Previously on The Flying Nun, Revisited…
“The Flying Nun is a hip sixties woman named Sister Bertrille from New York and she just began working at a convent in exceedingly windy San Juan, Puerto Rico. She weighs ninety pounds and her cornette is shaped in such a way that makes it aerodynamic when countered with a large gust of wind. She sings songs to children like The Sound of Music and there’s a local sleazy rich jerk named Carlos that Sister Bertrille is always running into whenever he’s about to kiss a woman. She usually gets into some sort of scheme that involves using his vast wealth or losing his vast wealth. The Flying Nun has a warm but begrudging friendship with the Reverend Mother. She’s also a good mechanic, and allergic to Hibiscus.”

That was five episodes of world building and continuity! Will episodes six through ten hold up? The titles certainly are chaotic and weird! Cut to present day!

The Flying Nun IMDb

Introduction –
In the modern day, no concept, TV show or movie is ever forgotten. Everything, no matter how stupid, has a fanbase of some kind and ends up getting a sequel, a revival, or a recap podcast with people laughing at jokes they made five to thirty years ago. Why has the long forgotten Sally Field sitcom, The Flying Nun, been left behind? Someone’s gotta do something, and the best I can muster is a series of confusing written recaps. Enjoy!

The Flying Nun, 1.6: “Flight of the Dodo Bird”
According to the opening episode narration, it’s still been merely a few weeks since Sister Bertrille arrived at the convent. At the outset of this one, the plot is that Bertrille is getting vertigo? There’s a shot of her flying towards a balcony and we see her point of view of the balcony, and then they spin the shot. It’s really intense stuff. Later, she’s talking to a doctor who’s asking her if she’ll be flying anytime soon. He means airplanes, she misunderstands, he asks if there’s any other way and she says “Well, if there is, I imagine it’d be classified.” Sweet callback to the pilot. This is the kind of narrative continuity I was looking for! The doctor that examined Sister Bertrille soon expresses concern for the clearly stressed Reverend Mother.
Unfortunately he sends a church psychiatrist who acts like a smug jerk and assumes the Reverend Mother is cracking under the pressure. He’s such a prick. The man assumes all three of these women are insane. I’m getting a bit tired of the Sister Bertrille has to prove she can fly plots, but this one led to the Reverend Mother uttering a legendary line: “Sister Bertrille! Go put on your wings. (Close-up shot, trumpets) I mean your cornette.” Epic. Of course when Bertrille tries to fly she can’t because she still essentially has vertigo and the wind isn’t gusty enough or something, so her powers just stop working, and the psychiatrist makes recordings about how the three nuns should be hospitalized. He insists on leaving for the airport, so Sister Bertrille and all the other nuns pray really intensely that their car will break down again so he can’t leave the convent and tell everybody that they’re insane. And then the car does break down. That bit is pretty funny. Of course, him being forced to stay the night at the convent leads him to believe he’s being kept prisoner, so he escapes and gets on a plane, where Bertrille finally regains her abilities and the reverend psychiatrist finally admits defeat. Great ending. I love to see a smug prick get taken down.
Episode Rating – 9.2 Sally Fields

The Flying Nun, 1.7: “Polly Wants A Cracked Head”
Fun new addition to the opening narration this time: “Sister Bertrille had the ability to fly. To fly emotionally, and literally.” Nice bit of compliment there. At the outset, Sister Bertrille makes the mistake of flying in front of some visitors and explains her powers thusly: “It’s all very simple, it has to do with lift + thrust being greater than load + drag.” The other nuns are frustrated because she insists it’s science, not a miracle. Surprisingly, no Carlos last episode. In this one, we get a woman in a very colorful and jazzy 60’s jumpsuit trying to murder a parrot in a saloon. The parrot’s name is Patrick Dolen, named after jumpsuit’s dead husband, so they call him Junior. Of course Bertrille saves the bird from the weirdo saloon lady. You can say one thing about this amazing television show. Nobody writes plots like the writers of The Flying Nun.
Sister Bertrille and Sister Jacqueline fail to find Patrick a home, so he goes with them to the convent, which has a no-pets policy. Hijinks with the Reverend Mother ensue at dinner that end with Patrick singing about whiskey and all the bread crumbs Bertrille snuck into her sleeve fallen onto the floor. And Sister Sixto, Bertrille’s best friend, assumes Bertrille is a ventriloquist. What I hadn’t realized until now is that Sister Sixto is played by the late great Shelley Morrison, who portrayed Rosario in Will & Grace. What a great actress. I mean, it’s inevitable once the Reverend Mother finds Patrick that they attempt to teach him to pray so he can stay. It almost works, until he sees the Reverend Mother and says “Hi, sweetie, give us a kiss.” Poor Reverend Mother. So Patrick is gifted to Carlos, who pretends to be a softie savior of birds to seduce women. Sadly, jumpsuit lady changes her mind right after Carlos forces him to fly away post-disastrous date. There’s a really touching scene where she prays to God to protect her bird. But if only she knew someone who could fly and track down loudmouthed bir- OH WAIT, THIS SHOW’S ABOUT A FLYING NUN! In the end, birdwatchers are confounded, owner is reunited with bird, bird is religiously enlightened and the Reverend Mother makes a friend. All is happy. We’re in a great stretch of episodes, and I was surprisingly touched by this one.
Episode Rating – 9.5 Sally Fields

