Somehow a little girl named Ingmar is one of Ned’s schoolmates at the All-Boys Boarding School. Oh wait – that’s a boy, and he taught Ned a lesson about gambling and treasures from your parents. As such, Ned is not much of a gambler as an adult, except for buying the Pie Hole during a time when the collective community is not carb-friendly.
I’m shocked by the number of Office Space allusions that have come into my life recently, and today is no exception with the appearance of Milton on this week’s episode. He is playing Dwight Dickson, a supposed friend of Ned’s parents back when they were dating. He shocks Ned with this news, and upsets Ned when Dwight tells him that he looks like his father. Ned shuts him down when Dwight asks for help looking for Ned’s absent father. Chuck gets a twinkle in her eye, so you know this isn’t done.
Emerson is trying to take a nap, but gets a message in a fortune cookie that he can’t refuse. He runs into an old client, Simone – a dog obedience trainer from last season – who has a strange control over Mr. Cod. The cookie actually came from the Lay-dee, the wife of the restaurateur downstairs from his office. Her husband was killed when a pressure cooker exploded, but she is convinced that it was foul play.
When Emerson, Ned and Chuck question the dead cook, he is unaware that he is dead, and only says that the men he was gambling with are going to kill him. I laughed out loud (even though I’d seen it on every preview this week) when the dead guy tried to run through the doorway and flew backwards when the pipe through his head slammed into the doorway. That’s some funny stuff.
Emerson questions the daughter of the dead guy, with little to no resulting information. Back at the Pie Hole, Olive is developing a bit of a crush on Dwight. I think he is Ned’s dad. But, not in the way you think. I think Ned’s dad wasn’t really Ned’s dad, and Dwight knocked up Ned’s mom when Ned’s dad wasn’t looking. Get it?
A little Asian man shows up at the Pie Hole, and confesses that there has been gambling at the restaurant since prohibition. They go back to check out the situation, and Simone is there again. Odd. Even odder is that it seems that Ned and Chuck pretty much have to be touching while the trio is hiding behind the curtains. Anyway, they notice that the table Simone is at is acting strange. They have no plates, they don’t eat, and the waitress spins a lazy susan in the middle of the table every time she brings them dumplings. They each take 5 containers, put soybeans on the table, and someone always collects the beans. Ned realizes they are playing poker with the food. Clever, very very clever.
Emerson confronts Simone about the game, and she spills her guts on all of the players. She claims that she could not have been the killer, but I’m skeptical. She plants one on him, and clicks her little clicker at him. He can’t help but throw her down on the couch for a little somethin’-somethin’.
When Chuck realizes that Ned has his dad’s address, she and Olive hop on over and discover that Ned has twin half-brothers who have his eyebrows. Their collective father disappeared a few years ago, and only the twins live in the house now. The mystery deepens.
In his post-coital glow, Emerson catches an until now unforeseen clue in the pics on his desk. He realized that the bus boy has a super expensive watch, and they are at the restaurant to check him out. He runs off, and Emerson is about to be the next dead guy from the Dim Sum. He pulls a Matrix move and the bar punches through a bottle of soy sauce and into the missing bus boy.
Turns out the bus boy is an insurance investigator who is undercover on the policy that the original dead guy took out the day before he died. The daughter is the beneficiary, and though she is a big suspect, she is not the murderer. The dead guy ran out of cash, and convinced the other gamblers to let him bet his daughter’s hand in marriage. The lead gambler, Shrimp Boy wants the daughter to marry his socially inept cousin – the restaurant manager. Nice parenting.
Emerson believes that she is innocent, and the mystery continues. He comes up with a plan to plant Olive and Chuck as new waitresses, and hilarity ensues. Seriously, you’ve got to come up with something else, Bryan Fuller! Chuck and Olive are always the plants. The rest of the plan is Emerson and Ned in terrible disguise, and of course no one recognizes them, because they haven’t been hanging around the joint for days on end. They hop into the game and talk to Shrimp Boy about the infamous bet involving the dead guy.
The trio realize that the manager is the one to blame – he made a final bet with the dead guy to relinquish the daughter’s hand in marriage and offered his insurance policy in exchange. Of course, he would have to be dead for the manager to collect. Emerson wins the hand, and gets his bad wig torn off when the manager pulls a gun on him.
The socially inept manager isn’t quite so inept when it comes to planning a getaway. When the daughter realizes that she was wrong about her dad, Ned realizes maybe he was too. Simone walks in to confront Emerson for avoiding her, and her dog tries to eat the food in the manager’s pocket. Turns out he had been cheating all along. His own cousin Shrimp Boy turned him in, and the daughter got the cash from the payout.
In the end, Emerson and Simone make up and make out. Ned goes to meet his twin half brothers Mercutio and Rybald – honestly, I can’t remember their real names. They give him a big hug, and watching from across the street is Dwight, and he’s got a gun. Hmmm, maybe I was wrong about him…
