“If you’re looking for my professional opinion as ship’s counselor: he’s nuts.” - Deanna Troi

By Sonia Aurora

Another episode, and this one made me hungry not only for Pie, but for Chicken as well (although as I continue, you might find that a little sick).

Of course, I’m already feeling a little sick as it’s been confirmed that creator Bryan Fuller is now working on the series finale of the show, and then heading back to his writer post on Heroes, which [insert expletive here] me to no end. But, for now, I am taking a deep breath, and talking about this amazing, awesome, wonderful, fantabulous show.

Pie is comfort food for Ned, dating back to when he was Young Ned, baking with and for his friend Eugene Mulchandani, and then for his boarding school mates, partying until being caught by the headmaster.

Comfort is certainly what Ned needs now, as he is still absorbing the night before when he resurrected Chuck’s father for his 30 seconds to talk about Dwight as bad guy (yes, it’s confirmed he is, duh) and 30 seconds for Chuck to say hello and goodbye. Chuck, snuggling out of Ned’s plastic wrap embrace (a lovely contraption that lets him hold Chuck without touching her) is preoccupied with thoughts, and anxious to get Ned out the door and attend the Best in Belly Cook Off he missed the year before, and the same that Ned and Olive lost 2 years before that. The bitter taste of defeat instead of blue ribbon victory still weighs on Olive, and she is determined to see victory through this year, but Ned doesn’t want to leave Chuck behind. She insists she needs an “emotional snow day” and off Ned goes for a shot at Comfort Food Glory.

Lilly’s been staking out Dwight’s hotel room, meanwhile, and has a delightful imaginary confrontation with him where she shoots him through the door. Instead, she leaves him a note “I got it. You want it? Cemetery, L.” She wants to justice of returning the watch to its rightful resting place with Chuck.

Olive is determined for greatness this year, convinced the faulty oven from two years prior had been sabotage as she sends eye daggers and verbal barbs with Mary Ann Marie Beetle of the Muffin Buffalo, that year’s winner (I’ll be calling her Ms. Muffin here on out). Leo Burns, Event Coordinator wheeling around in a mechanized wheelchair, is secretly rooting for the Pie Holers, as are we, and Olive doesn’t matter that she’s cooking with revenge in her heart, the dark side will motivate a win for them, she feels.

Chuck, instead of manning the Pie Hole restaurant, is entering what we come to realize is Ned’s old abandoned home, across from the Aunts, and she enters the room with the most shocking of announcements: “Hi Dad.” (!)

Turns out in her reunion time, she didn’t want to be robbed of more time with him so she asks her father to play dead while she slips her glove on his hand and that is what Ned touches to re-dead him. And while she assures him that he won’t crave human flesh, and that everything will taste better, his new life comes with consequences. Someone in that cemetery is dead then, having taken Charles Charles’ place, and she enlists Emerson’s help to find that poor dead soul and do right at least by that, while she struggles with the deceit of keeping this from Ned.

At the Best in Belly event, Colonel Likkin ends up battered and deep fried (extra crispy) in what everyone determines was a heart attack –accident. Ned’s act of chivalry to obtain the secret recipe for his new widow (which the Colonel, a “fat-frying savant” kept locked in his head) unearths that the Colonel was murdered, shoved into the batter and then into the hot oil. He did have one written copy that he kept in his jacket pocket, but its missing, and now Ned needs to find the saboteur and the killer, who may be one and the same.

Of course, when he tries to enlist Olive’s help in even fronting a murder investigation, he almost slips in telling her his little secret, and I realize how unfair it is for her to not know, especially since it keeps her such an outsider. This would be one of those items to resolve by series end, I would hope, but who knows? Is it better she be kept and stay in the dark about that? And will we the viewers be able to know what the creator and writers intended to do with what is now truncated time?

Anywho, back to the ep at hand…

Turns out Lil Miss Selfish Chuck killed Dwight in the cemetery. In all fairness, had she not, she and Ned would have been toast, as Dwight has a rifle aimed at Chuck’s father’s grave for them, and if it had taken him less than 61 seconds to process what was going on and what to do, they would have been toast.

Vivian at this time is pining for Dwight, who she now knows was driven away by Lilly. She shows up at the Pie Booth at the Cook-off, letting them know that the Pie Hole is closed, and also reckons that Ned and Olive are an item, but more importantly, that Olive is lying about her feeling for the Pieman. In a gentle but heartbreaking way, Vivian tells her that “lying to yourself about love never works.” I’m honestly devastated by the turn of events for poor Vivian. She lost Charles, even before his death, she lost him to Lilly, and then she loses her niece Chuck and now, as she’s finally come to be so brave to venture outdoors and open her heart up, she loses Dwight. He might have been a bad egg, but I believe his feelings for Vivian were the most honorable and pure he probably had ever felt.