The Flying Nun, 1.8: “Ah Love, Could You And I Conspire?”
This episode marks the return of that awful purple car and the introduction of Bobbye Starr, the harangued partner of a local mobster who stows away with the weekly fish haul to get to the convent. A series of white lies about being a secretary gets Bobbye out of the back of the purple car and into the convent as the Reverend Mother’s temporary secretary, all while her boyfriend, Al Caine, looks for her and plans to make her co-conspirators “sleep with the fishes”. Hello, you’re reading about The Flying Nun, a show about shipwrecks, political intrigue, duplicitous parrots, and mobsters. “Bring the funny sticks” he says when he finds the car. What is a funny stick, ripoff Capone? Starr’s boyfriend finds her quickly, which is good, since the Reverend Mother deserves a better secretary. The Reverend Mother is my favorite character, hands down. You see, Bobbye doesn’t want to break up with Caine, she wants him to marry her and stop being a mobster. As she puts it, “I’ve got what the Mother Superior calls ‘a situation’ I can’t get out of.” What would you call it? Isn’t that what everyone says?
Anyway, a plot is plotted to use Carlos as a decoy boyfriend to make Caine jealous. He’s still an unconvincable sleaze, but he’s got a great suit. Sister Bertrille has to fly at least once an episode, and this time she does some beautiful skywriting with an aerosol can above Caine’s boat to let him know Bobbye’s been wooed. Carlos, of course, takes it too far and falls for Bobbye. It must be said, Caine is a very nonviolent and noncommittal gangster. Luckily one of the kids somehow knows he’s a famous Chicago gangster, making the Al Capone comparison concrete. It’s becoming more clear that they keep using the same stock footage of Sister Bertrille flying, because you’d think she wouldn’t be grinning if she thought her new friend would be killed by a gangster. Caine’s convinced to marry Bobbye not because he loves her, but because she’ll testify against him that he tried to kill Carlos if he doesn’t. The coda of the episode is he tries to escape his own wedding in that same purple car, but is found immediately. He’s got a nice top hat though.
Episode Rating – 7.2 Sally Fields

The Flying Nun, 1.9: “Days of Nuns and Roses”
This episode sees the convent face financial issues once more, but this time Sister Bertrille thinks she may have a solution after she sees a neighborhood boy selling lemonade for 2 cents a glass (With inflation, that would be 18 cents now. Yes, that’s irrelevant, but I enjoy knowing.) and hatches an idea to start selling grape juice as “The Nectar of San Tanco”. If I’ve not mentioned it, San Tanco is the fictional town they live in. When Bertrille tries to sell Carlos the distribution rights, he lays down a splendid comeback that the clueless laugh track/studio audience(?) completely ignore.
BERTRILLE: “The convent is coming out with a sensational product.”
CARLOS: “You already have one. Religion.”
WHAT A ZING! You go, Carlos. If you think this episode quickly leads to Sally Field and her friends stomping grapes in bathtubs and trash cans, you’d guess correctly. It’s seconds before the Reverend Mother walks in and reprimands her entrepreneurial sisters. Although she quickly gets swayed into supporting the chaotic sea grape juice business. Sure, the wine bottle it ends up in has a nice label, but since I saw the feet that smushed them and can’t see why their juice is any better than the other options, I can’t say I’d drink it. Quickly they end up in more debt with the bottle makers and various investors, which makes this whole endeavor an even bigger mistake. But Carlos’s friend and fellow investor decides to invest in this sea grape juice purely because he thinks Sister Bertrille’s flying is a side effect. Carlos gets a whole new plate of shenanigans served to him when he tries to leave the country with four cases of what has now fermented into sea grape wine. I don’t know how fermentation works, sounds legit. This leads to the police thinking the nuns are at the head of an illegal wine smuggling ring. The other nuns think it’s a miracle that the juice keeps changing, but after the police raid the convent, they find out that it all turned to vinegar and everyone is cleared. In the end, no profit has been made, and Carlos is down a quarter to help pay the difference for the business license they no longer need, and everyone does those weird smiles you see when the writers didn’t know how to end an episode properly.
Episode Rating – 7.1 Sally Fields

The Flying Nun, 1.10: “With Love From Irving”
During a heavy wind, Sister Bertrille loses her rosary beads nearby an injured pelican who instantly falls in love with her. Of course, the relationship will never work. Though she nurses him back to health and bandages his leg, she doesn’t care for him that way and is in a devoted relationship with God. Their love could never be. At the same time, the reverend Father Sweeney visits to interview the Reverend Mother. Unlike the fifth episode, (Which you can go back and read my review of) Sister Bertrille’s time at the convent is not at risk, it is the Reverend Mother this time. She’s being interviewed by the Father to be the dean of women at a college. Unfortunately, Irving the pelican won’t leave Sister Bertrille alone. There’s something wrong with the recording of this particular episode. The audio is somewhat distorted. This episode does somewhat rely on the belief that everyone thinks this pelican is entirely Sister Bertrille’s fault. It also takes Sister Bertrille quite a while to figure out Irving is in love with her because he thinks she’s a bird, considering the bird watchers mere episodes ago. “I’m not gonna play Juliet to any pelican, I can tell you that.”
Sister Bertrille tries to break up with Irving, to let him down easily, but he becomes lovesick and forlorn and refuses to leave. Of course when the Reverend Mother starts to solve the situation, she is overheard by Sweeney, who thinks she’s insane. A montage of different bird suitors fail to appeal to Irving until Sister Bertrille tries reverse psychology and two birds fall in love. The episode ends on a sweet note where Sweeney decides the Reverend Mother is already where she can provide the most help, and her and Sister Bertrille have a heart to heart about enjoying working with one another. I won’t lie, it brought a tear to my eye. They always know how to bring it home in the end.
Episode Rating – 7.8 Sally Fields

It’s been a year since I wrote my first five episode recap post, and I promise it won’t take that long next time. This is not an annual endeavor, and I shame myself by showing a lack of commitment and dedication to The Flying Nun brand. Sorry, Sally. I’ll do better. You can expect a more consistent release and see one of these at least every month. I am, if nothing else, a devoted scholar.