And then sometimes life is like the gooey mess that drops out the bottom of the tin when you turn out your apple teacake and watch it collapse into a pathetic steaming heap on the cooling rack. It just falls apart right there before your eyes, and there's nothing you can do about it but pop down to the store for a frozen Sara Lee^® before your guests arrive and pretend that nothing's wrong.

Nick's having an apple teacake kind of a week.

Brian, who if he were a chocolate from that chocolate box of life would be a strawberry cream – sickly sweet, popular with children and grandmothers, slides down like a slippery white lie – has driven into town early for his engagement party. Instead of spending the evening at Lulu's house, which may be full of the crap she's collected since grade school but has one alleged attraction – namely, Lulu – he decides to solicit a hooker and then spends the night in jail fending off the advances of his cellmate, an unattractive crushed almond cluster. We all know Nick wants to squash Brian's soft-centred head with his thumb so he can gobble up Lulu himself, but he'd do anything for the lady and agrees to help. Brian wonders if his picture will end up on the Internet. Careful what you wish for, buddy…

Lulu – a stylish chocolate-covered nougatine with unexpected chewy red and green bits – wants to talk about swan poop. I have this theory that the reason she keeps involving Nick in her love life is to remind him that she's taken, that he shouldn't be looking at her that way, because he's still doing it. It also serves as a reminder to her that she shouldn't be thinking about him that way, because she's still doing it, I know she is. She should probably just leave the poor guy alone, but she's figured out that developing this camaraderie could serve as a pressure valve – a professional disagreement here, a scatalogical joke there, it all helps to release those forbidden feelings a little at a time in safe doses so that she doesn't boil over and accidentally jump his bones one day. She does not want to receive another one of Alvin's memos.

This episode has five story threads, four of which piss Nick off (the other one pisses Alvin off) so we'd better move on to the next.

The delightful peppermint cream on reception, Gretchen, falls out of her chair at Nick's chirpy greeting. He's got a spring in his step such as I have never seen before, so you know he's about to be served up something really nasty like one of those revolting aniseed balls. Unlike Amanda, a highly strung peanut brittle who would run after Nick to pluck lint off his tailcoats if she could only keep up with him in her heels, Gretchen fails to pick herself up in time to warn him that his probation officer is waiting round the corner with a little plastic cup and a story about how he fell in love. Nick bites back his “What's your point?” and wonders why he's supposed to care, until Dale offers to turn a blind eye to his various infractions if he helps out with some confusing legal stuff. Nick would rather risk his chances with tough-ass Judge Handley (an unforgiving hard toffee, if ever I saw one – not that I've seen him) until he realises that his probation violations could end Burton's new career before it even starts.

One thing's for sure: Dale and Mandy don't even belong in the same box of chocolates as the rest of us. They're just cheap candy – a couple of tacky gummy cola bottles that no-one wants to touch because they look like someone else already spat them out. He's kind of dumb; she's sherbet-coated, kind of smart. They dream of buying a gentlemen's club so they can become respectable jelly beans. The current owner is Lenny, a chocolate-coated brazil nut – smooth and weird-looking and to be avoided at all costs because it's either gone rancid or will break your teeth. This is not Nick's idea of a sweet business deal but Mandy makes sure we all know about the fearsome weapon in her purse – a tube of handcream. Hey, don't laugh. It's enriched with collagen, elastin and Vitamin E and has sun protection factor 30+. If I were Lenny, I'd be shaking on my boots.

Then there's Bobby Hinkins, a sad peanut butter meltie that's been sitting around in the jar too long. He's an ex-con whose ex-wife is about to turn little chocolate button Tess into his ex-daughter. Bobby murdered two men in a bar in a nice piece of foreshadowing, but seems to have been reformed by nine years in jail. Or is that eight? He may have his high school diploma but he can't figure out 2002 minus 1994. The state of education today! Nick objects all over the place but loses the case, which he should be used to by now, but he looks totally defeated. Bobby saves him the need to ask what his point is by telling him that there is no point. Nick agrees and his mood continues to darken. It does seem a shame that Bobby is headed back to jail for ten years for giving his daughter a ride to Waffleteria. Stranger things have happened, I suppose…

…Like Alvin, a nosey toffee that's been sticking in a few craws lately, who routinely assigns known felons and drug-users to Nick as clients, and is then obligated to report Nick's dealings with them as violations of his probation. Uh, okay, right. No wonder Nick calls him Masterson.

