- The gang tries to solve a murder of a woman who works for a company that makes beauty products from honey.
- The narrator(Jim Dale) recaps the set-up for you, the home viewer: Chuck the child (Samantha Hanratty) attends her father's funeral.
He was killed by Ned (Field Cate), the boy she loved who was, at that moment, attending his own mother's funeral. She had actually died twice. The first time he revived her. But she stayed alive for more than a minute and someone died in her place (Chuck's dad drops). Then, as his mom kissed him in bed that night, she died for good -- the second touch proving deadly.
The next time Ned (Lee Pace) would see Chuck (Anna Friel), she would be dead.
Ned's dad takes him to boarding school. Chuck was fostered by her synchronized swimming duo aunts. They raised bees.
Ned, meanwhile, was left at school. He began making pies to remember home, becoming the pie-maker. And the girl Chuck, died. Murdered on a Tahitian get away. But one touch from Ned and she was revived. They do a delicate dance in the apartment, announcing their movements to avoid accidental touches. He wears slippers with bells as a warning sign.
They go about reviving Chuck's dead bees, killed by rogue pesticide. The last time Chuck asked Ned to revive something, he said no. But it was her dad.
She asks if he'd do the same for his. No, because he hasn't seen or heard from him in 20 years.
Chuck, dressed in beekeeper suit, upends a hive over Ned and as they bounce off him, they spring to life. A thousand tiny water bugs die in a drain pipe.
We meet Olive (Kristin Chenoweth), the waitress at the Pie Hole who thinks Chuck faked her death. She's also still pining for her boss Ned.
Emerson Cod, (Chi McBride) the P.I., reviews his creation, the pop-up book "Lil Gum Shoe." A customer comes into his office, saying his wife has been murdered. The police say it was a work-related mishap, she was sloppy. "She said she was going to leave me, or him. I'm not sure which. She wasn't using proper nouns, but thank god I was eavesdropping."
Dusty Fitz (Peter Cambor), was hoping his wife, Kentucky (Autumn Reeser), would leave the other man. She was in the bee business and was swarmed by bees and stung to death. She worked for Betty's Bees as a Bee Girl. They sell creams, soaps and moisturizers made out of honey. Ned, Emerson and Chuck visit the morgue. Kentucky, covered in bee stings, lies on her stomach. The coroner (Sy Richardson) warns them not to turn her over, then takes his bribe and leaves. She wakes up when Ned touches her. She wasn't having an affair. She was trying to sabotage her employer, Betty's Bees. Someone came after her in the dark, but she didn't see who. Before she can say how, with 5 seconds left on the dead clock, Chuck asks if she has any last wishes and they fail to learn how she was sabotaging.
They hear a low hum and bees rush from her now dead again mouth. The coroner says he warned them not to turn her over.
At the Pie Hole, Ned, in full retrospect, freaks out about how close he might have come to a swarming death on the roof. Chuck wonders if maybe she was attacked by bees shaped like a man. They try to figure out who had it in for Kentucky. They need an inside person, a bee girl. Chuck volunteers.
Chuck applies as Kitty Pims and meets Woolsey Nicholls (French Stewart), who quietly bought Betty's Bees.
When Chuck tells Woolsey she heard Kentucky was thinking of leaving he shows her their new ad campaign, featuring Kentucky as the new face of Betty's Bees. Betty's the old face, emphasis on ''old.'' She's 38, which rounds up to 40, which rounds up to 50, which rounds up to old.
Kitty is hired. Ned and Emerson listen from a wire she's wearing. Chuck searches Kentucky's office, finding a key. And then, she finds Betty Bee (Missi Pyle) in a closet doing claustrophobic therapy. She insincerely welcomes Kitty, taking the key from the desk drawer. At the Pie Hole they discuss motives, including work place romances. Olive watches Chuck use a dropper on a pie she's making for her aunts. Vanilla, she says, but really an herbal mood enhancer. Flash back to Olive delivering one such trippy pie and hearing Lily (Swoosie Kurtz), high on pie, confess to being Chuck's mother. Then Lily banished Olive from their lives. Chuck wants to snoop on Betty, but Ned is worried. Just then, Lily and Vivian (Ellen Greene) burst through the door, Vivian saying I told you she wasn't dead. Chuck has disappeared just in time, Vivian is talking about Olive, not understanding why she's stopped bringing pies. Ned freezes. They demand to know (although Lily already does), why Olive stopped coming. She says she's really flaky, and then hides in back. Chuck wants to know why Olive hasn't been delivering her aunts pies.
