moment to pay their respects while Louis rustles up the hate mail to go. Once he's out the door, Ned and Chuck share a look, carefully planning their words, before Ned gets his touch on. Instantly, Lawrence Schatz is alive again. Ned makes his apology quick as the confused man lies in his coffin. Chuck takes center stage, causing Lawrence to become even more confused. "Lonely Tourist Charlotte Charles?" he asks. "Are you part of my welcoming committee?" Chuck says uh, no, she's more like a beneficiary, seeing as how she's alive and because of that, Lawrence is dead. "Am I a human sacrifice?!" Lawrence asks, sitting up in alarm. He is distracted by Emerson, whom he greets warmly, and from whom he does not receive a warm greeting in return. Abandoning pleasantries, Emerson asks what Lawrence did with all that stuff he stole. "Why don't you ask Louis what he did with it?" Lawrence snaps, suddenly angry. Emerson tells him that Louis said Lawrence buried the stuff. This is not the case, Lawrence says, suddenly freaking out and wondering who killed him. "Nobody killed you, per se," Ned tries to reassure him, but Chuck busts out the truth. Someone did kill him, she says, so that she could live. Ned nervously tries to explain the random proximity problem, but Emerson cuts to the chase. "So, Louis has all that stuff you stole?" he asks Lawrence. "WE stole," Larry shoots back. "It was a family business." In fact, he says, Louis has everything but the pocket watch resting right now on Lawrence's chest. Chuck gets nostalgic -- she had a watch just like that that her father had given her as a child, she says. "Yeah," Lawrence says. "You were buried with it." Or, well, he adds, they were going to bury her with it...but, uh, ha ha... "Caught me in the cookie jar," the undead guy snickers. Chuck gets pissed. "You stole that off my dead body?" she asks, her voice full of ice. Lawrence: "Your dead body wasn't doing anything with it."
In a rage, Chuck snatches the watch off the man and slams the lid of his coffin, causing him to scream in terror. Not, however, as loud as Emerson screams when they all realize that the coffin lid is stuck and the random proximity rule is about to kick in. "Aw, HELL no," he shouts, and he takes off out of the building, crossing himself all the way. Meanwhile, Chuck and Ned are frantically trying to break into the stuck coffin, banging it with urns. Finally, they succeed. "That was not cool you guys," Lawrence says, and boom, he is dead. Again. Ned collapses to the floor as Chuck begins to reminisce about her sweet aunts via her father's watch. She wants to see them so badly, she says, especially now that she's heard from Louis that they had a grief relapse. "You can't see your aunts," Ned says, deathly quiet, probably contemplating how he could have fallen in love with this dead chick who causes so many problems. "I'm sorry." The two of them drive down the road to pick up Emerson. "Anybody back there dead that shouldn't be?" Emerson asks, smoking a Schatz cigar. They assure him that no, there isn't. Emerson: "Sweet."
Back at the Pie Hole, the crew goes through all the Schatz hate mail. I...have no idea why, really, even though they try to explain it -- some convoluted reason about how they now realize that Louis hired Emerson to make himself look innocent. They are convinced that Louis knew all along where the dead people treasure was buried. "Hmm. That's a'ight, though," Emerson says. "I'm gonna follow his lying, fat ass until he leads me right to it. Then I'm gonna take it." Chuck is upset -- she says Emerson can't go stealing dead people's stuff. He insists, however, that he's not the one who stole it. "I don't condone what they did, but it's once removed now," he says. "I'm not the pirate; I'm just looking for treasure." Chuck says the pirate metaphor is weak. "It's apt," Emerson spits, managing to convey two tons of disdain in three little letters. Chuck argues on, waving her watch -- it's not a doubloon, she says, it's a thing that was important to people. Emerson rightly points out that it couldn't have been all that important to the people who buried it with someone who couldn't use it. The man makes a good point, but this scene is not about good points. I loved this episode, but it hangs loose right here as they patch together a reason the team would be reading through these hundreds of letters. Chuck says maybe someone was intending to kill Lawrence anyway, before Ned got to him. "Why do you have to say it like that?" Ned asks, all sad. Chuck rambles on, saying that any one of the people who wrote the letters could be the killer. Emerson somehow refrains from asking whether or not Chuck has had some kind of senility episode, since we've just spent half an hour watching her come to terms with how Lawrence actually died. Instead, he reminds her, again, that there is no killer.
