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Seems back in the day, Young Ned lost his ability to dream, being so sad and abandoned in the boys' home. But, as a grown man, he can dream, no problem. Wait, as a matter of fact, this is a problem -- especially when he dreams that he can touch Chuck, and when they celebrate this touching by getting naked, he finds that Chuck is really Olive in a Chuck suit. I'd like to say this is very sexy, but a "Chuck suit"...that's pretty gross. Anyway, Ned's in kind of a pickle trying to decide if his dream, plus the spontaneous smooch he had with Olive in the last episode, means he's secretly hot and bothered for her. Meanwhile, Olive stresses over the same issue and Chuck gets a little pouty that she doesn't get to kiss Ned herself. All of this is very interesting, but before they can work through this developing triangle, they catch a case. Seems a polygamist dog breeder, after he was poisoned, accidentally stabbed himself to death on an elaborate dog brush...yeah, I said it. When the dead guy tells the crew that his wife poisoned him, they think they'll have an easy time of it, until they find that he has four wives, all also dog breeders. Enrolling Olive as a temporary team member, the four of them go undercover, each using Digby as a co-spy, and try to discover which wife is guilty. When Chuck's favorite wife is arrested for the crime, they decide to prove her innocence and get on the trail of a repugnant rival dog breeder, who has nefarious plans to clone Bubblegum, the dead man's beloved dead dog. Ah, but then someone kills that guy. Using extreme genius, the team smokes out the guilty wife at the original dead guy's funeral, and goes back to working on their own issues. Ned apologizes for avoiding Olive since their kiss, and realizes he does love her as a friend when she tells him she just wants him to be happy. And, as happy as he is to know what he really wants -- Chuck -- the sadness remains that they can never touch. Want more? The full recap starts right below!
Jim Dale serves up his weekly tale of woe: Back in the day when Young Ned spent his time in the School for Abandoned Children (not its official name), he lost the ability to do much dreaming, even while wearing the monster head he used to wear when he played with Chuck. "He found," JD drones as the Claymation family Ned has conjured up in his mind falls apart, "even his imagination failed him." Digby, who obviously can never die, since we see him sleeping in a closed trunk, whimpers a sad cry for his master's broken heart. Yes, well, none of that was depressing at all.
But, ah, hope is alive, for as Ned stares up into the full moon out the window, somewhere out there Chuck is pining for him under the same moon. Now, are you kids old enough to see what I did there? That joke had layers. Come on. Get a little Ronstadt in your life, young people. Jim Dale explains that because they continued to think of each other, Ned and Chuck were together, even though they were far apart.
Well, back in the present day, they're no longer far apart, but are they really together? Waking up one morning, Ned rolls over in his twin bed to see the fresh-faced Chuck stretching awake in hers. "Are you watching me sleep?" Chuck asks. Ned quirks through an entire paragraph of Gilmorian babble before finally saying that yeah, watching Chuck wake up is like watching her come back to life. Um, isn't it romantic? Chuck smiles and goes to get up for the day but, gasp!, accidentally trips over the sleeping Digby and falls into Ned's bed! Right on top of him! Ned is horrified! Is this the end of his beloved? A moment later, no, she pops up not even slightly dead. Hooray! But, why? "Maybe," Ned says, "it wears off...maybe there's an eclipse...maybe...oh, my God, your skin is amazing..." Chuck silences him with a finger to his lips. "We're wearing too many clothes," she says, immediately stripping off her cute nightgown, embarrassing Digby no end. "I'm still wearing too many clothes," she says, confusing Ned. "You're not wearing any," he says, thrilled. That is, in fact, true, but apparently, er, apparently, she is wearing (cover your eyes!) Too Much SKIN. AAAAIEEEE! Wasn't the Halloween episode last week? Right? If so, why is Chuck now gripping her waist and pulling her skin over her head to reveal the Olive Snook beneath? HUH? Deep breaths, Al Lowe, for it is just a dream. The scariest dream in history, but still. "Don't tell Chuck," Olive whispers as she lays one on Ned, who receives it happily, but starts awake, thank God, to find that he is not actually doing the dirty with a crazy skin-suited alien hybrid, but in his sexless twin bed, back where we started this ordeal. (May I make a side note here about how Lee Pace is possibly the luckiest actor on TV right now? Did he or did he not just get up close and personal with the two most impressive sets of natural bazooms in prime time? You're the man, Pace.)
