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.”

Look at this, we’re almost at the end! We’ve changed, evolved, become better people. And so has Sister Bertrille. Maybe.

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? Perhaps it’s time for a Force Awakens style revival! I can see it now. 77 year old Sister Bertrille revisits the Convent San Tanco for the funerals of Carlos, Mother Superior, Sister Jacqueline, Sister Sixto, Sister Ana, and well pretty much everybody and realizes that she can still fly. And beyond that, so can her disillusioned atheist granddaughter. So to prove her love of God, and the power of flight, Sister Bertrille bests her granddaughter in aerial combat and claims the title of Reverend Mother. Ah, yes. What a wonderful idea. You could call it “The New Adventures Of The Old Flying Nun”.

The Flying Nun, 3.16: “Armando and the Pool Table”
Armando is back. From “The Big Game” episode. Which is odd. Because the last episode he was in, which was entirely about him, ended with him being adopted. This show has no continuity! It’s ridiculous! Armando wants to jump around, jump up, jump up and get down. They want to give him something more grounded to do, and Sister Bertrille suggests they get him into playing pool. Since Carlos is offloading his pool table on the Convent. Sister Sixto still doesn’t know how to say phrases or words correctly. She says “cute ball” at one point. I do like Shelley Morrison.

This episode also reveals that Sister Jacqueline used to be a pool shark. I’m not surprised. I don’t know why anyone ever listens to Sister Bertrille’s ideas anymore. They enlist an old pool player to teach him and Armando becomes obsessed with being the world’s greatest pool shark. Not the best dream, probably. I mean, I like pool as much as the next guy. I don’t know why it’s called pool. Anyway, Armando’s teacher says the only way to get Armando out of playing pool is by having the other best pool player beat him. Unfortunately that is Carlos, and he’s on an island massaging his secretary played by Farrah Fawcett! That’s weird.

They try to psych Armando out of winning the game. But he’s quite good. He almost whups Carlos’s ass. But then he doesn’t. And the Sisters make Armando think he’s going to gamble away all the Convent’s money, including the golden candlesticks, just as the Reverend Mother returns home. Sister Bertrille ends up traumatizing Armando, and the Reverend Mother specifically says, “When I allowed you to come up with a solution for this, I didn’t expect it to be so contrived and dangerous”. Reverend Mother, have you not been paying attention to the show you’re in?!?!
Episode Rating – 7.0 Sally Fields

The Flying Nun, 3.17: “Hello Columbus”
In the interest of full disclosure, this post will be a bit different from previous Flying Nun Recaps, for one specific reason. Well, two. I watched episode sixteen months ago and have no memory of it whatsoever. And I’m quite inebriated. I am a professional, a true Flying Nun scholar. But I’m so unbelievably sad that I’m almost at the end that I needed to drink my sorrows away before I was willing to watch the episodes. Or I have no interest in finishing it and I had a few drinks. You decide. Anyway, episode time. Man, my head feels fuzzy as shit. Do your feet feel weirdly numb when you drink a bunch? I’m asking for a friend.

Oh, great. An episode about Columbus. That fuck. Or at least, an episode about reenacting the story of Columbus with Convent kiddos. That reenacted fuck. I wonder how Sally Field is doing. I heard recently she said bad things about this show. How dare you, Sally?!?! Carlos is upset about his cousin Luis. Have I seen Luis before? Let’s look at IMDb. Oh, right, Alejandro Rey plays Carlos and Luis. Man, I really need to pee. Sister Bertrille needs someone to play Columbus, all the viable kids are sick and on an unrelated note, Luis is terrible at his jobs at the Casino and Carlos wants to get rid of him. I wonder what’s going to happen…

Luis has glasses and a mustache. Has he been in this show before?? I feel like he has but I have no memory of this character. Great, an ad for Vinted. Thank you, Tubi. I just sneezed. I can’t remember the last time I sneezed before today. I should keep track to see how many times a week I sneeze. Sneeze stats would be interesting. There’s some sitcom-ish shenanigans about Sister Sixto confusing fleets of boats with horses, but who cares? The world is doomed. All the people in charge are horrible. Elon Musk has all the money and he’s one of the worst people to ever exist. And I need to pee. I have now peed, in case you were worried. Luis has quit the play because he doesn’t like his costume for some reason. And I snarled at the doorknob while I was peeing, for some reason. It felt right. Now I’m watching Alejandro Rey act badly across from himself, in an episode I couldn’t give two shits about. Or one.

