Pushing Daisies:The Norwegians (Episode 210)

It seems that the first time that Ned alive agained someone to find out how he died, he landed himself in jail for his trouble, with no one to bail him out. You might think this would be enough to put him off the whole investigative endeavor, but as we all know, the magic finger has been getting Ned into trouble for a good twenty years, so why stop now?

Chuck, Ned, and Emerson are all seriously spooked that Dead Girl's Dead Dad has taken off. Secrecy becomes the watchword, even more so than usual, and Olive loses the tiny bit of foothold she had last week as Emerson's Itty Bitty. The team's cold shoulder (despite Chuck's reluctance) gets her itty bitties all steamed, and you know there's no thwarting a determined Olive Snook.

There's also no deterring Vivian, who wants to know what happened to Dwight disproportionate to his worth or his intentions towards her. Emerson turns her down, going so far as to tell her that the dude lost interest and took off. So she hires the Norwegians, who are the proudest Norwegians from Norwegia that ever Norweeged. They're forensic experts that drive around in a giant RV, named Mother, emblazoned with the Norwegian flag. They've been forced from Norway by the dropping crime rates, and though they found the most concentrated spot of American crime in Couer d'Couer, they can't compete with Emerson Cod. They are, also, total anagrams of Ned, Chuck, and Emerson: the skinny and lanky dude with impeccably groomed hair; whimsically dressed young woman; and Orlando Jones. They do not have a magic finger among them, but they do have a fanatical appreciation for the details of solving crimes.

They first question Emerson and Ned, since Vivian first pointed them to Emerson, since Dwight's credit card receipts show he frequented the Pie Hole, and since Chuck has to hide from them or reveal herself as the Lonely Tourist she is. They think Emerson's hiding something. They're going to find even the smallest shred of evidence linking Emerson and Dwight, with the help of their Mother, which is a high-tech mobile forensic analysis unit. Ned throws them out, but not before they try to take a spit swab of Ned's (which Olive snatches back) and a hair from Olive's head. Emerson's like, we need to shut these weird Norwegians down; Chuck's concerned about her dad; Ned's worried that the Norwegians will find Charles and get the whole story. Emerson tells them to deal with Charles, he'll work on the Norwegians, but he needs someone to convince Vivan to fire the Norwegians. It takes one call of "Itty Bitty" to Olive to get her back on their side. Chuck tells her that without her help in convincing Vivian, they're all in a lot of trouble. Olive wants to know what's going on, but Chuck can't say. Olive just wants to feel like she belongs and is appreciated. She wants full access to their weird little club. Chuck: "So you'll do it?" And then they hug on it, though Chuck's not really agreed to anything.

Olive goes to the aunts', where Lily panicks at the notion of crack investigators finding the note she left for Dwight. Lily asks Vivian to put the Norwegians off, though she won't say why. Olive sides with Vivian--she's tired of people saying they can't say something for her own good, when what they really mean is that they don't trust her. Maybe if "Vivian" stood up for herself, she'd get the trust, respect, and honesty she deserves from her friends.

Emerson stalks the Norwegians while they go through Dwight's motel room with a literal fine tooth comb. There they find Lily's note, much to vivian's shock. She confronts her sister, and Lily tells her the truth: Dwight never showed at the cemetary. Vivan clearly thinks Lily did something terrible, and so Lily produces Charles' pocket watch, telling her sister that after vivian told Dwight where the pocketwatch was, he dug up Charlotte and stole the watch from her grave. Lily says she took it back, plus Dwight's. She was planning to convince him, with both barrels of her gun, to dig Charlotte back up and return the watch.

Ned and Chuck go to Ned's old house in search of Charles, or clues. Chuck finds a button, which to her is code from her dad telling her that he's near. He used to give her buttons when they'd be separated or she might be scared, to let her know he would come back or that he was with her somehow. Ned doesn't believe any father would come back, but Chuck's convinced that her father hasn't really left.

The Norwegians have initiated another member: one Olive Snook. Even the narrator can't help a grossed out "Aw, HAYULL NO." Olive provides the vial of Ned's spit and tries to pump them for information. They've done DNA analysis on her hair, proving her to be of "good, strong, shapely, Norwegian stock."  Olive sucks up some more and asks what they thought happened to Dwight. They think he was a dangerous man with a destructive agenda. They also found a shovel beneath his bed, dirtied with mineral content matching a local cememtary. They've zeroed in on Chuck and her dad's graves, somehow, and have even ordered an exhumation. Emerson, of course, watches all this from the outside, with the help of fashioned-on-the-fly rearview mirror.

At the Pie Hole, the rest of the team commiserates over Olive's sudden betrayal and their sure and impending exposure, given what they'll find in Chuck's (nothing) and her dad's (Dwight) coffins. Come to find, however, that both coffins are empty. Emerson reports this to Chuck and Ned, who are dumsquizzled. Plus, the Norwegians are bringing the coffins back to Mother for analysis. Ned wants to know who moved the body, who else knows. Chuck thinks her dad did it to protect them. I would like someone to hit Chuck on the head this week, because that's annoying me a little. They realize that Emerson's DNA is going to be all over Dwight's/Charles' coffin, and he'll look guilty. Emerson says that he is: he may not have given either man the finger, but he pulled Chuck and Ned into his life of investigative hooha. Without him, Ned would be just a piemaker and Chuck grass fertilizer; it was his job to keep them in line and he didn't. Ned startles and says he has a plan, starting with Emerson telling the Norwegians everything he knows. So Emerson starts to spout his investigative philosophy to team of Norwegians captive in his office.