"Are you watching me sleep?" the real Chuck asks. Ned mumbles that yes, he was, as Jim Dale turns up the violins to explain that the pie-maker wants so badly to tell Chuck how he loves to watch her sleep, but his dream forces him to say nothing. So, against his better judgment but to my great pleasure, he decides to use Emerson as a sounding board for his problems of misplaced morning wood. Oh, I said it. They can gussy it up all they like, but the problem is the man has a confused wang. "I had a sexy dream about Olive last night," Ned launches with no preamble, "and I am sure it was influenced by a reality-based kiss." Emerson, wearing a fantastically lurid shirt, purses his lips. "There's no way for this conversation to be anything but awkward for me," he says, but Ned has to get it off his chest. "She was wearing a Chuck suit," he blurts. "What do you think it means, beyond the obvious?" Emerson says that dreams are just the brain's way of processing a bunch of stuff it has no place for, so it means nothing except, you know, that he kissed Olive when what he really wants is to kiss Chuck. "I said 'beyond the obvious,'" Ned retorts, still worried, advancing the theory that when Olive kissed him it was just a spontaneous gesture of gratitude. "Was it a wet kiss," Emerson asks, laying it on the line, "or a dry kiss?" Ned tries an innocent shrug as he admits that there was a little moisture, but he can't maintain a cool demeanor. "That girl dropped a bomb in your subconscious with her saliva," Emerson says, and, as Ned writhes, he gives Ned the facts of life. "Some women love like gangsters," he says. "They be like 'Oooh, baby, you bleedin'! How that happen?' while they hidin' a razor in they weave." Ned, his eyebrows in maximum confusion, says that Olive is not a gangster. "Why you think she's always rubbin' up on you?" Emerson asks. Ned, sweating now, says maybe she's just trying to be nice. "It's an employer/employee kind of niceness," he suggests, "that occasionally includes platonic rubbing?" Emerson relieves him of the notion that there's anything platonic about it, and then, as Ned sees all, laughs at his pain. Ned insists, however, that he doesn't really want to touch Olive, not in that way, earning a very meaningful "mmm hmm" from Emerson.
Meanwhile, Olive, who has unzipped the front of her work smock as far as it can go, is confessing her own issues to Chuck. She assures Chuck that the kiss she shared with Ned wasn't even worth mentioning...although she is sad that Ned hadn't mentioned it. Chuck sighs. She guesses, she says, that Ned deserves a friendly expression of innocent gratitude, but she doesn't think she'd like it if he did it again. "I don't think I'd like it, either," Olive insists, backtracking to say that well, she would, but not in this context. "So that being said," Chuck asks, "are his lips soft?" What is this, seventh grade? Oh, right, it sort of is. Finally, Chuck reveals to Olive that she and Ned can't touch. Olive is thrilled to hear her admit it and asks if Chuck has some weird food allergy to Ned. "I'm going to say 'yes,'" Chuck says. "I get swelling, eczema, hives," she says, "you know, all things to avoid." Olive is pained. "That is the most tragic story I've ever heard," she says. "Notwithstanding the big ticket items like genocide and famine, but tragic nonetheless." Chuck lets out another sad sigh, saying her situation with Ned isn't so bad, but the omniscient Jim Dale strikes again: "And it wasn't," he says. "Yet."
