“We gonna crash again?” - Zoe

By Sonia Aurora

When reading the description of the episode this week, I couldn’t help but think of a more sensational Nancy Drew like title like “The Tale of the Lighthouse Keeper”, but as it progressed I wanted  to call it “The Case of the Bratty Lonely Tourist” and by the end “The Jerky Reanimated Dad.” It’s not to say I didn’t enjoy the episode – I did – but knowing that the show’s life is ticking away and things are getting complicated its just frustrating to know things will need to be rushed or left unresolved.

Alas, for now, on with the show.

Chuck is definitely reverting back to the nostalgia of her father, his new life with her and his new existence bringing out the little girl in her, which is acting self-serving and stubborn. Obviously, this is what motivated her to deceive Ned, and that he’s big enough to acknowledge that he understands (because of his own reasons for bringing Chuck back) is sweet and make us love him all the more. But more often than not, throughout the episode, I found Chuck to be undeserving of that love. She was clinging onto an idealization of who her father was, and not factoring in the idea of his own free will, his aptitude for being as inflexible as Chuck can be (a trait inherent in both her parents, as it seems). I admit, being a bit of a Daddy’s girl myself I can understand, but having grown up with him and as and adult I can see my father’s failings where Chuck does not. That Ned does become a huge issue between them that only somewhat get resolved by the end.

However, we have a mystery to solve.

Nora McQuoddy, lighthouse keeper, was shot with a harpoon and plastered on the lighthouse light that stretched through the air (much like the Bat Signal) and the main suspect is her long lost at sea husband Merle, who 10 years ago had vanished in Typhoon Tyroon and was found only recently by a traveling gay cruise ship (or something like that- its irrelevant that it was a gay ship, but the glee with which the Tom-Hanks-in-Castaway Merle dances when rescues is indeed gay, in the happy sense). Emerson doesn’t work in the rain, and even Elliot McQuoddy (son of Nora and Merle) lugging his big jar of coins and his crackling boy voice imploring his fathers innocence barely nudges our detective’s stance (and I couldn’t help but think of Peter Brady singing “When it’s Time to Change” every time the boy spoke). It’s only when Chuck forgoes her share of the profits does Emerson begrudgingly agree to take the case.

While at the morgue preparing to revive the victim Emerson advises Ned to re-dead Charles Charles; Ned’s horrified at the thought, and probably because it guiltily crossed his mind. In the best line of the night, Emerson says that it should be an accidental touch: “trip over an ottoman and Dick Van Dyke that ass.” I couldn’t agree more, as Chuck’s dad mandates that the safest thing for his daughter is for Ned to stay away from her. Ugh.

Anyway, Melty Mouth Nora, who for some elemental reason became goo on the glass of the light, Morse-codes that PCHS was the murderer – meaning that the Papen County Historical Society had something to do with it.

Meanwhile, Olive wants to join as a junior detective, having gotten specific rain coats for her new team – Emerson’s features cods, Ned’s is covered in pies, and Olive’s is covered in, well, olives, naturally. Ned runs off as he’s still dealing with the new Dad Dynamic, but Emerson and Olive still decide to cohort. They learn that through Gus Papen that the lighthouse was declared historical and that it would pass into the hands of the historical society if all the McQuoddy’s were gone (and what better way to help dispatch of them than by killing the wife and framing the husband). That leaves the kid in charge, and we wonder if an accident will soon befall him. Our new twofer also interview Nora’s best friend Annabel Vandersloop, of which Nora was a member of some widows club whose name I glossed over when I realized they would build miniature dioramas of their husbands’ deaths (such as Mrs. Vandersloop’s, whose husband, an ammunitions expert, essentially blew himself up). She’s covered in glitter, Paper Mache powder and cotton balls, but more than that, she covers our Olive in pity of never having married, loved and lost, etc. I immediately peg her for the murderer even if I can’t figure out motive. In a more tender moment, Emerson also confesses that the reason he hates rainy days is because he used to share those days with his ex and they now remind him of what he’s lost.

Concurrently, our Ned is drenched in dreaded sweat of having to live with Chuck’s father and have him abide by a Rules book regarding the no-touching. Moreover, Charles Charles hates pie and prefers cake, which Ned actually makes for the ingrate –er, father. And then there’s the matter of apology – Ned to Charles for killing him. I’ve never seen Ned more terrified, and I can’t blame him. That Charles increasingly becomes more and more intolerable makes me want to reach out, grab Ned’s arm and make him touch him and kill him back. He leaves the apartment, Corpse-face intact, and sits at the Pie Hole Counter while Chuck explains that her father is just paying the over protective dad and that she and Ned get to play the forbidden teenage lover roles, with a sweet make out season between the two through plastic wrap. Dad’s none to pleased, and neither is Ned as it is rule #17 that he not venture out of the apartment, and a fight ensues with wielding brooms and mops, ending with Ned locking Dad up in the storage closet.

Olive and Emerson are still unearthing elements of the case, and it turns out that Elliott duped monies out of a realtor to sell the lighthouse (which he can’t do as it’s a historical site) and Nancy Drew and Ned figure out that Merle the legendary husband is hiding in the caves. From him they learn that Nora sought shelter with another man while Merle was gone, but he didn’t know who it was. He sought shelter in the caves in the hopes of reconciliation more with his son than with his wife. He gives our detectives a Dutch Love Spoon inscribed with “AP hearts NM”, and it seems Gus – or rather Augustus- Papen is the other man.

Chuck releases her father from the storage room and sends him upstairs while she talks to Ned in a rather heated discussion that reveals the brat in her, and when Ned says this needs to get taken care of she immediately jumps on the fact that re-deading him is not an option – of course that’s not what Ned meant but I’m upset by this exchange because Chuck is seeing this only with emotion, and she needs to approach some of this with logic. It has to be forgiven, as she is feeling with the heart of the girl that lost her father so young, but its still is frustrating. Her father wants to travel the world, explaining to her that by staying she is not living the adventures he had promised her and now they can; pie is simple and flaky while cake is complex, and he asks her to choose cake.

Olive and Emerson come upon Gus trying to throw Elliot off the lighthouse…no, wait, save him from his accidental slip when he tried to raise the signal flags. What seems to be the killer turns out to be a fanfare of a pitch for the Papen Lighthouse Resort and Spa. While Emerson implores the singers to “shut the accapella up,” Olive notices glitter on the glass and as it happens, I was right – Mrs. Vandersloop is the killer! The facts were these: she and Gus had a passionate one night affair, but once he fell for Nora he fell hard, and she was tossed to the side. Since Nora stayed with Gus after Merle came back, she had to permanently get rid of the competition. Now she’d rigged the lighthouse with a trail of dynamite (which Olive mistakes at first for more glitter – and she asks the best question of the night – “Does she toot glitter?”). As Mrs. Vandersloop stands armored with a long lit match, Olive appeals to her heartbroken side, that they share the same sadness of unrequited loves, and manages to blow the fire out before they all get blown up. Mrs. Vandersloop gets 30 years, Merle and Elliot get that trip around the world with the benefits of the new Resort & Spa, and Emerson shares the rewards with “itty bitty” Olive, who made him love a rainy day again. He also tells her that if she ever tires of having to endure Ned and Chuck, she has a place in his detective firm.

In the end, Chuck chooses Ned and chooses pie; she has adventures and she does love her second life. Chuck’s father chooses too, as he drives away with rubber burning in the snow away from the confines of any rules that Ned or Chuck implore. He wants to have his cake and eat it too, and its 4 episodes left to see the reverberations and repercussions of that.

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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.