Pushing Daisies/Recap/S1/E06 Bitches

The Past
Ned, lonely at Boarding School, can't sleep. He tries to console himself by playing with a clay village he's built, but it doesn't work; and he ends up sitting by the window and staring up at the full moon, missing his old life... and Chuck. In Coeur d'Coeurs, Chuck is looking at the same moon, and missing Ned.

The Present
Puppy breeder Harold Hundin's death seems tricky at first - a stabbing with no witnesses and no fingerprints on the weapon - until he's revived by Ned and reveals that he was actually poisoned, and stabbed himself accidentally as he panicked and slipped around near an unfortunately pointy dog brush. As Harold's minute ends, he gives them the crucial testimony - "my wife did it."

Of course, the next morning, Emerson Cod discovers that Hundin had four wives, each of whom had a motive for murder. Back to square one for the Pie Hole detectives...

The four of them split up to interrogate the wives. They discover that Hundin had just bred the ultimate dog, Bubblegum, but that Bubblegum had also just been killed--and then they're outmaneuvered when the wives--who are on good terms--compare notes and figure out what's going on. Ambushing the detectives at the Pie Hole, they suggest interrogating fellow dog breeder Ramsfield Snuppy, to whom Harold had sold Bubblegum just before his death.

Tropes

 * Beautiful Dreamer
 * Bitter Almonds
 * Does This Remind You of Anything?: There's a lot of dog terminology applied to people in this episode.
 * Erotic Dream: Ned has one involving Olive disguised as Chuck, which makes him nervous around both girls. The facts that he can never be intimate with Chuck and that the current case concerns a polygamist (Emerson: "One to have...one to hold") make him nervous the entire episode.
 * Evil Brit: Simone..
 * Of Corpse He's Alive