Ah, because, meanwhile, across town, a guy named Harold is being murdered in his office. These, my friends, were the facts: Harold Hunding, a renowned dog breeder and head of the county kennel club, was stabbed multiple times in his office with the handle of a fancy dog brush. The kennel club offered a reward for information leading to the killer and the team was on the job. All pretense of being a [whatever] expert has been abandoned, apparently, because now they're just bribing my beloved coroner to get to the dead folks. Chuck, wearing a hat of which Alexis Carrington would be proud, explains to the rejuvey that they will be moving efficiently through some important questions. "I wish I could have said goodbye to Bubblegum," he says, talking about his favorite dog. "If you people are angels," he goes on, "I wish you would surround her with white light, or positive energy, or whatever it is you do; she was a sweet girl." Emerson gives his best eyeroll: "Yeah, yeah, white light. Check," as Chuck moves to the question: who stabbed the guy? But here's the twist! "There was stabbing," he says, "but nobody stabbed me." What had happened was, Harold took an innocent swig of coffee, realized immediately that it was poisoned, spilled the coffee, slipped and slid all over the floor, and fell repeatedly into an unfortunately-placed dog brush, the handle of which stabbed him to death. I mean, it could happen to anybody.
The coffee, he says, tasted of bitter almonds, with an intense, charismatic flavor that could only be cyanide. Emerson asks the obvious, if not quite polite, question: "Well, then, fool, why'd you drink it?" Seems the dead guy was using a tasty almond-flavored coffee cream creamer and realized too late what it masked. "Who gave you the coffee?" Chuck asks, cringing. Dead guy: "My wife...oh, honey, how could you?" Emerson: "Now, that's gangster love. But don't you worry, 'oh-honey' is gon' get what's coming to her." Great, the dead guy says, he'll come with. But, no, sorry, he's not coming anywhere with anyone. Ned gives him the touch of death, and that's that. Emerson is thrilled with what appears to be an easy case for once. "Oh, thank you, Lord," he says, "for simple things like, 'my wife did it.'" Much to their collective chagrin, however, Emerson arrives at the Pie Hole later to drop the bomb: "That son of a bitch was a damn polygamist." JD commiserates: "Harold Hunding was, indeed, a damn polygamist." Yes, in fact, ol' Harold had four wives, all quite cute, shown in a hilarious sequence of wedding scenes where the earlier wives all serve as increasingly bitter bridesmaids. Only one of them, Jimmy D tells us in his best ominous tones, killed their husband.
Olive traps Ned in the Pie Hole kitchen, pssting that they should clear the air. "Does our air need clearing?" Ned asks, nervously. And, frankly, he should be nervous, because the Chenoweth is pretty near topless at this point. "Our relations," she reminds him hilariously, "on the road." Oh, that. Ned mumbles, clearly lying, that he hasn't thought another moment about it, and rushes to safety in a booth with Emerson and Chuck, where Emerson is going into the details about the dead guy's four wives. "Some like chocolate, some like vanilla," he says, when Chuck says four wives is greedy, "some like Neapolitan." Ned chooses this inopportune moment to mention that he likes Neapolitan. "Then you'd do well as a polygamist," Emerson says. "One woman to have, one woman to hold." Gulp -- Olive and Chuck shoot each other looks as Ned clenches. "Why?" he spits out the side of his mouth at Emerson. "Why would you do that?" He goes on to say to the group that he would make a horrible polygamist and wouldn't know where to focus.
The dead guy, Emerson says, knew where to focus. "Found himself the perfect wife, except she had four heads." So, he was a polycephalist polygamist? Do I impress you with my vocabulary? Yes, I thought so. Emerson adds that, curiously, all four wives were also breeders. Olive gasps. "They made children for their polygamy cult?" she asks, horrified. Emerson sighs. "Dog breeders," he says, causing Digby to bark at the outrage. Olive's eyes go even wider: "They make DOGS for their polygamy cult?!" Emerson can't deal with it anymore: "Ain't nobody making nothing for no polygamy cult!" GOD, I love Chi McBride.
Olive, all excited to be one of the gang, wants to know how they know one of these wives did the deed, anyway. "He, uh, left a note," Ned says. Olive smiles. "Note," she breathes. "How mysterious! Can I play?" Ned brings down the kibosh with force. "No," he says, and when he sees Olive's dejected face as she slides out of the booth, he adds some mumbly stuff about how Emerson doesn't like bringing in extra people. Emerson himself, however, interrupts. If the same undercover agent goes to meet all the wives, they'd get suspicious faster than anyone could say "monogamy." Why not have each one of them take one wife each? Awesome plan! Olive is IN, as well she should be. Of course, Emerson assures her that if she's playing, "it's for play-play," because he won't be paying her. Meanie.
