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. Her real name is Elsie, and she comes from a family of doctors. She’s good friends with Sister Jacqueline, who narrates the episodes, as well as Sister Sixto. And she’s friendly with birds, whether they talk or have crushes on her.”

Fly fly fly across the sky! Fly everywhere, Sister Bertrille!

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? I’ve been binge watching Frasier lately and it’s led me to wonder- why is it that Kelsey Grammer and his iconic character, one he’s played since 1984, is allowed to come back and find some form of relevance forty years later, but the work of beloved actress Sally Field, who started this show over 60 years ago, fades away? Bring back Gidget, the bumbling beach girl! Bring back Sister Bertrille, the wacky nun! Heck, bring back the matriarch of the Brothers and Sisters family! It only makes sense, doesn’t it?

The Flying Nun, 2.21: “The Breakaway Monk”
Carlos is being audited! And as someone whose tax return got screwed up last year by state incompetence, I feel for him. He needs a list of all the contributions he’s made to the Convent over the last year. Unfortunately the Reverend Mother is bad at bookkeeping. So her solution is to invite Brother Paul, the clumsiest man alive. There is some good old fashioned comedy here. Everyone is so intent to Paul-proof the Convent and avoid damages that they’re getting clumsy. They have a sign over a door saying “Watch your head” even though the door is half a foot above his head. Sister Ana accidentally drops a ladder on Sister Bertrille, and somehow they managed to get her to fall through one of the gaps in the ladder.
This is great comic writing. Every attempt to anticipate the disaster Paul causes leads to the Nuns being clumsy instead. Brother Paul says to Bertrille “I hate to say this but I fear you may be accident prone. I know because I used to be that way. I haven’t had an accident since I arrived at the Convent. Heh heh heh. Brother Paul and Carlos try to get his taxes sorted out but there’s a massive gust of wind that takes most of his receipts away. The auditor tries to drive away, but he’s accosted by a flying nun who lands in his car with the remaining receipts. The mistake the production makes is having her fly directly in front of the sun, clearly highlighting the ropes holding her up. And we leave Brother Paul trying to fix all the damage Sister Bertrille did to the Convent, while she recovers from her injuries. This was some great stuff.
Episode Rating – 8.4 Sally Fields

The Flying Nun, 2.22: “Happy Birthday Dear Gaspar”
Well, dear reader, we’re finally here. This will be the final time I am subjected to the character of Captain Gaspar Fomento, the worst character in sitcom history not named Ross Geller. We open on the notorious idiot insisting that a pothole at the convent be fixed within two days despite the fact that it’s been there for three, and it isn’t an immediate issue, while he lights his cigarette from the wrong end. There’s a kid named Gaspar in the Convent whose uncle won’t be able to make it for his Birthday party tomorrow, and while picking up kaiser rolls for the Chief, Fomento sees the cake order and incorrectly assumes everyone knows it’s his 40th Birthday even though nobody cares about this annoying piece of shit.
The Sisters figure out what’s going on because he’s an awkward little bitch and resolve to make the party all about the Captain to unbruise his pride as, the younger Gaspar is less of a child. Those were the gracious words of the Sisters, I would never be so kind. Thankfully his uncle gets him a plane ticket to his amusement park, and when they let the idiot know in a veiled way, it cheers him right up. The writers temporarily gaslight Fomento and the audience into thinking the party still isn’t happening, because Carlos pretends he’s been robbed to get him out of the office, and when Fomento gets back he’s delighted to receive a surprise party.
He decides to give a speech standing on his chair, only to put his hand in the cake again and make everyone uncomfortable. Sigh. Goodbye and good riddance to you, Fomento, you unlikable, insecure, overly-strict, unnecessary addition. I will not miss you and your slapstick antics. I will not miss your switch that you shouldn’t have that gets you into trouble. I will not miss your ability to continue having a job despite the fact that you could not be less suited for a job in law enforcement, you childish boob. Watching this man clown around for thirteen episodes was like watching the third season of Community where Chang becomes a security guard and you instantly know it’s a terrible idea but his boss quits because the Dean is so comically stupid that he lets the psycho run free. Except the Chief in this is way more competent so I don’t know how he’s still there. Yeah. Goodbye.
Episode Rating – .3 Sally Fields

The Flying Nun, 2.23: “Cast Your Bread Upon The Waters”
After an episode all about a terrible character, the show seeks to win me over with one of my favorite things: Bread. And characters being lured by cartoonish smell lines. Mmmm. The owner of a large grocery chain on the island happens to find his way to the Convent when his car breaks down, and he’s lured in by the bread. Sister Bertrille sees an opportunity, because the Convent always needs money, and they apparently didn’t just sell all the expensive gifts her old boyfriend got her last time. So she tricks the guy into “coming up with the idea” to sell Sister Sixto’s bread. And she gets Carlos to lend $1,000 for a bread oven. And buy 2,000 pounds of flour. We also learn that Sister Jacqueline used to be in advertising.
Basically this is all leading to another great comedy set-up; everyone puts yeast in the dough at once and they end up with a growing mass of bread madness. There’s so much bread that it breaks that shitty car and Carlos helps Sister Bertrille bring the bread into town, where they’re pulled over by a belligerent cop. A random belligerent cop! Sure, his personality sucks and he cares too much about the law and gives him several citations, but he is not Fomento. I do feel bad for Carlos. Poor guy is getting used every week. This kind and upstanding casino owner has been financially and emotionally exploited by this conniving Convent and their money-making schemes. Oh, what a world we live in.
Sister Sixto’s ring comes out and ends up in one of the loaves of bread, so the Sisters recall most of their loaves from the grocery store only to learn that Carlos bit down on the ring. It turns out the bread stank and was hated by all who bought it because the Convent needed an old oven for an old recipe. In the end, all goes back to normal, minus one of Carlos’s teeth.
Episode Rating – 8.7 Sally Fields for the bread!

