When Jim and Cheryl hold their annual barbecue, it may go without saying that Jim isn’t too happy about it. You see, Jim doesn’t really like people all that much. What may come as a surprise is that he manages to actually make one of the neighbors cry. It’s nothing new that he says what he feels, and it’s not all that uncommon for him to get someone mad – but cry? This may be a first.
Yet when Fay asks him, for the umpteenth year in a row, if they are going to get together sometime for dinner, and Jim asks her just when that will happen – because they have never actually done it previously – she breaks down in tears. And when Cheryl sees what Jim has done, he’s in trouble.
Before he can even figure out what has happened, not only are plans made for the four of them to have dinner, but Fay and her husband Bob are coming over to the house for dinner. It’s the worst thing that could happen – at least if they went out, he might score a free meal out of it!
When Fay and Bob arrive later in the week, Jim has been practicing (with Andy, of all people) being nice. Both Cheryl and Dana are suitably impressed. He’s really doing very well. But when Bob wears a very strangely colored hat, it’s all Jim can do to restrain himself from saying something to let him know just how bad he looks. After the crisis passes, Andy starts giving Jim signs, like a third-base coach, and somehow Jim makes it through the next few minutes.
When Cheryl has to go check on dinner, it looks like a crisis is in the making, but then Fay tells Jim that she is so thankful that he called her on dinner, because she has been saying things like that for years, and no one ever had the courage to tell her what he did. She also apologizes for crying – it turns out that her cat died, and she was just all emotional. It turns out that Jim really had little to do with it!
To make matters worse (well, worse for Cheryl), Fay came over – and brought a pie – earlier in the week to apologize. But strangely, neither the apology nor the pie ever made it to Jim. It looks like it’s time for some anti-scheming to take place, and that’s just what happens.
When Cheryl comes back to the table, Jim, Fay and Bob let into her about the lake house that Fay and Bob have, and how the hot tub would be just perfect for the four of them. It’s a little cozy, but without their swimsuits, the should be just fine. When Cheryl hears that, she wants Jim to kick them out for being swingers – but by then, Jim is into his “Polite Jim” routine and won’t hear of it.
It’s all an act, of course, and when they return to the dining room with dessert, Fay and Bob are dressed in their skivvies, ready for some hot tubbing! Cheryl throws them out herself – at which point she gets to hear all about how she was just had because she didn’t share the apology (or the pie). When will she ever learn?