Let me guess, Luis is going to keep quitting and Carlos is going to keep convincing him to do the show. He’s irritable because his love interest in the show is a little girl. Man, my mini pizzas still aren’t done. The longer it takes, the easier it is for me to forget they exist and burn my apartment down. So Queen Isabella has been cast, it’s Carlos’s new bookkeeper. There’s a mini “Obviously beautiful woman in glasses that everyone weirdly thinks is ugly” arc. And now Luis is back. My mini pizzas are out of the oven and yummy. Luis instantly fell in love with Marta, the bookkeeper, so he can’t act with her because he’s too horny or something. This is easier when sober. And Carlos tells Marta, to intervene, to ensure the show goes on, that someone loves him, but I bet Marta thinks it’s him.

Luis saw Marta kissing Carlos and went out to sea. Sister Bertrille flew out to him, because that’s the premise of this show. Shit, the episode’s nearly over. Actually, this is easier while drunk! Except Bertrille is talking about how the whole point of the Pageant is showing off Puerto Rico’s grand past. Columbus was a fucking idiot and slave owner, man! I think. I hate Luis. Anyway, he did the play and got good reviews, who cares? Me. This is my job and I take it most seriously. Luis chooses to take on more jobs at the Casino, which upsets Carlos, and the episode is produced by someone with the last name Epstein. Yuck.
Episode Rating – 2.7 Sally Fields

The Flying Nun, 3.18: “The Dumbest Kid in School”
Rude title. The Reverend Mother wasn’t in the last episode at all, so she better be all over this one or I’ll be miffed. Anyway, there’s a dopey white boy named Joey who is either dumb or does pranks. Hard to say. I’m having a hard time paying attention for some reason. Oh shit, Sister Bertrille is on vacation, it’s another no Bertrille episode! Maybe. Sally really wanted to stop making this show. I want to clarify by the way, I am no longer drunk, it’s a day later. It turns out if you have multiple drinks you get very tired and have no interest in reviewing TV. So, the premise of this episode is mildly upsetting.

There’s a man named Mr. Sanders who used to be an orphan of the Convent San Tanco and is now rich and successful. He wants to adopt Joey because he’s an idiot and is very mischievous, and Sanders was the same way as a child. Joey apparently wants advice from Carlos about being adopted, because somehow he’s friends with a local casino owner despite being a little blonde boy who can’t really act. The issue is that Joey wants to be adopted, by proving to Sanders at their “Get to know the kid I want to adopt” picnic that he’s a good kid worth adopting. And if I know my TV plotlines, I’m willing to bet in trying to not be a troublemaker he’ll make Sanders second guess his pick. There’s a funny bit where Joey, knowing that Sanders is a stock broker, goes to research stock brokers with Carlos at the library so he can impress Sanders.

Which leads to this odd pair at the beach, with a little boy (Whose hair definitely didn’t remain blonde his whole life, that’s not long-lasting blonde like mine) eating an either fake or dry as hell sandwich and asking: “Do you think high-yield municipals will prompt preferred stocks into a decline?” That’s good stuff. “High yield municipals are the darlings of the mutual fund. In this industry, it’s a bigger write-off for plant expansion.” But now Mr. Sanders thinks he’s got a nerd on his hands! I get the point of this whole plotline, but when you get to Joey insisting he won’t swim without a bathing suit and Mr. Sanders saying it’s perfectly fine to swim in your underwear, it’s easy to see this in a different light. Especially since this guy came in off the street and said he wanted to adopt a kid and a day later he’s alone with him at the beach and the impetus is on Joey to interview for Sanders. It’s ridiculous. The 60’s were insane.

This is honestly a pretty good episode about the relationship between a potential father and son. And the two actors have pretty good chemistry. But I’m looking at it from a modern context. Oh, Joey gets another chance and impresses Mr. Sanders, but then Joey figures out what he said, about the dumb thing, and gets rightfully upset. It’s not a nice thing to say to someone. Joey insists he’s not gonna let Sanders adopt him until he’s the smartest. But I don’t think he’s that dumb to begin with? He managed to memorize all that shit about the stock market, which is incredibly boring. I also think it’s hard to say this is a good episode since the titular Flying Nun is absent. Did they just have to make an episode or did they think they could have a show about a convent without a Flying Nun?
Episode Rating – 5.7 Sally Fields (It would’ve been higher if they hadn’t said the title of the episode roughly thirty-seven times.)

