His wife Annie says she is the same weight now she was 20 years ago since ‘the wedding’. I presume they are talking about their wedding. The podgy Rev has put on 12 pounds at the most, but Annie still loves him and suggests they start going for walks together which would be romantic and healthy.
Mary wants Matt, whose hair is currently at a respectable length, to be her wing man and ask out a guy she likes. The guy, Brian, says Mary is not his type, as she appears to be the kind of girl who’d give a guy a hard time. Matt agrees (what a brother), but begs Brian to take her out for pizza, giving him $20 to do so because it would be easier for him to do that than explain to Mary why Brian didn’t want to go out with her.
Lucy, the misunderstood middle child gets invited to a sleepover and it’s like she’s won the lottery. Can’t wait until that blows up in her face when the middle school skanks act out whatever they have planned for the poor, unsuspecting do-gooder.
Simon and Ruthie are on the beat playing family detectives, wondering how their uncool sister got invited to the cool group’s sleepover. Then Ruthie gets told she is going to have swimming lessons, something she is less than thrilled about. So Simon offers to teach her to swim in the bath.
Matt asks Simon to borrow $20, who laughs in his face and says ‘You’re paying a guy to take Mary out!’. Simon eventually agrees but with conditions - interest and a no disclosure policy. This kid is smart.
The Rev goes for a run. Annie tries to stick her nose into her kids’ business with little to no success. Don’t worry love, it always comes out in the end.
Brian turns up for his date with Mary, and is a major sad sack. What are they going to talk about for two hours? He says he will have her home early and the Rev is immediately suspicious. Annie is onto the game, and she tells Matt it’s going to blow up in his face big time. There’s a lot of things that blow up in people’s faces in this show. Guess they don’t have five kids for nothing.
The Rev asks Matt to get him some cheeseburgers because being healthy is really not working for him. Matt offers to get ice-cream for the rest of the family so they don’t figure out he is an enabler. Ruthie says no thanks, we don’t want to be fat too.
At the sleepover, Lucy is told to hide under the bed as the girls set up a sting for the last girl to get there and hear what she really thinks about her without her knowing she’s there. Elaborate, pathetic, childish, but effective. It has the desired effect, Lucy is upset and so is the unsuspecting girl they got to talk about what she really thinks about Lucy. The head bitch of the group high-fives everyone and laughs like the evil dictator she is. As an aside, Mila Kunis plays one of the cool girls who is now going out with Jimmy Moon, Lucy’s ex-boyfriend.
The game is up with Mary and Matt, she finds out he paid Brian to take her out. It’s a shame because they actually had a good time and Brian was going to reimburse Matt because he actually ended up liking Mary and they shared a front porch pash like any good middle-class American teenage couple.
The cheeseburger ruse is also up, as Annie and the Rev go and pick up Lucy from the terrible sleepover, she runs over the cheeseburgers Matt had hidden behind a rear wheel. They come home as Mary is looking at a picture of her ex-boyfriend, wondering when her life got so hard and how could her brother do that to her? Then we find out Mary had told the head bitch to invite Lucy to the sleepover… pot (cough, cough), kettle (cough, cough). Shit is about to get real.
The Rev eats a grapefruit while Matt eats pancakes and laughs at his diet. Lucy is going for a walk with her dad, and Simon and Ruthie are still swim training in the bath tub. Until their mum walks in on them. While she thinks it fabulous Ruthie is learning to swim, she doesn’t let her off the hook. She’ll still be taking swimming lessons. Annie also tells Simon he is responsible for breaking her teeny tiny little heart. Own your actions people.
The walk turns out to be the Rev and Lucy eating junk food and drinking milkshakes. That’s my kind of diet. Of course, Annie can read them like a book and is in fact an evil puppet master pulling strings here and there to manipulate her significant other and offspring into doing whatever she wants them to do.
Mary and Brian make up after he tells her he actually likes her giving him a hard time, and she tells him that’s pathetic. Oh, and see you tonight for our date. Annie tells the Rev she’s missed him the last few nights while he’s been out ‘running’. ‘Every pound of me,’ he asks? Oh Rev, you’re really having a hard time of it. Now LAY OFF THE HOT DOGS!
Ruthie jumps into the pool and can swim, her family cheer and cry like she is the first person ever to have figured out how to propel themselves through a body of water. I love a happy ending, and it would appear, the Camdens do too. The fatty boombahs break the bed as their children run to see what the fuss is about. Now that is one fucked up image.