So, they all get to it. The suspects are these: Wife Hillary runs a prêt-a-poochie boutique selling ridiculous items to ridiculous dogs. Wife Heather, the renowned pet psychologist, is austere and intellectual. Wife Simone (curiously the only wife without an alliterative name), breeds and trains Jack Russell terriers...a job, I assure you, owning a terrier mutt myself, that only a person with a heart of steel and a will of iron could successfully perform. And sweet Wife Halle trains puppies to aid the blind. All of them are, without question, mentally deranged in some way, as is evidenced by their dog obsession and their swinging lifestyle. Ah, how I love to hear the clickity-clack of polygamist fingers sending me diatribes outlining the ways in which I'll never understand their multiplied love. No need to join them, dog lovers -- you, I get.
Olive heads first to the dog accessories shop of Wife 1: Hillary, who, like her very beautiful standard poodle, is pretty and perky, but might snap if teased or surprised. She must be very surprised indeed by the arrival of Olive, fully bedecked in green, wearing a red wig and introducing herself as Pimento, calling Digby "Pickle." I mean, does it get any better than that? Pimento? "You have a gorgeous selection of couture," Pimento/Olive says. "Pickle just loves him some D & G." Digby/Pickle barks in agreement, raving Tim Gunn-style about the simple elegance of last year's lines. Over at Wife 2's head-shrinking office, Ned is fumbling through his cover story. Apparently, his powers of creativity in pie-making do not extend to subterfuge -- the fake name he comes up with for Digby is... Ned. "Ned and I have been together for a very long time," Ned says. "We're intimate, but it's the appropriate human/canine sort of intimacy?"
Things don't go any more suavely at Wife 3's dog training school, later, when Emerson shows up with Digby. "He doesn't respect you," Simone says, coolly appraising Digby's attitude toward Emerson. "He respects me," the detective insists, but when Simone suggests he try to tell Digby to sit, and he does, Digby all but guffaws aloud.
Frankly, Digby's the only one who is any good at these shenanigans, because later, Chuck fakes blindness on her visit to Wife 4, Halle. It doesn't go well. "I know you're not blind," Halle finally says, after Chuck stumbles around and tries to use her aunt's cat-litter story as her tale of woe. "Thank you," Chuck says, relieved. "I felt awful doing that." Halle: "It was humiliating for both of us." Please, it was most humiliating for Digby -- a nice, self-respecting undead dog such as himself does not normally go around running these small-time shams.
We cut back and forth now between scenes showing the full scope of Digby's trials of the day. Pimento/Olive has opened her heart to Wife 1, telling her of her late horse The Pie, named after Elizabeth Taylor's horse in National Velvetwho died and left her heartbroken. Hillary is so moved by this horse story, she opens up about her own recent pet loss: her beloved dog, Bubblegum. Olive commiserates, saying she was so miserable until one day on the street, she passed "a bakery in the shape of a giant pie (the food, not the horse)," she knew it was a sign. "I don't know what it said," she says, "but it was there." Hillary wonders if she'll find the answers to life in a Bubblegum machine.
Chuck's mark, Halle, also mourns the loss of Bubblegum. Chuck identifies strongly with Halle, especially when she says that she wouldn't be alive if it weren't for Harold. "Literally?" Chuck asks, thinking of Ned. Halle's brow pinches, and while she no doubt mentally catalogues all escape routes to get away quickly from this crazy stranger who has arrived in her house, she admits that she might have exaggerated a little for effect. Chuck gets back on track: "How did Bubblegum die?" she asks, and we get the answer from Emerson's visit to Simone. "I backed up over her," she says unfeelingly as she works with Digby. Apparently, she had just heard about Harold's death and, rushing to get to the scene, she didn't check her rearview mirror. I can tell that Digby is offended, though being a professional, he doesn't show it.
