Brendon takes Cynthia to Jason's country club and pretends to be a member. The ruse is exposed when a waiter calls his bluff. Paula is suffering from test anxiety. McGuirk pretends to be a bodybuilder in order to get a date with a former schoolmate.
Brendon spends the weekend with his father and his father's girlfriend, Linda, who turns out to be a very unpleasant person. Coach McGuirk, meanwhile, plays big brother to a student who is prone to sickness.
Brendon goes to family therapy with Andrew and Linda to learn "gentle talk." Brendon doesn't like the therapy, and when the therapist begins to analyze his movies, he likes it even less.
A class trip to a hotel provides a great opportunity for some "on location" footage. It sounds like a great plan until Paula is asked to chaperone the trip with Mr. Lynch. Coach McGuirk has to get a second job to pay for damages resulting from a fight with the office coffeemaker.
Mr. Lynch is tutoring Brendon, who is failing History. His lack of historical perspective is evident through his movies, which star the evil George Washington, the evil Picasso and the evil Annie Oakley.
The school writing fair is one week away and Brendon is suffering a bad case of writer's block! Melissa and Jason put pressure on him to no avail, but they end up being a hit anyway. Paula is inspired by the pep talk she gives Brendon and gets back to her writing roots.
Paula tries to get a role in one of Brendon's films about a little girl named Little Malooloo who has two fathers. McGuirk feels left out by the regular pizza club meetings that Brendon has with his dad.
The big day is here: Brendon's dad is marrying his girlfriend. A rash is slowly covering Brendon's body, but otherwise he's doing okay. Paula's friend Stephanie is in town for the wedding and takes a liking to Coach McGuirk.
Erik is worried that Melissa doesn't have enough friends who are girls so he enrolls her in The Fairy Princesses. Meanwhile, Brendon gets invited to spend the weekend with Fenton, whom he didn't even know he was friends with. Both Brendon and Melissa have what they consider to be the worst weekends of their lives.
A kitchen fire at the Smalls is nothing compared to the flaring tempers triggered when both of Paula's newly separated parents move in. To make matters worse, Coach McGuirk volunteers to "renovate" the kitchen. Meanwhile, Brendon, Jason and Melissa make a crime drama called "Mulligan and Winooski" about two cops.
