Chuck gives Oscar (Paul Reubens) a piece of her hair so he can find out the truth about her smell. Emerson tells Ned he has a daughter but later blames carbon monoxide poisoning as the culprit for his sharing mood (but we know the potato was inserted in the tailpipe after he shared that information). High as a kite from a mood enhancer, Lily tells Olive Chuck’s her daughter. Oh my! All sorts of secrets came out of hiding tonight.On the run from Ned after he told her he’s responsible for the death of her father, Chuck goes to the only other place she knows she’s welcome: Olive’s. And because it’s the last place he thinks to look, Ned scours the city before knocking on Olive’s door. But now that she and Chuck are friends, Olive’s not about to give her up. I was happy Chuck got to tell someone the real story of how she died and was resurrected by Ned, even if Olive ending up not believing her. I may have mentioned it before but I’ll mention it ag...
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Some things we know:• Ned is Chuck’s boyfriend• Emerson’s ok with lying by omission (well, and outright lying)• Ned cleans when he’s upset• Dilly really does stutter when she’s upsetThere was a lot going on in tonight’s episode. We had the arrival of rival small business Balsam’s Bittersweets Taffy & Sweet Emporium and not one but two murder cases. And, of course, Ned’s confession to Chuck at the end of the episode. Let’s start with the highly anticipated (at least by me) arrival of Molly Shannon’s Dilly Balsam. Well, I guess I should really start with the arrival of Mike White’s Some Guy. I loved how he came into what would shortly be known as The Pie Ho to talk about the arrival of the new candy shop. Ned, Olive, and Chuck do the neighborly thing and offer a welcome gift in the form of one of Ned’s delicious and pungent pies. The only problem is that all the customers love the smell of the pie so much t...
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Tonight we finally learned why Ned decided to become a pie maker and how he became so set in his ways. The smell of pies reminded 9 year-old Ned of his mother and feeling safe, loved, and warm. He knows he can’t eat the pies but he derives pleasure from making them nonetheless. Years later when Chuck buys cupcake pans and suggests offering cup-pies on the menu, we get a glimpse of how averse Ned is to change. Can you really blame him? I can’t even imagine the trauma of having a bearskin rug come alive beneath me.I really enjoyed Chuck enlisting Olive in her scheme to get the Darling Mermaid Darlings (DMD) back in the water. Hard nut Lily really likes torturing Olive and I like seeing just how far her invective will go. Olive does her best to put Phase 2 in motion but Lily passes her fleeting smile off as gas. Our mystery death of the week involves apprentice Anita Gray. She works for olfactory genius Napoleon LeNez (Chistopher Sieber), who is publishing a book on smell. Wh...
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"Bitches"
Season 1, Episode 6
Written by guest blogger Katie BottnerChuck and Ned fans, I can hear you breathing a sigh of relief that the Olive/Ned kiss was just a dream sequence. Though for a moment I thought that was real Chuck that tripped and was going to fall on Ned — I got scared for a second there. But alas it was all in Ned’s head as he became conflicted over being able to touch Olive but being in love with Chuck. And lucky for us, poor Emerson got to once again be the soundboard for this dilemma. Kudos go to Olive for coming clean to Chuck about the kiss, which Ned did not mention, but I feel sad for Olive — and my sadness for her deepened throughout this episode.The facts of the case are these: One Harold Hundin (Joel McHale), president of a local kennel and breeder of the perfect dog, Bubblegum, is found dead. As we know, "where there is a reward, there is Emerson Cod," who with Ned and Chuck found out at the morgue that Harold was murdered by his wife. Simple? Not so much — he ha...
