Bad Habits - Recap

As a child, 10-year-old Olive, a burgeoning jockey, asked her parents for an Arabian stallion. They couldn't get her one, so she decided to dig her way through the earth to Arabia and get one. As she dug, she found a Triceratops fossil and sold it to an Arabian emir in return for a stallion.

As an adult, Olive is hunting truffles along with Pigby the pig. Sister Larue is in charge of the nunnery's truffle-hunting efforts. Olive and Larue get along well and, impressed by Olive's enthusiasm, Larue shows her how to identify truffles by scene. After they get done chatting, a happy Sister Larue goes up to the bell tower to polish the bells.

Ned visits Chuck in her new apartment across the hall and finds her meeting with Mr. Cyrus Pennybaker. After he's gone, she explains to Ned that she's trying to complete her family tree and her aunts don't know much about her father's side of the family. Wearing a blonde wig as a disguise, Chuck has hired Pennybaker the genealogist to complete her family tree.

After Sister Larue leaves to polish the bells, Olive prays to God for a sign to indicate if she should leave. Sister Larue falls out of the bell tower and lands right in front of Olive, dead. The Mother Superior, Sister Mary Mary, and Father Ed inform the nuns that Sister Larue committed suicide. Olive doesn’t believe it and finally breaks her solitude to hire Emerson. He's amused by the fact she's an aspiring nun and wants to know how she's going to pay. She promises to pray for him and he accepts in the hopes it might help him find his missing daughter. However, Olive insists that he not give away that he knows her when he comes to investigate, and he not bring Chuck and Ned.

Emerson disguises himself as a priest from the Vatican and brings Ned and Chuck, disguised as a priest and Nun. They check out the bell tower first, which is covered in bat guano. They meet Sister Mary Mary and Father Ed, who inform them Sister Larue may have killed herself because of the faltering truffle harvest. Ned and Emerson check out Sister Larue's body while Olive ends up completing a penance list given to her by the Mother Superior. As Ned prepares to bring back Larue, he admits to Emerson he's worried about Chuck's sudden interest in digging up the past, and how digging up the past has never worked well for him. Emerson isn't that interested. Ned brings back Larue, who wants to know why she isn't in Heaven, where the person who shoved her is, and where her "diamonds" are. She starts to run off and Ned is force to grab her, re-killing her, before they can get any further answers.

Chuck is checking out the nunnery records and learns that Sister Larue was a fungi specialist in her former life. She meets with Ned, and mentions that Pennybaker should have her family tree finished shortly. She also admits that she was unable to find the reason Olive entered the nunnery. As they talk, Ned realizes there's a secret door nearby. They hide as Sister Mary Mary emerges from it.

Meanwhile, Emerson meets with Olive in Larue's bedchamber and confirms that Larue was murdered. He notices a secret panel concealing illicit goods: candy, CDs, high-quality feminine products. One of the nuns, Sister Marie Christina, comes in and Emerson gets her to admit that Sister Larue was running a black market business in return for the nuns doing her chores.

The four investigators get together and Emerson concludes that the Mother Superior found out about Larue's black market business and killed her, then faked the suicide. Chuck distracts Sister Mary Mary while Chuck and Emerson investigate the hidden passage in the cellar. They find a truffle cellar with a bricked up passageway that leads off underground. Chuck, speaking uncertainly about her (fake) career as a nun, talks to the Mother Superior about her lack of a family and the early death of her mother, as she checks the visitor's log and determines Larue hasn't seen anyone since she entered the nunnery.

Ned and Emerson follow the bricked up passageway and find themselves in the nearby kitchen of Hansel Van Getz, a German-Swiss cook. He takes them prisoner and asks them what happened to Larue. As it turns out, Getz moved to the States to open a restaurant, but Larue found the existing passageway. They fell in love and made a deal: she supplied him with truffles and he supplied her with her black market goods. They made mad passionate love on the prep table but Larue didn't turn up recently for their anniversary dinner. Instead she sent him a note saying she was breaking up with him. Getz releases them and offers them a meal featuring a rare Italian White Truffle nicknamed the "Diamond of the Table." Ned and Emerson realize what Larue meant when she spoke about her missing diamonds.