So while Chuck struggles with her “guilty mind giving rise to her guilty feelings,” Ned and Olive’s pies are burned due to yet another accidental oven malfunction? Or more sinister? Turns out all their ingredients are missing, but on the edge of a spatula Ned tastes what could be…maple syrup…could the saboteur be the Waffle Nazi? In their search for evidence it turns out that the Waffle Nazi (who speaks not a lick of German, but can riff English with a perfect German accent) was going to go into business with the Colonel, making a Chicken and Waffles franchise. Alas, poor Olive and Ned and suspected of trying to sabotage the waffler, and our Event Coordinator disqualifies them.

Seeing as they’re already out, why not try and figure out who the killer and saboteur are? In their snooping they are knocked out by frying pans wielded by Ms. Muffin herself, who pleads with them that she needs to win, appealing to their sympathy of which neither Olive or Ned have none. Having been caught in the Colonel’s tent, Ms. Muffin also gets disqualified…until they notice the tracks left in the batter are of the wheelchair. Lo and Behold, Leo Burns is our killer. Having been a svelte unhappy man who turned to the Colonel’s secret recipe for comfort, he became somewhat addicted, and in so, fatter and fatter. Blaming the Colonel for his larger lot in life, he vowed to destroy the Colonel as his recipe, but couldn’t bear to destroy the secret of the 500 herbs and spices. He’s hauled away, and with 30 seconds left and no one wise to their disqualifications, Ms. Muffin and Olive race to submit entries on the Judge’s table. You see, Olive was so determined but also so paranoid something might go wrong she had a backup pie in the fridge ready and waiting to be served.

And so with said pie, our Pie Holers do bring home the blue ribbon, but with this victory also brings Olive’s confession that she is still in love with Ned. Our Kristen Chenoweth gets another singing scene, belting out The Bangles “Eternal Flame”, which gets interrupted twice by Ned (in two very funny and appropriate ways) when Ned asks if its ok that he go look for Chuck since he’s worried, and it’s ok, Olive’s used to the mess she’s left to clean up. And again, there is another pining, breaking heart to add to this episode, one at least I’d hoped had healed, but just one she’d tried to bandage up as much as Chuck had bandaged up her dead father’s face, which is the face Ned comes to when he bursts into his old house and catches Chuck and Charles Charles there, in hiding.

I can only breathe so much a sigh of relief that we’ll know what happens next in the saga as there are five more episodes left of the original 13 ordered. I also know that a “big mystery” of the show is supposed to be resolved in the end, but how many lose ends can they tie up with so little time? This world created is so intricate it would do it a disservice to try and cram so much in five more hours (or, here’s hoping they got at least an extra hour or episode to finish it all).

This episode was great, and while I didn’t go on too much about Emerson who was a background player, his agreement to help Chuck find the body in the cemetery while also telling her to expect massive scolding at the end of it was Emerson gruff at its height. It’s always fun to have our Olive burst into song, as Kristen has such a wonderful voice, and they do it in a seamless way, at least seamless in this show. I was sorry to see Stephen Root go, since I feel we don’t really know the mystery of the watches, for one, and for another I had hoped that Vivian would finally and really break free of the invisible clutches Lilly has in her.

All in all, another great episode for this great show. And one of its last, sadly, but I plan on enjoying them while they are here. When it’s over I’ll curse and raise my fist at the sky screaming “WHY!?!?!?” but in the precious moments left, I want to enjoy the world of the Pieman, the Detective, the Lonely Tourist, Emerson, Olive and the Darling Mermaid Darlings, Aunts Vivian and Lily. These last few hours are too few not to enjoy, fully immersed, and fully loved.

Never miss an update. Subscribe to Pink Raygun by Email or subscribe via RSS

About Sonia Aurora: Aspiring screenwriter and seamstress, Sonia’s dream is to write life-changing films while product-placing her own line of handbags. In 1999, she wrote, co-directed and co-starred in the short film Dr. Lovestrange, or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bug, a satirical homage to Stanley Kubrick set amidst the panic of Y2K (Featured on ifilm.com & Coming Soon to YouTube!). While Sonia waits patiently for the Studios to call, she continues her selfless, humanitarian efforts (think Mother Teresa) through her scripts, short stories and sewing (a true triple-threat!), knowing all the while that someday her efforts will indeed save (or at least mildly tweak) the world. She still struggles with which picture to kiss before bedtime: her boyfriend’s or Bruce Campbell’s. And, in the interest of time, she’d like to start thanking the Academy now.