Speaking of professionals, the psychologist is messing with Ned's head, but good. "Clearly, it's not an affectionate relationship," she notices as she looks over at the three feet of space between Ned and Digby. The actual Ned projects his own problems onto the dog "Ned," claiming that "Ned" has been having some serious stress-related anxiety due to mating issues. Digby lowers his head in shame, wondering why he puts up with this bullshit. The doctor digs deeper, suggesting that "Ned" is merely wrestling with the natural anxieties of an inexperienced stud. "He's had experience!" Ned says defensively. But the doc is on a roll. Passion, she says, is extremely important for all animals. "She was referring," Jim Dale explains, much to my relief, "to her late husband; not Digby."
Jeeez, I cannot stand all this jumping around. We see Emerson back at Simone's, where he learns that Harold's specialty was breeding designer dogs. You know, labradoodles, jackapoos, labrajacks, collidores, and various other creations against God and nature. "It was a niche," Simone says, "but it was Harold's niche." And the apex of that niche, JD explains, was the creation of the world's greatest dog, the collidorusslepoo, aka Bubblegum. And, y'all, I have known some cute dogs, okay, but Bubblegum is indeed the cutest in history. I am already a die-hard terrier fool, appreciating them as I do for their irrational loyalty and sometimes satanic tenacity, and Bubblegum had me from the jump.
In fast-motion, here is a wrap up of the rest of what we learned from these visits: Bubblegum was not only cute, she was hypoallergenic; Simone can make anyone her bitch, with just one click of her training clicker, as evidenced by Emerson's Pavlovian response to the site of her ass in a tight skirt; and somehow, all four wives provided Harold with his morning coffee on the last day of his life. There was some cute stuff in there, but show, you're killing me with the scene cramming. Maybe we don't need quite so many words. Why not let Chenoweth summarize in song? The nation is still kind of stupid from those few years where all we had to watch was Wife Swap and Temptation Island.
"My wife did it," Olive says. "She had murder in her eyes. And that murder, was couture." Nope, Ned says, his wife did it because she admitted to giving Harold his morning coffee. "So did mine!" the other team members shout. "No wonder the guy could handle four wives," Emerson sighs. "The dude was caffeinated." Of all of them, Chuck is the most supportive of her assigned wife. She just doesn't think Halle could have done it -- she's too sweet. "Well, here she is now," Olive says, going to hide behind the bar. "You can ask her." Through the door of the Pie Hole, all four wives stomp in, mad as hell. They want to know just who these snoopers are, and the details of Harold's alleged note. "Who said anything about a note?" Emerson asks. Chuck gulps. "I said about the note," she admits. Emerson swings around on his stool to have a quick continuing education update in Crime Detection 101. "Under," he explains, "meaning 'below'. Cover, meaning, 'the radar', people. What's so hard about that to understand?" Chuck cringes out a "sorry," and they turn again to face the angry wives. Emerson snaps that they'll explain who they are later; right now, he just wants to know what kinds of cream each of them used in Harold's coffee. Hillary says hers was soy. Heather pouts out in a weird Southern accent that she used heavy cream. Simone, naturally, wouldn't put cream in her coffee, as cream is for the weak. Halle, at last, sweetly announces that she uses almond-flavored coffee creamer. Dun dun dunnnn! The jig is up! As they all gasp, Chuck looks at her wife with a face of betrayal.
The day (I guess), the Pie Holers review the whole tragedy. "The police wrestled little Halle Hunding to the ground..." Ned recounts ominously as he pulls a pie from the oven, "...to the ground, and she's small. It was like a lion taking down a baby zebra." Chuck moans that they were awful tourists, standing secretly by, watching the injustice. Emerson, as he does, pshaws this, saying Halle clearly put the cyanide into her husband's coffee. "My wife, the baby zebra, is obviously being set up!" Chuck huffs. "She breeds puppies for blind children!" Chuck says Halle is no killer -- in fact, she's an angel. "Yeah," Emerson snarks. "The angel of death." He says neither the kennel club offering the reward nor the police think Halle was being set up, and that's good enough for him. It is not, however, good enough for Ned. He says that from a pie-maker's perspective, Halle looked innocent. He can tell, apparently, because his experience making pies makes it possible to tell guilt from innocence? Well, sure. This is why they ask you about the flakiness of your homemade crust when you get interviewed for jury duty. Emerson is ready to shoot down this new round of foolishness when the phone rings. After a quick chat, he announces that they now need to get on the job of proving Halle's innocence. "Your conscience calls you on the telephone?" Ned asks. Oh, no. Money calls -- seems the blind kids have raised $25k to help free Halle, and Emerson is now on the case. "You're taking money from blind children?" Chuck asks, horrified. "I suppose I could pay my bills with blind kids' smiles," Emerson snaps, "but their money is a lot easier." Once again, the man makes a point.