Now the investigators figure that Getz killed Larue and Olive readily agrees. Suspicious, Ned asks her what's going on and she says that she wants them out. She admits she had feelings for Ned and was hurt that he put his feelings for her behind him so easily. Now she wants to be alone at the nunnery without them. However, Olive lets slip that she has a secret about Chuck. Ned threatens to tell Chuck that Olive has a secret, unless Olive tells him. She agrees to mime out the secret and eventually Ned figures out that Lily is Chuck's mother. However, as they leave, Olive looks at the penance list and Sister Larue's breakup letter to Getz, and realize they're in the same handwriting: the Mother Superior's.

Ned talks to Chuck, who reveals that Pennybaker was unable to find out anything about her father's side of the family. She laments the fact that she's trapped between life and death, much like the ghost of Sister Larue that is reputed to now haunt the bell tower, and Ned wonders if she wants him to touch her one last time. They're interrupted when Father Ed comes in to ask Ned for his help.

Olive and Emerson confront Sister Mary Mary, who admits she wrote the fake breakup note. However, after Chuck's earlier slip she realized something was wrong and confirmed that Emerson and the others aren't from the Vatican. The rest of the nuns close in...

Father Ed asks Ned to hear his confession, but Ned wants to confess first. Ned confesses that he's acting just like his father, abandoning his friends like Olive. Father Ned tells him to change his life, then asks who he is: he knows what Sister Mary Mary has learned. The father locks up Ned with Emerson and goes to find Olive. She's in the laundry room working on her penance list. As he comes in, she tries to explain that she hired Emerson... and notices that his dirty clothing is covered in bat guano. She accuses Father Ed of murdering Sister Larue, knocks him out, and runs for help.

Emerson and Ned hear her screams and break out through the window. Meanwhile, Chuck has wandered up to the bell tower to see if Sister Larue's ghost really exists. She notices the bells are stainless steel and don't need polishing. Noticing Sister Larue's footprint on a bucket, Chuck climbs up on it and discovers a fake bell rope that opens a secret truffle lab. Hearing Olive's screams, Chuck goes to the window.,. and the real killer knocks her over the edge.

As he chases after Olive, Father Ed explains that he tries to help Sister Larue and blames himself for her suicide. Emerson captures the priest while Ned spots Chuck, clinging to the top of the bell tower. Olive runs up the stairs while Ned gets a wagon filled with straw. As Olive tries to pull Chuck up, she apologizes for rejecting Chuck. Chuck explains that Pigby is the killer: trained to find truffles, she bumped into Larue when she smelled the truffles in the sister's hands. Olive calls out to Pigby, who pulls her back by the dress and Chuck along with her. However, the bells start to chime and knock Olive out the window. As Olive falls to her death, she prays for everyone in the hopes they'll be happy. Fortunately, Ned gets the wagon in place beneath her and Olive lands safely.

As the trio discover, Sister Larue originally worked for a food company before joining the nunnery. When she failed to develop white truffles, she joined the nunnery to get access to their truffles, then used the money from her black market activities to fund her secret truffle experiments. When the Mother Superior found about Larue's black market deal, she faked the breakup with Getz and bricked over the passageway. Father Ed went to confront Larue and discovered the truffle experiments. After he left, Pigby pushed Larue to her death, and Father Ed assumed his chastisement drove her to suicide.

As the trio leaves, Olive tells them that the nuns will continue Larue's truffle experiments and want her to stay on as head of truffle operations. Ned says he knows she'll be great at it and apologizes for how he treated her. Olive thanks him... and asks for a ride home. Ned tells her that he plans to tell Chuck the secret and Olive will have to trust he's doing the right thing. Olive agrees and shows him the one thing she'll be taking with her: Pigby.

Later, Ned and Chuck talk on the roof above the Pie Hole. Ned tells her that Lily is her mother. Chuck is happy that she finally knows her family, and Ned decides to do some digging into his own past concerning his father. The two of them fill in Chuck's family tree... together.


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