Ah, but what does Jim Dale spy with his beady little eye? Some creepy person rolling down Main Street in a redneck-mobile, watching the Pie Hole with ominous interest. (Speaking of my dad, he once was trying to fix up a truck just like that, except the front of his was blue, and the back was black. We called it The Bruise.) Some time later, Chuck is still sitting in the booth, cataloguing the letters of the angry relatives of the dead. It causes her to think of her aunts and all the things they have lost as a result of her death. "This is depressing," she says aloud, and immediately she is joined by Alfredo with his case of happy juice. He gives her the rundown on his goods. "Herbs for depression sounds so much more civilized than anti-depressants," Chuck says. I pause to wonder if we have diverged into some sort of anti-Pfizer campaign. The upshot is that Alfredo gives her an herb sample pack, and she uses it to bake the pie equivalent of pot brownies for her aunts, even grating cheese into the crust, and packing it up for the day's delivery. Even after she was dead and gone, JD tells us, Chuck found a way to care for her aunts.
The morning, the delivery boy arrives. But, what's this? He is leaving the aunts' pie behind! None other than Olive, coming in on her day off, notices his oversight, and when he says that address is out of his zone, she tries some psychology on him. "Do you want to be a delivery boy?" she asks. "Or a delivery MAN?" Yeah, he'll just be a boy, he says. Olive, ever the faithful employee, resolves to deliver the pie herself. Her resolution is so strong, in fact, she walks out without noticing the dead body of Louis Schatz in the Pie Hole freezer.
Later, Ned is working on some pies in the kitchen when Chuck comes in. Let's take a moment here, shall we, to discuss Chuck's wardrobe again? Sometimes, um, she wears dresses whose tops...how do I put this? She...Anna Friel has, well, quite the pair of jugs. I know I just said "jugs," yes, and I am so sorry, but I am not sure how else to phrase the glaring truth -- the woman has a rack to rival even the Chenoweth's, and sometimes her dresses seem a little, I don't know, TIGHT in the upstairs, and though of course she is lovely, I wonder... is it completely necessary for her to be cute and a sexpot? Anyway, she's been doing some thinking, she says, and she's come to an understanding about Ned's whole dilemma with the one-minute rule that resulted in her re-life and Lawrence's death. Ned is happy she understands, and as he turns to put his pie crust in the freezer, he reiterates that he doesn't want her to think he's a killer. Except, ah, pay no attention to this body in my freezer! "That's not good," he mumbles. Chuck freaks. "Di...did you?" she starts. He assures her that, no, he didn't.
As Chuck and the Pie Maker consider the dead Schatz brother in the freezer, Jim Dale tells us -- and please stop calling him "the Pie Maker" -- Olive has turned up, pie in hand, at the slightly scary home of Chuck's aunts. Olive is having regrets, considering the rising crimes against delivery people, as she nervously rings the doorbell and takes off at a run for the street. "SOS!" she cries, rattling the gate. "OS! OS!" Behind her, like an apparition, Aunt Vivian appears from nowhere. "Your pie smells delicious," she says, and even I, prude of the century, take a moment to giggle.
Inside, Vivian serves up the goods. "Pies for breakfast," she says in a tremulous voice, "always remind me of Mother." In her bathrobe, Aunt Lily staggers into the room. "Vermouth always reminds me of Mother," she snarks, following this brilliance up by asking why they're having pie and who the hell is Olive. Vivian reveals all: Olive is in the pie industry, and has delivered a pie from the Pie Hole. "As in 'shut your,'" Olive explains. "Or in this case, 'open your,' 'cause it's real good!" Oh, show, it really was not necessary to explain the centuries-old joke of "pie hole." Olive quickly realizes that these are the Darling Mermaid Darlings, and that they have recently been the victims of a home invasion following the loss of their niece, the Lonely Tourist. As Lily and Vivian reminisce over their pie about Chuck's childhood friend who gave her a beaver t-shirt -- "beaver boy" -- the wheels of truth slowly begin to turn in Olive's mind. She's putting it all together.
