Reviews @ PXDCO

Stake out of deep dark and touchy Remember Ned's Only Friend Eugene, the one he had at boarding school when he was a lonely wee tot? Eugene had a snake named Bilbo and a rabbit; Bilbo jumped through the glass enclosure of his cage into that of the rabbit, killing them both, since he choked on the bunny. Eugene was devastated, and Ned, feeling it was the right thing to do, sacrificed two other animals, less beloved, to bring Bilbo and the bunny back to life for Eugene. He took something else to give back to someone who needed. Just like we need this show, because it elevates TV to unheard of awesomeness, so ABC, please kill something less worthy. You know you've got one in the stables somewhere.

This week, an attorney named Daniel Hill contracts Emerson to find out who killed his client, Gustav Hoffer. Gustav was a wealthy inventor, having made his first killing at 19 with the invention of a mechanized yarn spinner. And Daniel Hill loved Gustav, cantankerous elfin bastard that he was. Gustav was crushed by a falling chandelier, shot from the ceiling. Daniel suspects Gustav's gold-digging, airheaded wife Elise, who stands to get everything with the current will. So Emerson brings Chuck and Ned to the morgue. Chuck notes that Gustav was said to have the Midas touch; she compares Ned to Midas, but with life instead of gold and sans monkey ears. Ned says that Midas was a miser, while he is a philanthropist. He gives Gustav the finger, and Gustav gets right down to business. He has a second will hidden in the trophy room, in the biggest trophy, which they have to turn left to get to the safe. Emerson tries to interrupt to ask who killed him, but Gustav is like, I am talking here, what did I just tell you to do? Chuck repeats the instructions, to Gustav's satisfaction, and he tells the trio that under no circumstances does he want his no-good gold-digging wife (uh) to get his fortune. Emerson asks again who killed him, and Gustav yelps that the Bellman did it, just in time for Ned to put him under again.

Chuck, Ned, and Emerson next go to Gustav's home to question his bellman. Emerson decides that he and Dead Girl will take the bellman while Ned goes to the trophy room. Elise welcomes them and invites them to wait for James Andrew, the porter (not bellman, thank you very much); she is blonde, buxom, and brainless. She says she was at a charity ball when Gustav died, an event about which she has absolutely no remorse or even pause. James Andrew was at a key party with fifteen witnesses. While Emerson and Chuck question them, Ned finds the trophy room. But the trophies are less big and shiny metalic emblems of achievement and more large taxidermied animals, which poses a problem for someone who can bring things back to life. Ned tiptoes to the biggest trophy, which is a large polar bearish bear. We don't get to see him grapple with the animal, but we hear its roar from the other room as Ned moves it to get to the safe, which is empty save a message scrawled in Latin: ORBIS PRO VOX. Ned tells Emerson and Chuck, who tell him about the key party. Ned doesn't know what a key party is. Chuck, finding this adorable, tells him it's a raffle. Emerson adds that it's more of the porno kind. He oooohs like he gets it, and Emerson grouses that their case just turned into something way more complicated and bedonkedonk, which I assume means asstastic. It seems that if Ned and Chuck ever watched the news, they'd know that rich people all over are getting robbed and left with the same Latin inscription.

Emerson gets a "nugget" from the police: after every serial robbery, the thief makes a donation to a charity. Like a modern day Robin Hood, Chuck thinks. Emerson says he knows of one bellman with a charitable streak. There's a local organization called the Bellman's Charity, whose motto is Ring for Right, or orbis pro vox. They make telemarketing calls to houses and beg for money for charity. Their leader is Rob Wright, who assures the investigators that his workers have nothing to hide. He welcomes them in, and they quickly zero in on Tam Phong, a rather aggressively mean solicitor of charities. They find him suspectish. Turns out that he's called every house that's been robbed. Hill wants to go out and get him hard-core street justice style now, but the team talks him down. They tell him about the second will; if they can find it, he says, he'll double their fee. They decide to catch the robber in the act, using Lily and Vivian's house as bait. Olive, in a truly fabulous and over the top pink get up complete with diamond necklace in the shape of a bow, goes to the Bellmen in person and berates them for being annoying telemarketers in search of cash for their liberal bleeding heart causes, making sure to get herself on Phong's list.

While Emerson, Chuck, and Ned have been investigating, Ned's also been stress-baking and worrying over Dwight finding out about Chuck's not-deadness. He's still seeing Vivian regularly, and rather falling for her heart of gold, and Ned thinks it a matter of time before he sees a photo of Chuck and realizes she's not dead. Chuck thinks Ned should just wake her dad and ask him what it is that Dwight might be after, but Ned refuses. He doesn't want to put Chuck through such an excruciating minute; he had his mom alive again for seven hours, but he wouldn't if he could. She has a life time of things to say to her dad that won't fit in a minute, and Ned loves Chuck too much to put her through having to see her father die all over again. Things get more complicated, however, when Vivian confesses to Dwight that she feels responsible for Chuck's death in some way. She encouraged Chuck to go on the cruise, living vicariously through her niece because she was tired of being a shut-in but afraid to leave. She now carries around Chuck's obit as a reminder to herself to live-live, not live vicariously. She shows it to Dwight, who has a visible brain aneurysm over the information.