So, off to jail they go, where they find Halle, suffering dewily in her cell as her cellmate naps on her bunk. Halle says that prison is not at all like those prison exploitation movies, and gestures to her snoozing cellmate as an example of how nice everyone has been. "She says she runs the cellblock," Halle says, "so I'm protected." Ned: "She sleeps a lot for someone who runs the cellblock." Back to the story at hand, Halle insists that none of her sister wives could have set her up for Harold's murder. If you ask her (and they are), it was Harold's dog-breeding rival, Ramsfeld Snuppy, the son of a wholesale furniture liquidator and Home Shopping Network hand model, who wanted to collaborate with Harold to create a race of Super Puppies for his nationwide conglomerate, Snuppy's Puppies, using Bubblegum's DNA. Sometimes the sentences are so long, and make so little sense, I feel like I fell asleep in the middle and woke up still typing.
Investigating the Snuppy home office where dog-mating goes on by the hour, Chuck passive-aggressively spins a comment on dog "kissing" into a stab at Ned for not telling her about his kiss with Olive. It's artful, especially when she sends it home, saying she would have preferred to hear about it from him, not Olive. This devolves into yet another moon-eyed chat about how the two of them are an "us," just with special circumstances. "Maybe we just have to embrace the idea that sometimes I might have to hold someone else's hand," Chuck says, "and you might have to kiss someone else's..." Ned interrupts: "I don't want to kiss anyone else's anything." Emerson: "Why do I always have to be around for this stuff?" Heh. All this important soul-searching is cut short when Snuppy comes in bloviating on the greatness of his plan to clone the remains of Bubblegum, featured here in a pink urn, and put a perfect puppy under every tree for Christmas. The crew is, naturally, mortified, and when Chuck blurts out that Bubblegum wasn't even Snuppy's dog, he gets pissed. Whipping out a contract that shows that Harold sold him Bubblegum, dead or alive, Snuppy says the sale was against the Hunding Wives wishes, and probably why they wanted him dead. "But the ink was dry," Snuppy adds, "before Halle got to him. I got what was coming to me." Furious that he has been hoodwinked, Emerson growls that there's someone he needs to see and heads to Simone's where, in a gorgeously shot scene, he gives her the third degree.
She knew, Emerson says, that Harold sold Bubblegum to Snuppy, which gave her enough motive to kill her husband. Simone, like Halle, thinks Snuppy did the deed. Apparently, when Harold came to the wives with his plan to sell Bubblegum, they threatened to get an injunction against it as partners in the business. Since this would have held up Snuppy's plans for years, he must have gone ahead and killed Harold and framed Halle. "That's one theory," Emerson says. "Another one is, when you heard about Harold's plan, you put an injunction on the blood flow to his heart." Genius. Simone huskily (dog joke!) asks him if she seems capable of such an act. "Well," Emerson answers, "you never know what a body's capable of 'til you mess with their kibble." Simone: "So, don't mess."
Later, back in his office, Emerson falls asleep only to enter into a fantastic Hitchcockian dream in which all the clues come together, Vertigo style. Jim Dale leads us through Emerson's subconscious, where Emerson recalls seeing Bubblegum's collar, which leads him to Bubblegum's empty grave. Ipso facto, BG is alive! Which means Simone has lied to him once again, and, far worse -- he realizes, as he falls into a kaleidoscope world of spinning pies -- he might be falling for her.
