Circus Circus - Recap

The Past

Ned flees the boy’s school and runs into Miss Moss and her kindergarten class. Miss Moss has her students dressed as butterflies and is trying to show them a nest with three yellow canaries. Ned brings them to life as a new beginning for them, then brings them down from the tree and shows them to the kindergarteners. However, after one minute Miss Moss’ class project, three red-breasted woodpeckers die. Ned decides that new beginnings usually result in painful ends.

The Present

Ned is at home still moping about the fact that Chuck has moved next door. As they go out for the morning, they compare notes and Ned lies about sleeping poorly in her absence.

Emerson is taking calls due to his reputation as a successful detective when Georgeann Heaps comes in and insists on hiring Emerson to find her missing teenage daughter Nikki. She insists Nikki hated to be alone and asks Emerson if he’s a parent and he reluctantly admits that he is, then covers and agrees to take the case.

At the nunnery, Olive is explaining to her new friend Pigby the Pig about all the secrets she has when the Mother Superior calls her to prayers.

At the Pie Hole, Chuck tries to fill in for Olive while Ned is worried about the aunts coming in and discovering Chuck is alive. Emerson shows them the case, with photos of Randy Jean, Nikki’s friend. Chuck tries to talk to her, while Emerson figures Ned is angry because of the situation with Chuck. Chuck manages to get Randi Jean to reveal that Nikki wanted to become a big star and ran away to move in with a cute guy in entertainment, Rocky Baselli. They track down Rocky’s van and discover he’s dead from poisoned makeup.

Ned brings Rocky back to life and the mime reveals that Nikki left him for a clown at a traveling circus. He asks them to give Nikki a poem for her and Ned re-kills him before the minute is up. Emerson and Ned go to the circus, and Ned insists on Chuck staying to run the Pie Hole. She suspects that Ned is mad at her but he denies it. Meanwhile, Olive talks to the Mother Superior, wondering if things will ever become more interesting. Mother Superior notes it probably won’t. After she leaves, Lily drops in and tells Olive to meet her at the chapel, and not to reveal she’s there.

At the circus, they run into Pierre, an acrobat, who views them with contempt and directs them to the owner, Bailey. He claims that he doesn’t remember Nikki and notes the clowns typically go out and get drunk and show up just before the show. Each time he makes a joke, his female assistant Dijon snort-giggles, and she does so when Bailey claims he doesn’t know Nikki. Figuring Bailey is lying, he goes back to confront Dijon. She says that no one at the circus liked her and Nikki deserves anything she gets, and she’s apprenticed to Jackie Johnny. the two of the left after the previous night’s show and haven’t been seen since.

At the Pie Hole, Vivian arrives and Chuck throws herself over the counter before her aunt can see her. Vivian asks for pie and Chuck pretends to be shy. Vivian is lonely since Lily left and came to the Pie Hole to see her friend Olive. Chuck slips her a pie and Vivian thanks her for listening as she departs.

Ned and Emerson drive down the road Jackie Johnny was last seen on and Ned admits he misses Chuck and discusses his non-touching relationship. He spots a weird clown mask and they find a clown car that has gone off the road into a pond. They call the police and the coroner, who find the car filled with 15 dead clowns, including Jackie Johnny but no Nikki. Back at his office, Emerson briefs Georgeann on the case but she’s less than impressed with their success so far.

Ned invites Chuck to the morgue and apologizes for leaving her behind, and insists on closing the Pie Hole when they have a case. Chuck explains about Vivian’s visit and says she handled it. They find Jackie and he says they left Nikki behind to clean up after their most recent performance, which involved ticking off an audience member, Bryce Von Deenis. They figure that Von Deenis ran the clown car off the road and Emerson slips a coupon for free pies under Bryce’s door to set a trap.

Olivia meets with Lily, who explains that she never slept with Chuck’s father and tricked him into believing he was Chuck’s father. Olive soon realizes that’s impossible and Lily admits that she’s trying to take it back.

At the Pie Hole, Ned and Chuck are discussing their relationship when Von Deenis arrives to collect his free pies. He explains how the clowns humiliated him and they put a mask on him: the mask they found at the scene of the car murders. He explains that Nikki took the mask and chased after the clowns, and Von Deenis can account for his whereabouts.

That night, Emerson pays Ned a visit and admits that he doesn’t think Nikki is the killer. He sympathizes with Nikki as a missing girl and admits that his wife ran away with their daughter. Emerson realizes that Georgeann said Nikki liked being with people and wouldn’t have left the circus.

The trio goes to the circus while Lily and Olive eat porridge at the nunnery and Lily admits she hasn’t put Chuck or her affair with Vivian’s lover behind her. Olive suggests Lily go back home and hold on to the past a little longer, and admits she loves Ned who loves someone else.

As they search for Nikki, Ned tries to apologize to Chuck and admits he’s worried about how things are changing and he doesn’t want them to. Chuck says that she didn’t change the first time and refuses to go through life in a rut again. Emerson comes over to reveal that the circus management has been advertising for clowns and mimes even before they were dead. They confront Bailey, who says the clowns and mimes were forming a union and Nikki was his inside man. he sent her to follow them to their meeting the night of the murders, and he didn’t tell them because he thought he’d look guilty. They’re interrupted when someone fires the human cannonball through Bailey’s window, trying to kill them.

They run outside and see the killer running away, and pursue him into the toy storage area. They find Nikki, crying, and she explains that she reported to Bailey... and then Pierre grabs her and lifts her up onto a high-wire. She was unaware that Pierre was listening in. He followed the clowns when they went into the woods for a secret union meeting. Nikki drove after them once she as finished cleaning up Von Deenis. Pierre saw her and realized she could incriminate him, and has just now captured her when she came out of hiding.

Pierre explains that the labor would have ruined the circus, and he just wanted to scare the clowns. He killed Rocky to frame the clowns for his murder. Chuck reads Nikki Rocky’s poem, and Ned throws a baseball to knock Pierre off the high-wire and Nikki falls into the safety net.

Olive settles into the nunnery… and finds a hidden bottle of wine.

Lily comes back home to be with Vivian and visit the Pie Hole and Chuck is forced to hide.

Georgeanne is furious at Nikki until Emerson tells her to love her daughter no matter what. Mother and daughter embrace while Emerson looks over his Lil’ Gumshoe pop-up books and wonders if he’ll ever find his daughter.

Ned and Chuck start over again… and decide to make a fresh start of it every morning.

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