Episode Report Card Al Lowe: B+ | Grade It Now! YOU GRADE IT Bitterly Bad Idea
By Al Lowe | Season 1 | Episode 8 | Aired on 11.27.2007
In a hurry? Read the recaplet for a nutshell description! Finished? Click here to close.Ned is having a hard time dealing with his happiness. Though he and Chuck have decided that, yes, they are boyfriend and girlfriend, Ned is still plagued with guilt about inadvertently causing the death of her father. With Emerson's guidance, he decides never to tell her the truth. The crew is hired to work on a case in which a portly gentleman allegedly uses the lifeless hands of his sex doll to strangle a goomba named Tony, leading to the arrest of said goomba's girlfriend. Using their ingenious methods (asking him if he did it), they free the girlfriend. In the week's biggest "meanwhile": there's a new girl in town. Across the street, the wackiest brother and sister duo since Donny and Marie has opened an equally wacky candy store, Balsam's Bittersweets, and sees the Pie Hole as competition. (Dilly Balsam, a.k.a. Molly Shannon, how I've missed you.) Game on! The Bittersweets strive to drive our heroes out of business, going so far as to send a surprise health inspector who finds Ned's room full of rotten fruit and shuts down the Pie Hole. Ned refuses to engage in retaliatory measures, but Olive and Chuck have other ideas, such as dressing up in slinky hot black outfits and literally busting through the door of the candy store to "set loose some inappropriate vermin." Striving to right these wrongs, Ned goes back to the scene of their revenge, where he finds brother Balsam floating dead in a taffy vat. Of course, his touch brings the guy back to life, but when the police bust in, he has no choice but to poke him back to death. Thus, Ned looks super-guilty and is arrested, leaving Emerson and Chuck with no other option than to solve the crime in the old-school fashion, with no help from his powerful finger. Oh, speaking of fingers? Our beloved coroner finds one in the stomach of the dead guy. Ewww. So, using Olive as a cover, Emerson and Chuck get back in the candy shop, where they discover important nine-finger evidence, but before they can get the jump on Dilly, she gets the jump on them and kidnaps Olive! But, wait! Dilly may be totally wacko crazy, but she doesn't appear to be the killer. Nope, the killer is none other than the health inspector and, hmm, no one can find him (because Dilly, who has forgiven the Pie Holers but is still all about revenge, kills his ass). Thus, Ned is released from prison, much to the joy of his little gang, and Olive realizes, too late, that though she cares for him, she may also have feelings for sweet Alfredo, herbal-remedies salesman. Also having a late realization: Ned, a split second after -- in a moment of overwhelming love -- he blurts to Chuck that he killed her father. Want more? The full recap starts right below!
We begin with a flashback of Ned the Younger back in the day at his Boarding School for the Unloved where, because no one else will be nice to him, he is forced into friendship with another outcast, Eugene Maljandani, who is orthodonotically awkward, yes, but otherwise awesome, especially in the area of paper airplane-building. As Eugene attaches a balloon to his latest model and one of the classroom bullies goes to shoot it down with a spitball, Ned rises to the occasion and defends what turns out to be his first friend since he was dropped off at this prison. Of course, it is not to last. When he happily leaps into a pile of dead leaves, and they are reborn to utter greenness, Eugene Majandani flees in a flurry of saliva and fear, and though he returns, chalking up the incident to the leaves being magic, Ned learns the valuable lesson that happiness, born of passion, can never last.
"Through no fault of his own," Jim Dale tells us, back in the present day, "[Ned] had once again stumbled into happiness, which terrified him." And here comes his happiness: Chuck, tripping lightly up to the bar at the Pie Hole, blathering on about World Hello Day, and being cute, sure, but listen...I can't take the whimsy when it gets too chatty. Just get to the dead people. Okay...I think I need a week off. The thing is, Ned isn't tired of the whimsy. In fact, he is loving it. He loves it so much, he can't stop himself from asking, "Am I your boyfriend?" From here he diverges over the river and through the dang woods: sure, boyfriend and girlfriend may be conventional, trite labels, and yes, maybe it isn't necessary to define the relationship, and well, is she going to cut him off somewhere in here with a yes? Chuck: "Yes." Overhearing this nervous but happy exchange: Olive. And, though she decided previously that she really just wanted Ned to be happy, even if it was with Chuck, she is pained to hear the truth finally spoken. Ned, however, is sheepishly thrilled...until Chuck, with sweet sadness, mentions that today is her daddy's birthday. He would have been sixty, had he still been alive. Siiiiiiiiiigh. Being a member of the Dead Daddy Club, it ain't easy. My dad would have been sixty this year, too. Speaking of horrifying sadness, the needle has just come off the record in Ned's brain. No matter how happy he gets, any mention of Chuck's dad is going to bring him right down. "What's wrong?" Chuck asks, seeing him pale. "Nothing," Ned mutters but, au contraire. "The meaning of 'nothing' was," JD explains, "'I never told you how I inadvertently killed your father." I can't stand it that so much of this show is going to center on the inadvertent killing of Chuck's dad -- Ned didn't even know he had these powers, and would not have even realized Chuck's dad had died within any time-frame had he not looked out the window? I'm willing to suspend so much disbelief, but feeling guilty for twenty-plus years over something you didn't even do makes for some laborious plot-twisting.
Speaking of twisting: Olive is forgetting her troubles by spinning continuously on a stool at the bar. "Olive," Ned finally asks, sharply bringing her to a halt. "Where are the customers?" Olive, dizzy and dejected: "You got me." But, ah, there is one customer there waiting: Alfredo! Frankly, I am glad to see him back. Olive is getting the shaft over here, mooning after Ned who, let's just put it on front street, is weird. I mean, not that Alfredo's not weird -- no, in fact, he is delightfully weird, and loves Olive even when she stumbles off her stool to give him a long-promised macchiato and crashes into various pieces of furniture.