Young Ned’s lesson tonight is one we could all stand to learn: “even a forkful of immediate gratification can lead to a world of grave consequences.” Young Ned learned while opening the oven at the Longborough School for Boys and letting the aroma of pie waft through the night. It was a lesson Chuck could have used before opening her father’s grave and letting a very different aroma waft on the night breeze.

Okay, they tricked me but good. Last week, if you’ll recall, I said the only reason to end on the opening of the grave was if Charles Charles wasn’t inside. I was wrong. He was inside, dead for 20 years. Ned’s touch brought him back with answers about Dwight. A very dangerous man, but unlikely to be a threat as long as he had the pocket watch. ((Did they steal this watch from Kirby Winter?)) Ned runs off and gives Chuck 30 unhindered seconds. And then she grabs a forkful of her own immediate gratification.

In one of the cleverest moves the show’s ever employed, Chuck’s decision to keep her father alive permanently ((?)) solved the problem of Dwight Dixon. Dwight was too close. Of course now her undead father is squatting in Ned’s old house and Lucy’s gonna have lots of ‘splainin’ to do!

Tonight had an odd structure. If I were going to guess without doing scene or page counts, I’d say that Ned and Olive outpaced Chuck and Emerson and were technically the A-story. They got the murder mystery, they got the bright shiny happy sets, they got the majority of screentime (I think.) But that B-story…wow. I’ve never…I mean, Anna Friel does comedy great. She does cute like labrador puppies. But she was broken tonight and it made my heart ache.

She couldn’t tell Ned what she’d done, the horrible betrayal she’d committed. She couldn’t tell her father the price that was paid for staying alive-again. She was trapped between the lies she was telling the two men she loves. And doing it across the street from her aunts (one mother, one aunt.)

All in all, a rough episode for Chuck.

On the MoW front, it was nice to see Ned and Olive get some interaction. They’ve got an interesting dynamic together and I don’t think it gets used enough. Seeing the two of them play like Simon and Simon for the hour was a blast, especially with Beth Grant reprising her Wonderfalls role as Marianne Marie Beetle and Patrick Fischler playing the Waffle Nazi. ((This has been a great year for Fischler who has been *everywhere*.))

I was probably even more disgusted than Ned when The Colonel took a bite of himself, but otherwise the Papen County’s “Best in Belly” “Comfort Food Cook-Off” was another pitch perfect setting. As usual, there wasn’t much mystery to the mystery – and Doug Petrie took a big old cheat in his script by not letting us know Leo Burns used to be skinny until the reveal – but it was fun times. I’m savoring what little is left of Pushing Daisies, trying to enjoy every last drop of twee, charm, whimsy, and cutesy that it shoves onto the screen. There’s a lot.

Of course, as bad as the cheat with the killer was, it’s nothing like the massive plot hole surrounding Dwight’s death. See, I think it was great that he died so that Charles Charles could live. Clever, cute, smart. But…if he followed Chuck to the cemetery, and thought she was digging up her father’s grave to return the watch, why did he let her and Ned dig it all the way up? Why not just shoot them as soon as he was setup with the sniper rifle?

He never should have gotten to the point of being confused or surprised by what was going on in the grave. He should have been long gone.

Some favorite bits:

• Ned’s Boy in the Plastic Bubble sleeping suit.
• Lily’s shotgun fantasy.
• “Are we weird now because I did ‘it’ with your dad?”
• Emotional snow days. I want to take some of those!
• Every last bit of Chuck and Emerson in his office. Her fear and pain, and his attempt to mask his actual affection for Chuck were brilliantly played. Chi McBride nailed that scene.
• “You know what no one tells you about cooking with the dark side? The food is really good.”
• Olive smearing something -jam maybe? – on her face and pretending her eyes were bleeding. Nothing slows paramedics down faster than Ebola. ((Or any hemorrhagic fever, really.))
• “That’s the peck of cahoots, which we are definitely not in.”
• Chicken and waffles! ((Must. Get. Lo-Lo’s!))
• Ned and Olive in the trunk. “Hey! Clean thoughts, chum!”
• “Did The Colonel spatter when you deep-fat fried him, you sick sonuvabitch?”
• Ned using his watch to count down the 20 seconds to get their entry on the table.
• Finally…and YAY! Olive sings! It took *eight* episodes this season until someone broke into song. That ain’t right. But this? This was oh, so right.

What did everyone else think?