Outside, Ned prepares to do what he must. Chuck wants to come, but Ned's determined to take care of things himself. He doesn't blame Chuck for anything, given that he did the same thing to her that she did for her dad, and he doesn't blame Emerson, since he uses his magic finger of his own free will. If anyone's to blame, he says, it's him. So he boards Mother in the hopes of hotwiring. Onboard, of course, he's discovered mid-wire, by Olive. Ned apologizes for shutting her out; the last thing he wanted to do was shut her out of his life and hook her up with the Norwegians. Olive reveals the obvious truth: she has been double-agenting for the team to prove her worth! The swab she gave them was courtesy Pigby, and she's on Team Ned no questions asked for life. But she does have questions. Ned's like, I really can't tell you. But perhaps if we played twenty questions? While we stole Mother in an attempt to sabotage her and the evidence inside? Ned's down with that, even more so when Olive produces a key.

Emerson's still mid-story when the Mother alarms go off: she's departing without permission. The Norwegians run, saddened to see Mother taking off through the streets of Papin County. Olive asks a series of questions we already know the answers to, but Ned does answer honestly to the following: does he know why Charles Charles' grave was empty; was his grave robbed; no one took the body; what did he do, get up and walk away? Ned takes a hard turn off the road as Olive comes to this conclusion: Chuck faked her death, her dad faked his, and Dwight Dixon was onto them. And Ned, without meaning to, had something to do with his disappearance. Olive's just up to the pertinent question, if Ned killed Dwight, when Ned realizes he's driven very literally to the edge of a cliff.

Olive and Ned manage to escape Mother as she dives cliffside, hanging to a branch or tree root. Ned apologizes for getting Olive into this, for so many things; Olive's not sorry for much other than that Ned's never looked at her the way he does at Chuck. He wouldn't say never, he says. Ned starts to lose his grasp, but he's caught by someone from above, a masked man calling Ned by name. Ned gathers Olive to him, saying he's got her. "You've got me, but who's got yoooouuuu?" she yodels, as the mysterious stranger hauls them over the edge of the cliff.

Emerson's called Vivian to his office to tell her that the Norwegians found empty coffins. Vivian shudders to think that Dwight stole Charlotte. Emerson wishes he could explain or say something to make her feel better, but he does know that someone can't steal another's soul. The Charlotte Vivian knew wasn't in that box, she was with Vivian all along. Even though she can't see or talk to Chuck, whatever was taken from the grave wasn't Charlotte. Vivian thanks him, but realizes Lily was right: Dwight was a bad, bad man. She knows this will shatter Lily.

At Olive's, Chuck is patching up Ned's slight cut on his forehead, while Olive natters that the person that saved them had to have been Chuck's dad. Ned explains he told Olive how Charles "faked" his death. Olive didn't get a good look at him, as he was covered; Chuck says he has a skin condition. "Like your allergy to Ned!" Olive realizes. It had to have been Charles, then, she thinks. Ned apologizes to Chuck for his cynicism, but in his experience, dads who leave don't come back, but hers never really left at all. He hovered, Chuck says, like a guardian angel. Olive wants to know what he's guarding them from, trying to figure out once and for all if they killed Dwight. They say he died of natural causes, but they're still cagey. Finally Ned says no more question, and though Olive's wounded, she stops asking.

Down at the Pie Hole, she still has to deal with the Norwegians, however, who think she killed Mother. She claims to have been Mother-jacked. She was beaten with a blue and yellow sock, after which the perpetrators got high on ABBA and tiny little meatballs. "Swedes!" Olive insists that she's not protecting anyone, especially not anyone who killed Dwight. The Ned-avatar gets a message from his little fax machine that there's been activity on Dwight's credit card: he's checked back into his motel room. Olive celebrates that Dwight's alive. Ned stands there, mouth agape.

The Norwegians compete with Emerson and Ned to get inside, where Dwight's out cold on his bed with a slushie in his hand. Ned whispers to Emerson that the bottom keeps dropping. He asks if Chuck's dad could have done this. The story in the hotel room, as analyzed by the Norwegians, indicate that Dwight, a graverobber, died of natural causes, but not until he'd dug up the Charleses and burned their bodies to dispose of the evidence. In the end, all evidence pointed towards Dwight as a lone actor in his badness, because, our narrator tells us, that's what the Norwegians were supposed to find.

Vivan consoles Lily.

Ned makes pie, with fresh fruit. Chuck says she hasn't seen hide nor hair nor button of her dad. She notices Ned's using fresh fruit. He says touching dead things has only got him into trouble, so no more. He's already gotten the best thing he could have out of it: Chuck. He's quitting the magic finger business, cold turkey. Investigating crime is now Emerson's business, and baking pie is Ned's. Chuck thinks this is her fault, but Ned says raising the dead has too many variables, so he's taking himself out of the equation. She protests that her dad took care of everything, and Ned says that he doesn't want her dad, or anyone else's, to fight his battles. So that's it.

But, the narrator tells us, it wasn't Chuck's dad that fixed things up for Ned. It was his. Who, it would seem, is sitting right there in the Pie Hole, watching his son covertly.

... and OH SNAP did I see that coming, but I'm STILL PSYCHED.