Jim doesn’t get along particularly well with anyone, but least of all with his neighbors. And there is one neighbor in particular that he gets along with even less than the rest: Julie (played by the original Catwoman, Julie Newmar). Julie’s dog, Trevor, barks all the time – except when he goes over there to complain about the dog barking. Julie doesn’t particularly care, though, because Jim’s tree has a branch that she’s wanted him to trim back for some time (and he won’t). So they agree to disagree. Or disagree to disagree. Whatever.
After last night, Jim had an especially fitful night’s sleep and so he went over to ask Julie to keep the dog quiet once more. Naturally, she declined to help. But this morning was different, because now Trevor is missing, and it seems that she – along with the entire neighborhood – blames Jim, since he has such an intense dislike for the dog.
Now Jim is a lot of things, but one thing he would never be likely to do is open a gate and let a dog loose. That doesn’t mean that he’ll feel bad about it, because he doesn’t much like Julie, but he didn’t do it, either.
While he and Andy are checking the yard for the dog, however, they notice that Julie left her window open. And when they do, they see Trevor right there, in her window. He’s not missing, she’s hiding him, to get Jim in trouble. Why would she do that?
After a series of Batman-like moves in the yard, including the use of a grappling hook and climbing up the tree just like Batman and Robin used to do on the side of buildings, they get to the branch and are trying to cross over to Julie’s house when the branch breaks. At least she ought to be happy about that.
Next, they send Gracie in through the doggie door, and she opens up the door for them so they can get in. Once they do, they spot pictures of The Grumpy Guy – a popular book – and realize that Julie is the author of the book (her pen name contains the initials “CW”, presumably for “Catwoman”). Then they realize that Jim is the model for The Grumpy Guy, and Andy believes that Cheryl is the model for The Grumpy Guy’s round sidekick, Randy. See if you can figure out the fault in that logic.
When they invite Julie over, they bust her with what they found, and she confesses to them that she needed a new story for The Grumpy Guy and Jim hadn’t thrown a tantrum for quite some time, so she was getting desperate. That’s when Cheryl offers to help her find all kinds of stories, with all the other neighbors, and the problem is solved.
