When Jim finds Andy playing chess with Ryan one day, it’s like uncovering a web of lies – apparently Andy has been making up excuses to go over and play chess with Ryan for some time now. Most disturbing is that he has to “go to the doctor”. While Ryan is indeed a doctor, there is probably little need for Andy to see a gynecologist.
After confronting Andy with the evidence, Andy fires back that Jim has no other friends, and so Jim sets out to prove him wrong. The first thing he does is head out to the bar to meet up with some guys, and that just doesn’t work out too well. One attempt after the other is shot down.
With that, Jim decides that he still needs to win back his best friend, and the best way to do that is to make them jealous. So he promptly sets up a slot car race with Ryan that he hopes Andy will see and want to jump in on. When Andy sees it, he gets jealous all right, but not about the slot car racing.
At least, not nearly as jealous as he does about the talking bag of chips. And what really happens is that Ryan decides the whole thing is just a little too strange for him, and since Dana is his best friend, he ought to just leave and go home, and let Jim and Andy work things out on their own. But not before hosing them down to separate them.
This serves to make a huge mess, but it also serves to unit Jim and Andy against Ryan, both for getting them wet, and for declaring that his wife is his best friend. After agreeing to do the talking bag of chips trick for Andy, they settle in for the Andy-onapolis 500 on the slot car track, and it seems that all is forgiven. They agree to tell each other if they are jealous in the future, rather than trying to hide things. But it’s unlikely that anything will go that smoothly in this family.