The day when he explains it to Ned, the latter can't help reminding him that dreams are supposed to just be the subconscious jamming a bunch of rigmarole around in your head, as Emerson himself stated about the Chuck suit dream (about which we all continue to shudder). Emerson, however, is convinced -- the dog's alive, and Simone knows more than she's saying. He's going to shake her down. Fearing being left alone with Olive, who he kissed but does not love, and Chuck, who he loves but cannot kiss, Ned volunteers to go along. He is rebuffed, however, by Emerson and must face the cleavage -- I MEAN, "the music" -- when Olive tries to have a sensitive chat about the kiss, which Ned awkwardly avoids by being super damn awkward, blabbering about how it's not awkward for him, and anyway, their saliva is not even compatible. Or something. He runs away before he falls down, and Olive is left to ponder the sadness of her love when in walks Hillary with the dog couture order Olive placed on her undercover mission. "That order," Olive says, fearing the cost, "was placed under false pretenses!" Hillary: "Fortunately, your credit card was real." Oops. Well, Olive decides to make the best of it. "Happy birthday to Digby," she says, "and congratulations to you, too, I suppose." When Olive explains by saying she's glad Hillary will get her baby, Bubblegum, back through cloning, Hillary is surprised to say the least, and definitely not thrilled.
Meanwhile, Emerson has worn his most outrageous shirt ever to confront the lovely Simone about Bubblegum's aliveness. To his surprise, she gives up the goods without protest. The dog is, indeed, alive and Simone has her. She didn't admit it before, she says, because she knew Emerson would assume she killed Harold to get Bubblegum. Which is...exactly on-the-nose what Emerson thinks, yes. "You seem more concerned about Bubblegum than who killed Harold," Simone says, leaning in sexily. With effort, he resists her charms, sending her off to get BG, but he can't resist the clicker! For, as JD explains, Simone has been subconsciously training Emerson all along to do her bidding. Thus, his guard is down when she jumps him with chloroform and ties him to a board with a squeaky-toy ball-gag in his mouth. Here, I pause to flash back to this work trip I was on once where a co-worker's girlfriend showed up unexpectedly from across the country and horrified our entire staff by putting off the most gross and powerful ménage-seeking vibe ever felt by mere mortals. Subsequently, we nicknamed her "Ol' Ball Gag." That's just a cute little homespun anecdote from me to you.
Anyway, Emerson wakes up tied to a board, being watched over by one pissed-off Bubblegum. Simone thinks he's working for Snuppy to sniff out Bubblegum. She leaves him there to attend Harold's funeral. Emerson, fortunately, has a fear of the dark -- a result of being locked in a washing machine for two days...which is supposed to be funny, somehow -- and that fear is so powerful that it gives him superhuman strength. He breaks his bonds and rushes back to the Pie Hole, bursting through the door to shout: "My wife is gonna kill Ramsfeld Snuppy! Well, she's not my wife. Simone. The wife that... you know what the hell I'm sayin', COME ON!"
Moments later, the find that, yep, Snuppy has bought the farm. Chuck and Ned naturally assume it's Simone, but Emerson thinks maybe it wasn't Simone. Ned is amused. "Simone was hiding Bubblegum," he says. "She chloroformed you and tied you up. I'm not gonna mention the ball gag...that's gangster love." Awesome. But, see, Emerson says, that's what's bothering him. "If she was gangster," he says, "she would have busted a cyanide cap in my ass the minute I sniffed out her dog, but she didn't." Chuck suggests they use their normal method of figuring things out and ask the victim who killed him. Resolutely, Ned sets the timer on his watch and prepares to give the touch, but Emerson stops him before they "take another trip down Pointless Creek." (I have never been down Pointless Creek, but sometimes when I am recapping this show, I feel like I am on a runaway train traveling the Ridiculous Railroad. Still, I love it.)