Burton is having a preliminary interview for the federal bench. This fine dark chocolate cognac liqueur, imprinted with an impressive-looking seal of excellence from some foreign Empire or other, is under close scrutiny by the interview committee. They'd do well to take Burton as he is rather than mess with his foil because the more they peel away, the more screwed up everything becomes. In Lolita? his employment file from 1953–5 recorded that he was born in 1927, was married with dependents, had brown eyes and was a mere chocolate chip at 5'2”. Now we discover he was born in 1933, married in 1965, has blue eyes and has undergone a phenomenal 10” growth spurt. Must be something in the water at Clayton Steel. And don't get me started on his birthdate.

His buddy, Tom, a bland sort of vanilla fudge, is on the committee but is also feeding him inside information about how to get the job. Tom not only looks like Judge Stanton, he has Stanton's personality (which is to say, I'd rather be watching test cricket). The fudge's recommendation is to promote Sylvia, a sleek and elegant champagne delice packing quite a fizz. She and Burton try to outmasticate each other with a very chewy steak until finally she appears to relent by diving into the mashed potato. But she's only bluffing – she's not having a bar of Burton's offer to move to the inner circle of the top layer of the F&A chocolate box and be the token truffle among the liqueurs.

There's this thing with Levi, too, who needs help if he wants to aspire to being anything more than a sullen butter caramel. He's under home detention and is in trouble for being at home. Go figure. His storyline involves being rammed, punched, and force-fed chicken fingers, but it doesn't piss Nick off at all, so – unlike Alvin – I'm happy to leave it there.

Back to Nick, who's been dragging around some seriously funky music with him wherever he wanders. He now wanders into the Incline – which is a drinking establishment, by the way, and he really shouldn't be there even though everyone always knows to find him there – to wash his hands of the strawberry cream who gives a knowing grin when Nick mentions Lulu's name. And who should appear but the nougat herself, with her fancy uptight praline parfait friends, followed by Dale, worried the deal's gone sour, and then Alvin with a crisis of his own. Nick's stuck in the middle, desperately trying to keep his four worlds from colliding, but he's got his hard-centres rubbing shoulders with his soft-centres, his milk chocolates mingling with his dark, his nuts and cherries and cheap candy all melting together… It's a terrifying sticky mess looking something like that sorry apple teacake disaster - and the store is all out of Sara Lee^®. Lenny bashes Dale to a pulp like so much discount compound chocolate. Mandy squirts Lenny in the eye with her supercharged tube of handcream. Nick gives a PG-rated curse as he sees his lifetime membership to the gentlemen's club go up in smoke, but survives to do what he does best – walk out – and rocks up to his dad's office looking more than a little distressed. Burton is so used to the hangdog expression and monosyllabic responses from his son that he doesn't notice something is amiss. In any case, he's preoccupied with the brilliant idea of bringing back the peanut brittle to run the place if he leaves.

Not content with being slowly tortured for three hellish days by assorted candy, Nick decides that a masochistic appearance at Lulu's engagement party (which she thinks he helped organise, though I doubt he'll be taking responsibility for that weird feather ritual) will serve as the frosting on his puddle of a teacake of a week. The most delicious thing about this show, aside from Nick's red tie, is the subtle writing. But, "It's already set, there's nothing you can do about it now" - where did that come from? I feel like I just got hit over the head with a sledgehammer.

Nick, meanwhile, is being pretty subtle about looking wrecked - either that or the praline talking to him thinks this is his regular response to being given bad news about his laundry options. Too determinedly stoic for a soft-centre, too reluctantly compassionate for a hard-centre... he may wrap himself up in that thick, thick coating of solid milk chocolate - tasty and proud, a little off-balance with a lop-sided flourish on top - but the last three days have been nibbling away at that protective armour of his to expose the kernel hurting deep inside. It's not easy being a hazelnut whirl.

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* Gives Gretchen a cheery hello (I bet she fell out of chair).

* Initially says no to Dale's bribe, and then only accepts to avoid hurting his father.

* Goes to Burton's presentation.

* Gives Bobby Hinkins the time of day.

* Doesn't tell Lulu about Brian's walk on the wild side.

* Tries to stop Lenny killing Dale.

* Goes to Lulu's party.

• You can put only $4000 down as a deposit on a $175,000 deal.
• You can have your parental rights terminated just because you've been in jail.
• Some place in Pittsburgh is the only place in Pittsburgh that sells a culotte steak.
• That feather thing... um, no, I didn't learn anything from that.

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