Meanwhile, Emerson is back at his office, preparing to closely monitor Louis Schatz's movements, not realizing he is already dead. The phone rings. It's Ned with his little announcement that someone has Schatzed all over his freezer. "You're being set up," Emerson says, postulating that whoever is doing it has probably already called the police. Ned, in a panic, swings around to look out the front window. "Hey..." he whispers into the phone, as if in nightmare, "the police are here."
With no other options, Ned sets his watch and, with the police banging on the window, touches Louis back to life. "Hey," he says to the dead man, full of forced cheer. "You need to come with us." Louis asks where he's going. "We're going to heaven!" Chuck says sweetly. "And heaven's closing in like, one minute." Outside, Emerson's car screeches into the back alley, and Ned runs out to meet him, leaving Chuck to bustle the fat man up the stairs and into the car. "Hey, Emerson!" Louis shouts. "You're going to heaven, too?" Emerson says, yeah, what a coincidence; they all died at once in the Rapture. Louis finds this all fascinating and wants to chat about it, but Emerson interrupts, asking again where the dead-people treasure is buried. Of course, before he can say, Chuck interrupts, asking Louis who his murderer was. Louis is confused. "I choked on a piece of tongue," he says. Emerson: "Yours, or somebody else's?" Ergh. Jim Dale explains that in this instance, the tongue belonged to a cow. Hey, look. I know I come from a region where otherwise normal people regularly fry and consume things such as "gizzards" and "pig feet," but people, I...I'm not gonna be eatin' anything's tongue.
Jim Dale tells us that, although Louis Schatz had been attempting to reduce his portions, they weren't so small that they couldn't block his windpipe when he was confronted by an angry customer. Genius. "He said something about a Civil War heirloom," Louis says of his killer, "and then I lost consciousness." He adds that he normally would have coughed up his food blockage before passing out. Chuck gives him a sympathetic look. Emerson is just getting another chance to ask about the stolen goods when Ned calls five seconds. Kablam, Louis receives the touch of death. Emerson sighs, and Ned jumps into the back seat of Emerson's convertible to Chuck, asking what they're going to do with the body. Emerson says they're going to put Louis back exactly where he was when he died, "and show whoever this sucker was who tried to frame you exactly how a sucker gets framed." Ned is worried, however -- they don't know who said sucker is. Ah, but they do -- during Chuck's research with those letters, she learned all about a disgruntled family member wanting the return of his family's Civil War sword. It can be none other than one Wilfred Woodruff. In fact, we see a flashback of Chuck reading the letter, of which the sign-off was "looking forward to killing you, Wilfred Woodruff." Love it.
The trio hauls the most recently dead Schatz back to the funeral home, which they find has been locked up. Discovering a tiny transom into the basement, Ned wiggles through, followed by Emerson, whose girth is too much for the window. "Are you stuck?" Chuck asks on the outside. "No," Emerson grumbles. "Yes, you are," Chuck giggles. "You're like Winnie the Pooh. Gimme your paws, Pooh." She and Ned begin to yank Emerson from both ends, resulting in his renewed rage. Unable to help him, Ned wanders through the basement, accidentally touching the dead bodies randomly stored there. "What part of 'do not resuscitate' do you not understand?" an old man asks, and bam, Chuck touches him dead. "Honey," a woman on the neighboring gurney asks. "Did you turn off the gas?" Ned gives her, too, a touch. In the corner, he sees movement on the last table. Whipping off the sheet, he finds a young Asian man wearing a John Deere cap, very much alive. Ned touches him. The guy shakes it off. Ned looks at his hand in dismay and tries again. The guy is not redeadening! Ah, but that is because he was not dead to start with! It is none other than Wilfred Woodruff, and as he leaps up, family Civil War heirloom sword in hand, Ned must contemplate the sequence of events that led him to this moment. "The irony of being struck down by the man who murdered the twin of the man he killed was not lost on the Pie Maker," Jim Dale tells us, no doubt scratching his own head in confusion. Also not lost, JD adds, was Ned's agility. For when Wilfred brings down his sword, Ned is able to jump aside, resulting in Wilfred bringing his sword down and slicing off the foot of a corpse. They both squick out, but Wilfred quickly recovers. "I propose we fight it out on this line if it takes all summer," he drawls, puzzling Ned. "What line?" Ned asks. Wilfred sighs at his lack of knowledge in re: The Conflict of Northern Aggression. "Ulysses S. Grant said that," he explains. "Not all of it. Just that last part." He goes on to say that his great-great-great grandpappy proudly fought against Grant with that sword, which the family intended to be buried with him. Forgetting for a moment that his life is in danger, Ned must ask the obvious question: "Are you adopted?" I realize the Southern Chinese Man must be something of a novelty to most people, yes, but I assure you, they absolutely do exist, and in my experience, they are all ridiculous.