So Chuck and Ned sneak into her old room, where she has a treasure trove of her father's things and a collection of his letters. She's going to go through them for clues while Ned, Olive, and Emerson lie in wait for the robber downstairs with the aunts. Chuck's room has been turned into a cheese locker, which sends her into paroxysms of delight and nostalgia, but her few treasures are still hidden where she left them, including the tin can walkie talkie she used to spy on her aunts when she was a teenager, and the cache of her father's things. Downstairs, Lily is having a good old nutty over being used as bait, though Vivian's thrilled to be part of the adventure. They squabble over Dwight some more, and Lily simply says she loves her sister and doesn't want her to be hurt. Meanwhile, upstairs, as Chuck's perusing her father's things with fondness but not much luck, clues-wise, Rob Wright swings through the door, clad in black, to burgle the bait.

Rob Wright is the Bellman! He tells Chuck, "Society has a moral obligation to protect the least fortunate of its ranks and where society fails–" "You pick up the slack," Chuck finishes. But he didn't kill anyone, he says. He explains that he uses Tam Phong's phone list to choose his robberies, but his plan with Gustav was different. "The facts were these," he begins, which is rather awesome, even moreso because Chuck's like, huh? Rob knew about Gustav's second will. He'd helped Gustav once, when Gustav was locked out of his car. Gustav wanted to compensate him somehow, and they came up with a plan to test Elise's loyalty. They rigged the robbery: Rob would steal Gustav's fortune, and if Elise was distraught for Gustav's sake and stood by him, it meant he could trust her. The bellman would return half the fortune and give the rest to charity. But, he says, Elise walked in mid-robbery with a giant musket, so he ran. We're left to assume she finished Gustav after Rob's departure. Rob finishes that the loot from the fake robbery that Olive helped set up was going to be used to pay the mortgage of an animal shelter that's about to close, condemning all the animals to death. Chuck lets him go, much to Ned's very understated but crystal-clear-to-Chuck anger. She thinks that while James Andrew has an alibi, he might still know who the killer is.

So the team, without Olive, stake out of Gustav's house. Chuck wants to talk some more about Dwight; she wonders if it wouldn't be better if Dwight found out about her, and what's the worst that could happen. Emerson tells her: Ned becomes a sideshow freak and he ends up living off circus ticket sales. Ned's like, can we please not have this very cavalier conversation about a very dark, deep, touchy subject? Ned tells her, "Ever since I was little, I've had this dream that somebody found out what I could do. It starts off with lots of ice cream and balloons and ends in a small white room where little bits are cut out of me until there's nothing left to cut." Chuck thinks this is horrible, but she's touched that Ned still won't wake her dad, putting her emotional well-being above his very worst fears. She thinks it's very courageous and romantic. Emerson's like, I would rather watch Elise and James Andrew in a clinch, which they are right now, so hello, motive!

Chuck, Ned, and Emerson go inside to confront Elise, who protests at a very high octave. She can barely hold the musket that killed her husband, plus, she has an insane manicure, so she can't take her rings off to fit her finger in to pull the trigger. Plus, she and James Andrew are each other's alibis, since since Elise pulled James Andrew's key. (Ned is like, that so does not mean what I thought it meant, still.) The three investigators go to the Bellmen's Charity, where Rob Wright holds them at knife point while he tells his story and makes his escape. The facts were these: it was mostly as as Rob said before, with a few choice added details. Gustav suspected his wife was unfaithful, so he planned the robbery with Rob Wright. Just before the robbery, he saw Daniel Hill catch Elise and James Andrew inflagrante, and, moved by the way the tiny attorney stood up for him, determined to leave his estate to the man who really loved him. He called off the deal with Rob Wright, who was angry at losing half Gustav's fortune. They struggled over the musket, which went off in Rob's hands as he fell to the ground, shooting down the chandelier that killed Gustav. Rob Wright tries to ride a bell rope out of the room, but Emerson shoots him down.

While the team is out and Olive's alone in the Pie Hole, Dwight arrives and does a creepy stalking thing to Olive while she babbles about how she's not alone, but with Manuel the burly janitor. Dwight has a message for her friends: the obituary Vivian carries around in her pocket, with a picture of Chuck right on top. Olive then eats six pies. Literally.

Dwight, antique appraiser and collector, has stolen Charles Charles' pocketwatch from Chuck's stash, which presumably has been transferred to her apartment. Lily finds it when she goes to Dwight's to tell Vivian that Dwight is a big creepy weirdo. What she finds there is a cache of guns and the stolen pocketwatch, which she in turn takes. Dwight thinks that Chuck's stolen it back, and Lily's left waiting out there on the ledge of his motel room window to leave.

And Ned and Chuck? Have decided to dig up her father, despite both their reservations. Ned's still willing to forgo it, but his devotion and willingness to face his worse fears means more to Chuck than anything. They love each other, it's very sweet and tragic. They finish digging, and turn to say hello to Chuck's twenty-years-passed father Charles.