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"Girth"
Season 1, Episode 5
Interesting episode title and interesting episode. And by interesting I mean excellent, as usual.I like that we spent some serious time with Olive this week. I know many of you love her, and tonight we got a little glimpse into Olive’s past. Since she’s so short — 4' 11" to be exact — it would make sense that she was a jockey in a former life. She’s one of the sport’s best and brightest until a tragic accident brings her career to an end. When Olive’s jockey friends start going to that big racetrack in the sky, Olive knows she needs Emerson’s help to discover what’s really going on. She’s afraid the ghost of John Joseph Jacobs (Hamish Linklater) is returning to kill every jockey who crossed the finish line in the race that cost him his life. Turns out his witchy (with a b) mother (Barbara Barrie) has been impersonating him — on a horse that breathes fire, no less — to revenge the earnings and glory her son lost in that race...
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"Pigeon"
Season 1, Episode 4
Another Wednesday, another delightful episode.Poor Ned. It looks like he’s gone through most of his life being lonely. After he discovered his "gift," he kind of lost touch with people. Sensing something is amiss with Ned, Digby sets off to find him, but he somehow knows he and Ned aren’t allowed to touch. The only reason I’m willing to go along with this little leap in logic is because this show is a fantasy. Well, that’s not the only reason. I don’t really have a problem with Digby being an extremely smart doggie who is able to infer "the rules" of Ned’s gift, but I did think we’d get a little more on how Digby’s managed to stay so youthful all these years. I know quite a few of you had questions about that as well.OK, that’s my only quibble. Ned, Chuck and Emerson go to investigate a plane crash after Emerson smells some money in the suspicious circumstances. In the apartment, Chuck and Ned have a near-miss touching incident that leads...
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Chuck was bound to find out sooner or later that there’s a price to be paid for reviving and keeping her alive. I’m glad she found out tonight, although the way Emerson sprung Lawrence’s corpse on her and Ned wasn’t that nice. And the Darling Mermaid Darlings made another appearance. I, too, missed them in last week’s episode and was pleased to see them return. The funniest sight gag from tonight’s episode is their mermaid-fish-tail-shaped garment bags. I TiVoed back (well, really DVRed back; I don’t have TiVo) to make sure I wasn’t imagining things. I’m still totally enamored of this show.Let’s spend some time with the corpse, who we already met in the "Pie Lette." Lawrence Schatz (Brad Grunberg) was the dirty funeral director who unwittingly gave his life to bring Chuck back from the dead permanently. Ned felt he could justify Lawrence’s death because Lawrence was a grave-robber; he had been separating corpses from family heir...
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"Dummy"
Season 1, Episode 2
Color me charmed, again. If you don’t like quirky this is definitely not the show for you. I think at least one, if not a few of you, expressed concerns about the procedural element of the show. If Ned can touch someone and ask who killed them, their cases are going to be pretty cut and dried. But as we saw in this episode, they were given what Chuck called a clue but Emerson called evidence to help them solve the case. New things we learned:• Emerson is a closet knitter. That knitting needle definitely came in handy when they were trapped in those body bags. And he makes a mean gun cozy.• Chuck knows Japanese. Living with her shut-in Aunts, Chuck developed a curiosity about the world. She learned quite a few languages before her untimely demise.• The narrator will never lie to us. I know some of you aren’t big fans, but I still love how Jim Dale is the voice of reason. Even when every single person is spouting nothing but lies, Jim tells the truth.Let’...
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I’m thoroughly charmed by this show. I was a little afraid all the great things I’ve been hearing would lead to disappointment, but I must admit I loved the episode.The rules:• Ned’s first touch to something dead brings life, the second brings death forever.• If the person he brings back stays alive for more than one minute, someone else in close proximity will die.Ever since Ned (Lee Pace) was able to bring his trusty golden retriever Digby back from the dead, he has known he has the gift of reanimation. He was 9 when he found out. Unfortunately he didn’t realize his gift came with a price until he revived his mother only to watch his next-door neighbor and best friend Charlotte, aka Chuck (Anna Friel), Charles’ father die as a result. Soon after, Ned is shipped off to boarding school, and Chuck goes to live with her aunts, also known as the Darling Mermaid Darlings because of their synchronized-swimming careers. But before they are parted, they s...
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