And, see, Wilfred is just like the rest of them -- crazy -- and he is offended by the notion that his grandpappy, who JD tells us escaped Central Pacific Railroad work camp, and chose, possibly due to heat stroke, to run toward the Southeast. Oops. Eventually, he had to steal the clothes off a fallen rebel, and thus, the Asian branch of the Woodruff family was born. If I could laugh any harder at Jim Dale talking about the Battle of MurFREESboro, I don't know how. Round here, we say "MURfsbrra," but I will of course let it slide -- you should hear me try to say "Leicestershire."
Anyway, in this, the unending episode, the battle between Wilfred and Ned wages on. With Emerson still stuck in the transom and Chuck thus stuck outside, Ned also acquires a sword, somehow, and they have it out. Wilfred repeats that this he has taken umbrage that the family sword has been so molested.
Meanwhile (Al says, for the bazillionth time), Chuck continues to try to extricate Emerson. "Remember," she sing-songs. "Mind over matter makes Pooh unfatter!" Emerson grimaces. "I might be stuck," he snarls. "But I can still reach my gun."
Things are heating up inside. Wilfred has Ned on the ropes, as it were. "Now you should know," Wilfred announces, "that I was thrice named alternate sword master at the Southern Area Regional Volunteer Infantry Reenactment Regiment." Heeeeee! As impressive as it truly is, Ned is unmoved. Instead, he seems to have received a boost of courage from an unknown force. "I wanted," he says, "to be a Jedi!" With that, he rejoins the battle, and Wilfred's fortunes are reversed. They go at it, arguing about who killed which Schatz brother, and it truly goes on FOREVER. See, Wilfred was in the funeral home the day Ned brought Chuck back to life, and he saw Ned fleeing the scene and assumed Ned had killed Schatz. Ned denies responsibility, saying he didn't touch Lawrence until he was dead and in his coffin. Wilfred, alternately, says he did not touch Louis...until HE died, "and then I rolled him onto a dolly truck." I love Wilfred so much. He says (while still fighting) that he had to do it, having written a death threat, which has a way of coming back to haunt an individual. "Well, you framed someone for murder, you AAAASSSS," Ned yells, slightly out of character, but Wilfred says he had no choice. Ned gives a little speech about how yes, we all have choices and must do the best we can do, at which point he leaps, Errol Flynn-style, over the stair rail and onto a big velvet curtain, riding the rip down to the floor. I'm the only nerd who thought of this, right? That's okay.
Finally, Chuck has made it inside, just in time to see her hero crash to the floor. Spying her, Wilfred makes a run for her with his sword, at which point Ned jumps to his feet and throws his sword, causing it to stick in the wall and trip Wilfred. With the aid of one well-placed kick from Emerson, still stuck in the window, to Wilfred's head, Ned has saved Chuck, once again, and looks all the more like Prince Charming, wrapped stylishly in his velvet curtain, Wilfred's discarded sword gleaming in his hand. As Chuck stares at him, stars in her eyes, the rest of the curtain falls to reveal the hidden dead-people treasure.
Back at the Pie Hole, Olive arrives, smug with confidence that Chuck has faked her death for some nefarious purpose. Distracted as she is, she takes little notice that her own Price Charming, Alfredo, has fixed her espresso machine.
Meanwhile (AGAIN), Emerson has learned a valuable lesson from the Schatz Bros. Oh, not that trying to make a living off dead people is bad. No -- that fatness is a hindrance, and he wishes never to be wedged in a window again.
MEANWHILE MEANWHILE MEANWHILE -- the aunts are enjoying their herbal happy pie, and Chuck and Ned wrap up the dead people treasures to return them to their original owners. Everyone's cute. Everyone's in love. All the colors are beautifully coordinated. Ned loves Chuck. Ditto. Plastic Wrap is once again invoked. This is the longest goddamn recap ever, and I am going to BED.