Emerson and Ned do some figuring -- no need to waste the touch on Snuppy, as he probably didn't see who poisoned him any more than Harold did. Emerson has a moment of clarity and forms a cunning plan: "People are like dogs," he says. "They run when they're guilty." His plan? Take dead Snuppy to dead Harold's funeral. Ned can't touch him, of course, so Emerson and Chuck must haul the dead body into the church. "Would you prop him up?" Emerson commands the tiny Chuck as Snuppy flops around. "He look like a wino on New Years." I have to wonder if that was adlibbed, because Anna Friel can't help tittering out a little laugh that I don't think was very Chuck-like. Into the church they go, leaving Digby in the car to cover the getaway angle. As the wives and dogs, all bedecked in black mourning clothes (yes, the dogs, too, looking fly) all cry and whimper, the gang sneaks Snuppy into the back row. The wives all give impassioned speeches about Harold's championing spirit of champions and his championships, or whatever, and finally the recession from the church begins, with Hillary leading the way behind the coffin. "All right," Emerson mumbles to Ned, "on my mark." Waiting just a few more seconds, he gives the signal: "Mark!" Nothing happens. Sighing at Ned's incompetence, he makes it clearer: "That means now!" Hee!
Ned puts the touch on ol' Snuppy, and he comes to life, confused at the site of the coffin coming at him and everyone dressed in black. "This wouldn't be my funeral, would it?" he asks, and at that moment Hillary comes alongside the back pew. "Oh!" she screams. "You're supposed to be dead!" Bingo. She shoves her way out of the church, knocking over poor Harold's coffin in the process. "You got a mint?" Snuppy continues, meanwhile. "I got the nastiest taste in my mouth!" No time for mints, Snuppy -- Ned touches him back to death and takes off after Hillary, Digby leading the charge. "Sic 'er boys!" Chuck shouts, and sic her they do. See, Jimmy D has the facts, and they are these: when Hillary married Harold, she thought she had it made. The whole thing about extra wives was his idea, not hers, and she lived bitterly in silence until the birth of Bubblegum, the world's most perfect dog, provided her with the love she always wanted. But woe unto Harold when Hillary found out about the potential Snuppy deal. Refusing to subject her beloved BG to the same tortuous shared existence she had been forced to live, Hillary poisoned Harold and framed Halle to take the fall. What the Hunding wives hadn't known before Harold's death, was that he had already signed over Bubblegum, dead or alive, and hearing from Olive that Snuppy planned to clone BG from her remains, Hillary wigged all over again. Over Snuppy's dead body, she had silently vowed, Bubblegum would remain unique at all costs. But see, the other thing Hillary didn't know was that Simone had faked BG's death the same morning Hillary resolved to kill Harold. It's complicated.
All of this finally revealed, Emerson has yet another confrontation with Simone. If she really wasn't guilty, he asks, why'd she act like she was? She was just trying to protect Bubblegum, she says, not realizing until later that the contract said Snuppy had rights to her dead or alive. "That was a surprise," Simone admits. "But I am sure he was surprised when he discovered the ashes I turned over were nothing but a rat Bubblegum had caught." Emerson is impressed. "Slick," he says. Simone gives him her most flirtatious look yet: "You don't know slick." Ooo, Emerson's got himself a lady friend.
Elsewhere on the lawn, Ned sits perilously close to both Digby and Chuck as he sheepishly admits that he doesn't feel very heroic having just tackled a woman half his size. "She was your baby zebra," Chuck says. "Or maybe she was the lion with the baby zebra in her maw, and you were the crocodile who came from nowhere." Ha! Ned is enchanted by this cuteness, and watches as Chuck hugs Digby (embarrassed again) and pretends he's Ned. "The pie maker was saddened that Chuck could hold Digby," JD intones, "while he had no one."
Except, we see later at the restaurant, for Olive. As she leaves, he calls her back, apologizing for avoiding her and saying their saliva was incompatible. Aw. Olive is moved. "I'm a big girl," she says. "I'll be okay." She so very sweetly and sincerely tells him, taking his hand, that she hopes he and Chuck can make it work, and if they can't she hopes it doesn't take forever to figure that out. "I just want you to be happy," she says. And, Jim Dale tells us, she means it, though she's not quite ready to let go of the idea that maybe Ned can find his happiness with her after all. As she leaves, Ned begins to contemplate the hand he just held and, JD says, the many different forms love could take, each one precious in its own ways. Though some, you know, are more special than others. That night, as they settle into their beds, he tells Chuck: "you're the only one for me." Sob! Damn this show.