"The expression 'like a rat in a candy store,' though slightly less popular," Jim D explains, "is equally true." Rats like candy. Who can blame them? Do you understand how ballooned I am becoming from all the holiday foods encroaching upon my office space, and thus, my ass, right now? I know I was asking for a cupcake last week, but damn, I didn't mean I needed to eat seven a day baked during practice rounds for your Sunday School Christmas party, Marge from Accounts Receivable. Anyway, as Ned chases after the sugar-high rats in the store, it occurs to him that staying out of this fight is becoming more work than fighting it. He could have figured this out, like, a million years ago just by listening to any number of Kenny Rogers songs, but you know, some people have to learn the hard way. And a hard way it truly is -- especially for Ned, who is having to go after the dead rat floating in the taffy vat with the wooden stick hand in order not to bring the gross thing back to life. That doesn't work out so well. The rat sinks, and Ned is left with no choice but to reach in after it and, while feeling around, bumps something that was, once dead, now alive. And it ain't a rat. No, in fact, it's Billy Balsam, and he now emerges from the pink goo like...like...The Gay Swamp Thing, unable to speak or breathe through all the taffy and seriously grossing the hell out of me. Ned, also, is terrified, and as he hears someone bursting through the door, has no choice but to touch him back to death. Surprise, the door busters were the police, with Dilly, and it looks as though they've caught Ned pink-handed.

So now Ned's in prison. Emerson and Chuck sit across from, behind glass, and Chuck apologizes, against Ned's protests, for getting him into this mess. If she hadn't retaliated, she says, he wouldn't be in prison. "So, maybe it's a little your fault," Ned admits. "So, maybe now you're even," Emerson says, referencing the Dead Dad Angle once again. "What do you mean we're 'even'?" Chuck asks, suspicious. "NOTHIN'," Emerson says, and they get the rundown from Ned on what happened the night before, with Ned illustrating the poke of life/death. "Me and Nancy Shrew will get you out," Emerson says, and adds, as Ned is led away, that an attractive man who bakes pies shouldn't spend even a short amount of time in prison.