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Recap / Moral Orel S 2 E 4 Elemental Orel

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Elemental Orel is on the case.

It's a sunny Saturday in Moralton, and Orel has a new business venture: solving crimes as a Kid Detective. His first case involves proving that Billy, who won the annual "Making Things Contest," cheated and doesn't deserve the first place trophy. Doughy, playing The Watson, asks how Orel knew, and Orel happily explains that Billy's entrance to the contest was a flower (actually a crude art project made of a plastic cup and some folded paper)—and since only God can make a flower, Billy can't possibly have won. With the case solved, Orel heads home for dinner.

The next day in church, Reverend Putty delivers an extremely brief sermon on how stealing is a sin ("Do I even have to waste my breath here?") and orders Joe to pass around the collection plate as Bloberta covertly slips out of the building. Orel happily contributes two dollars of his birthday money while Joe gripes that he doesn't have any cash of his own. He gets a devilish grin on his face, and one Jump Cut later, Reverend Putty is furious to learn that there's only a single nickel in the collection plate. Joe blames the passing Marionetta and claims that he saw her steal the money, but Marionetta protests that she wasn't even in church. Orel tells Reverend Putty that he'll take the "Case of the Disappearing Donations" and runs home to tell his mother about it—only to find that she's not in the house. Strangely, though, Bloberta is cleaning a kitchen floor and playing with a baby—only they're not her own...

Orel begins his investigation the next day by interviewing Marionetta, who explains that she was delivering "cripple food" to Moralton's disabled residents and thus could not be the crook. As Orel interrogates her and learns that she did the good deed by disobeying her parents' orders to go to church, the ice cream truck pulls up, with Doughy lamenting that he can't afford a particularly expensive treat. The next stop is Joe's grandfather's house, where the elderly man wheezes out that Joe came right home after church and refused to cut his lawn. Orel confirms this story with Joe (who's lounging in a hammock and eating the same costly ice cream cone that Doughy observed earlier) and announces that the case is solved: Marionetta is indeed the culprit, because she broke the Fourth Commandment ("Honor thy father and mother") by doing charity work and would thus be likely to break the Eighth ("Thou shalt not steal"), while Joe, who refused to help his grandfather, obeyed the Third Commandment ("Keep holy the Sabbath day") and thus couldn't have broken another. Marionetta runs off crying, with Orel and Doughy in hot pursuit. When they arrive at her house, though, they're shocked to see Bloberta playing housewife and mother there, leaving Orel in a crisis of faith.

At church, Orel prays to God for guidance—and inadvertently wakes up Reverend Putty from his nap. The grouchy clergyman tells Orel that Bloberta is a bigamist, since she has two families, and Orel reluctantly returns to Marionetta's house to confirm the story. Bloberta is stunned at Orel's discovery—as is Clay, who has been hiding behind a couch the entire day. A very confused Orel asks what's happening, and Clay tells him that he'll find out after his daily beating. In the study, Clay explains that he and Bloberta, in a desperate attempt to keep their marriage alive, have engaged in a strange kind of wife-swapping that involves his watching Bloberta be cold and distant to another man and children. Orel is saddened by this, but cheers up when his father remarks that sadness is just "Nature's spankings," so he learned his lesson—"Mind your own little business"—twice.


Tropes Present:

  • Borrowed Catchphrase: Orel uses the phrase "It's elemental" whenever he works on a mystery. At the end of the episode, Clay says the same thing (and even produces a matching bubble pipe to do it).
  • Bubble Pipe: Orel uses one while dressed as Sherlock Holmes.
  • Conviction by Contradiction: Parodied with Orel's "logic" in solving cases, such as pointing out that Joe kept one commandment and thus wouldn't break another or saying that since only God can make flowers, Billy can't have created one for a contest. Given that it's Moralton, everyone treats this logic as incredibly clever.
    • It's played straighter with poor Marionetta, who keeps finding genuine evidence that Joe committed the crime, such as the ice cream man having the birthday money that Orel put in the collection plate, but her sleuthing goes unheeded.
  • "Everybody Laughs" Ending: Orel and Clay share a hearty chuckle after Clay remarks that Orel feeling horrifically sad is actually a good thing, since it proves he's really learned his lesson.
  • Explain, Explain... Oh, Crap!: Played for Black Comedy when Orel and Doughy observe Bloberta taking care of Marionetta's family:
    Orel: Gosh, my mom's treating those people like they're her family!
    Doughy: I don't know, Orel—it looks like she's just ignoring them, and fed up, and not happy at all to be there!
    Orel: Exact!...ly.
  • Fair-Play Whodunnit: Played for Laughs—it's extremely obvious that Joe is the culprit in the crime, but the audience is still given clues (like his buying the "Samson and Delicious" ice cream cone despite claiming to have no money) as if the show is a genuine mystery.
  • Freeze-Frame Bonus: Pausing reveals the names of treats on the ice cream van, including the "Easter Sundae," "Matthew Mark Luke and Fudge," and "Jesus Crunch."
  • Insane Troll Logic: Orel's "elemental" deductions are this. To give one example, Joe honored the Third Commandment by keeping the Sabbath holy and not doing anything to help his dying grandfather, while Marionetta broke the Fourth by disobeying her parents (who were too lazy to go to church themselves) and volunteering to feed disabled people—and obviously someone who broke one commandment would break another!
  • Kid Detective: Orel becomes one for the episode.
  • Lazy Bum: Joe gripes about having to walk about ten feet to pass around the collection plate, and then refuses to mow his grandfather's horribly overgrown lawn—even though the old man is dying. In a flashback, we even see Joe ignoring his grandfather as he's swarmed by butterflies who steal his walker.
  • Mathematician's Answer: When Marionetta's father asks Bloberta where his tie is, she coolly replies "Wherever you left it, dear."
  • No Name Given: Marionetta's family's last name is never stated.
  • Painting the Medium: When Orel solves the case of Billy cheating in the "Making Stuff" contest, the solution he's stating appears on the screen upside-down, parodying the way solutions sometimes appear in "Mini-Mystery" books.
  • Punny Name: All of the ice cream man's desserts have religious-themed puns for names, including "Easter Sundae" and "Adam's Ripple."
  • Sinister Minister: Reverend Putty is at his worst in this episode: he rushes through his sermon, blatantly declares that he planned on using the collection plate money to pay for prostitutes, naps in the church, and threatens Orel to recover the missing cash by saying that God will get him if he doesn't.

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