The Flying Nun, 3.19: “Man’s Best Friend Isn’t”
Greeeeeat. Another dog episode. I think there’s like five of these? But this dog is pretty cute, to be fair. And he belongs to a plumber who considers himself the Van Gogh of plumbing. Sister Bertrille gets Felix, the plumber, a job as Carlos’s go-to plumber. Who instantly walks in, looks at the pipes, and says that he needs very specific parts. He leaves town for three days, leaving the dog to be babysit. But Sister Bertrille claims all dogs get obsessed with her. Or that she gets obsessed with them. Cut to a shot of her explaining to Tiger the dog why she can’t get attached to him. Except the sequence is a shot of her walking with the dog where she clearly isn’t talking to him, and we’re hearing a voiceover recorded after the fact.

When Felix gets back, Tiger is obsessed with Sister Bertrille and doesn’t want to leave her. My question, though, is why does Carlos have to help Felix carry his pipes into his casino? Does he not have guys who do that for him? Tiger runs away back to Sister Bertrille, and Felix says he’ll be fine. But I bet he becomes a terrible plumber now his dog is gone. Yep. I’m right. There’s a good bit about him being distracted, somehow he connected a pipe to an electrical outlet. Sister Bertrille wants to punish Tiger, to make him not like her, but her heart isn’t in it. At one point she says “You’ve never felt one of my spankings, have you? Well, I spank real good. I’m better with a strap, though. I punish real good with a strap.” That’s, um… yeah, that’s interesting. I don’t have anything to say about that. I’m not even sure why I mentioned it.

It turns out Felix is afraid of birds, so Sister Bertrille theorizes that if a woman on clearly visible ropes floats about, the dog will run back to Felix. Which, by the way, is a shit theory, why would you assume this dog will keep running and not get hit by a car or something? He made it though. And Carlos, who is hysterical about the state of his plumbing, will finally get that fixed. Felix hits a sprinkler on accident though, and there’s a shot where Tiger is soaked through, which then cuts back to a shot of him not wet at all. The episode ends with Felix bringing Sister Bertrille Tiger’s brother, who is identical to Tiger because it’s clearly the same dog. But where did he come from? If he had two dogs, why is he so obsessed with Tiger and not his unnamed brother? Why did he not need Tiger looked after when he went out of town? This is nonsense!!!
Episode Rating – .5 Sally Fields (For blatant factual inaccuracies.)

The Flying Nun, 3.20: “The Somnaviatrix”
This episode was written by John Green! Who knew the man who crafted The Fault In Our Stars got his start here! And that he used to go by John L. Greene? Fascinating. Anyway, as you can probably guess, this episode is about Sister Bertrille flying in her sleep. And every time she does it she’s just slightly slumped over and clearly has her eyes partially open. Also there’s a sequence where she lands and there’s clearly a different woman in her outfit that is not Sally Field. But here is the predicament. Sister Bertrille happened to land near Carlos, who was stuck in a mud hole with the daughter of a man he’s hoping to do a business deal with.

Everyone thinks that Carlos slept with the girl, who is engaged, but this is the one time he’s telling the truth. He was driving her home from a party and he got stuck. So the business deal is on the rocks, as is the girl’s engagement to a man with sideburns as big as the sun. Anyway, the Reverend Mother and Sister Jacqueline figure out what’s going on. Sister Bertrille is the only one who can save Carlos but she thinks he asked her to lie. There’s a few other things of note. One, despite Carlos not being involved with the businessman’s daughter, he still has a framed photo of her, in an office full of framed photos of women he’s slept with. So it’s not as if he’s done himself any favors.

Of course Sister Bertrille refuses to bend the truth and tell the businessman what she saw without telling him about the flying. The businessman doesn’t believe her. But also she didn’t see it, really. She tries to fly for the businessman, it doesn’t work because there’s no breeze. Which, by the way, is a predicament she’s been in many times. But then she turns around and tells the sideburns man that she can fly as well. And that he can’t tell anyone either. At this point, dozens of people have to know this. Oh, the dog is still here! That’s the other thing! I was shocked, honestly, that a show so dedicated to abandoning episode to episode continuity actually kept the dog around after he was gifted to the Convent last episode. This one is named Horatio. And by this one, I of course refer to the same dog that played two dogs.

Anyway, the wedding is saved and the deal is back on but the businessman still thinks Bertrille is a nut. And the Reverend Mother puts an end to the sleep flying by forbidding Sister Bertrille from doing it again. Which is definitely how the subconscious works.
Episode Rating – 6.3 Sally Fields (I could have made a dark joke about Mike Birbiglia while reviewing this episode, but I showed great restraint and I feel that’s admirable behavior.)

To be concluded in the next post, when the Flying Nun takes her final flight. Technically her final flight was 56 years ago, but you know what I mean. See you then!