The Flying Nun, 2.24: “The Convent Gets The Business”
I thought this would be run of the mill, because just like last time, the Convent is running a business. They were left a dry goods business in a will. But something completely unexpected happened. Carlos is struggling because he has to give his cousin a job, but his cousin is an idiot. His cousin is also played by somebody very familiar. Alejandro Rey, the very same actor that plays Carlos Ramirez. This is not something I expected. Anyway, Luis is made the boss of the Dry Goods store, and uses Sister Bertrille to deliver orders to customers. Essentially the whole episode is a setup to show her flying on a carpet, which makes no sense at all, considering how she flies and how people carry carpets.
Luis isn’t a particularly interesting character. He’s just bad at business. His cousin has people come in and buy random shit to make it seem like he’s not terrible, and eventually Carlos has to buy the business for him rather than tell him the truth. And according to IMDb, we never see Luis again. I’m surprised they knew how to do one actor playing two characters back then. Good for them, I guess?
Episode Rating – 6.3 Sally Fields

The Flying Nun, 2.25: “Cousins By The Dozen”
This episode is different. It starts with Carlos narrating rather than Sister Jacqueline, and he’s talking about her talent for being in the wrong place at the wrong time, and we are once again treated to flashbacks of past episodes, this time via still images. She means well obviously, in this episode she spies his car from above and considers saying hi, then decides she should when she sees only his footsteps in the sand. Of course Carlos carried a woman into the trees for a sex.
The crux of this episode is Carlos is dealing with an uncle who wants money but won’t get a job to make some himself, and a woman in a large lawn chair who wants sex. Sister Bertrille brings children from the Convent for a boat ride, but Carlos cancels, due to the sex woman. But one of the kids, she had mumps, so Sister Bertrille comes looking for Carlos to get him cured of the mumps. Of course when he lies to Sister Bertrille and tells her that he wants to help his uncle, she suggests he let his family move into his house on the hill, and he “agrees”. So she finds the uncle and tells him the “news”. And thus the complications begin. They’re putting less and less effort into hiding the strings, by the way. Eventually Carlos has to tell his family that he won’t be moving them to San Juan. But remember, Carlos is a coward. This is no “Scott’s Tots” situation. And the roof in his spare house leaks. So the large family moves in with Carlos. Happy days. This episode wasn’t that bad, but it wasn’t interesting beyond Carlos’s increasingly funny attempts to hide from Sister Bertrille. I stopped halfway through because Severance came out. I’m not going to wait on Severance for this.
Episode Rating – 5.3 Sally Fields

The Flying Nun, 2.26: “The Lottery”
This is the season finale, which is why I’m covering six episodes instead of five. And it also means, mercifully, that I only have five more months of this to go. But honestly, I think I’m falling for this show again. Maybe because I didn’t make myself cover ten episodes this time, and maybe because Captain Gaspar Fomento has died an incompetent death or something. Anyway. The Lottery. A chicken pooped an egg onto Sister Bertrille. And then the owner of the egg gave Sister Bertrille a lottery ticket because he didn’t have money of his own to donate for the Convent lottery.
Sister Bertrille learns that the ticket might be worth $25,000 and decides to return the ticket to the chicken owner in the fear that all the Sisters would squabble over what to do with it, leading the Reverend Mother to buy a mink coat. Of course these Sisters wouldn’t actually do this. The Reverend Mother wouldn’t want a mink. I don’t know if I’ve ever said, but Sister Bertrille is a stupid idiot. Anyway, when she returns the ticket to the chicken man, they see her fly away and assume the ticket is blessed. They think they will win and they promise to sell a share to chicken man’s brother, who tells his wife, who happens to be the biggest gossip in San Juan. Soon everyone in San Juan is buying a share, and Chief Galindo is investigating them for fraud. It’s a new Chief Galindo too, they switched actors a few episodes ago, somehow in the same episode. Sister Bertrille proves that she couldn’t bless a ticket by trying to fly, AKA flapping her wings stupidly. It doesn’t work. The funny thing is, after the Sisters tie her to a rope and make them all return the money, the chicken man wins the $25,000 and the people feel swindled. Ah, well. That’s the way it goes in this business called The Flying Nun season 2, episode 26.
Episode Rating – 6.5 Sally Fields

Well, there ya go! Two down, one to go.