As Chuck hides and Vivian asks Olive why she's not visiting and as Lily glares at her not to reveal she's Chuck's mom, Olive cracks and screams. Then she rants about secret keeping. She quits. ''Olive, you don't have to quit, you have to calm down,'' Vivian says. ''You want a drink? Lily, hand me your purse.'' Ned stutters and Lily sends Vivian outside. Ned asks her where she'll go. In Olive's apartment, Chuck confesses to having packed homeopathic antidepressants into her aunt's pies. They clearly worked, since they left the house and took the bus. Olive is gone, her apartment is paid through the end of the year. Chuck realizes she's never lived alone. She wants to move into Olive's place. Ned finds this terribly unromantic. Olive is where Lily took her, twirling on a hill top like Maria in '''The Sound of Music,'' trilling. Until some passing nuns shush her. At Betty's Bees, Woolsey brings Kitty in to talk to Betty. She tells Kitty Woolsey's acquisition was a hostile takeover. She's been demoted to ''honey mascot.'' Betty tells her all of her bees died shortly after Woolsey took over. ''It'd almost be poetic if it didn't suck so much.'' Chuck realizes Kentucky sabotaged Betty's Bees using not might, but mites.
Betty talks about growing up with the bees. Betty doesn't think it was sabotage, sometimes bad things just happen. The narrator tells us unbeknownst to Chuck/Kitty, something bad was about to happen. To her. Chuck, Ned and Emerson meet with Dusty at the Pie Hole. They tell him about Kentucky sabotaging the hives with mites. He says Kentucky and Betty were like sisters until Kentucky was promoted to new Betty.
Ned and Emerson shout at Chuck to hide. Vivian is outside. Lily is missing. Ned tries to talk Vivian through letting the memory of Chuck go. At the nunnery, Olive doesn't like learning her belongings will be given to the poor. The mother superior (Diana Scarwid) thinks Olive is pregnant. She assumed, based on who brought her there. At Betty's Bees, Ned is now working the front desk, having sent the regular guy home with the scoots from a pruned pie. Betty walks out, saying she's leaving early.
Chuck goes into Betty's office and finds the bee key and a photo of young Betty wearing a bee beard. Then bees start to appear. She turns around to find a mass of bees shaped like a man. She screams. Ned walks in with Emerson to find Chuck covered in bees. Ned slides her to the window, she spits out what looks like a bee encased in something and the bees follow it out the window. The narrator tells us what happened: The bees were only swarming the man because he had the queen in a small plastic box in his mouth. When he spit it into Chuck's mouth mid-scream, she remained calm and the bees perceived her as a nest, not a threat. Looking at the picture of Betty as a kid, they realize Betty must be the bee man. The picture of Betty in front of her house shows the key is to the house.
At the nunnery, Olive goes to confession, wanting to file a police report to get her stuff back. The confessional door opens, and it's Lily. She tells Olive that Vivian can never know she's Chuck's mom. Viv thought Lily was apprenticing at a fromagerie in France. Chuck's father, her lover, was Vivian's finacee. Olive isn't thrilled to be given another secret. Chuck thinks her mother died during childbirth. Lily tries to convince Olive to stay at the nunnery until her head is cleared. Emerson, Chuck and Ned go to Betty's childhood home in bee keeper garb. The home was supposed to be vacant, but a loud buzzing comes from the door. The colony collapse was a hoax. The bees didn't die, Betty and Kentucky stole them. They turn around to see Betty, not wearing bee garb. She rants about what Woolsey is doing to her company, selling inferior product. There's now 60 percent less honey in all Betty's Bees products, including honey.
Emerson holds a gun on her. Betty says she can't tell the police Woolsey killed Kentucky because her scheme would be exposed. The proof would be Woolsey's DNA on the bees. The group visits Woolsey. They have the Queen Bee case he spat at Chuck.
The narrator explains: Woolsey was in love with Kentucky, but learned of her sabotage plan when he found mite-infested bees. He confessed, but never learned the colony collapse was a hoax. Because Kentucky was like a sister to Betty, Dusty was like a brother to her and Betty brought him on board. At home, Ned accepts Chuck moving out isn't the end of the world and brings her belongings from the aunts. The narrator explains Emerson's ''Lil Gum Shoe'' book is intended for an audience of one, and could serve as a manual of how to find her.
At the nunnery, Olive tries to adjust.
At the Pie Hole, Chuck and Ned make pies while the narrator tells us Ned's father was there, too, but Ned didn't know. Fade out on the back of a mysterious man in a fedora.
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