Life in Pieces – Boxing Opinion Spider Beard

In this week’s episode of Life in Pieces, John (James Brolin) is dropping off his granddaughter Samantha (Holly J. Barrett) for ballet practice. She is not looking forward to it and grumbles that she is only going because her mom Heather (Betsy Brandt) is forcing her. John decides to take the sullen teenager to his favorite place–the boxing gym. John sees himself as the big man on campus there and even gets praise from real life Victoria Secret model Jasmine Tookes who guest starred in this episode. He encourages his granddaughter to give boxing a try. She is hesitant at first because she knows her mom will not approve. It turns out she’s a natural – a Muhammad Ali in the making. When Heather sees a positive change in her daughter after her “ballet lessons,” she thanks her father for taking Sam to her lesson. He accepts the praise and suggests that he continue taking Sam to ballet lessons. As she continues with the boxing lessons, Sam becomes popular in the gym and this makes John very unhappy. He decides to regain his throne by telling Heather the truth about the boxing lessons. Heather is upset and forces her daughter back to ballet. However, John realizes that things will not be the same at the gym now that his granddaughter is out. His trainer Troy (Victor Ortiz) is sad that Sam is not there anymore. He reveals that Sam was the only talented person he was training and he was lying to his other clients–John included. Sam comes into the gym and angrily confronts her grandfather for spilling the beans to her mother and encourages him to convince her mother to let her continue the boxing lessons. The intimidation works and he tells Heather to give boxing a try. He tells Heather that he is jealous of the attention that Sam is getting. Heather decides to see Sam in action in the gym with the sole purpose of removing her daughter permanently from the gym, but ends up seeing how talented her daughter is and decides to stop standing her way.

Jen (Zoe Lister Jones) goes to her doctor and brother-in-law Tim (Dan Bakkedahl) for a check up and he tells her that she has acute infectious pharyngitis. Besides his corny hospital jokes, he informs her that she will have to get surgery to remove her tonsils or as Tim puts it, her “throat testicles.” Jen believes that step is way too drastic and wants to get a second opinion. She talks to her husband Greg (Colin Hanks) about her dilemma who thinks it is a good idea, but Jen is worried that getting the second opinion will cause drama in the family. While he strokes his new beard, Greg encourages her to get the surgery. In the end, Jen decides to get the second opinion. The second doctor does not think that she needs the surgery and Jen is relieved. The relief is short lived when she discovers that the new doctor has to send his recommendations to Tim who is her current doctor. Before she can stop him, the email was sent to Tim. Now all she can do is wait for the fallout. At a family dinner, Jen feels that Tim has not seen the email yet because he appears to be happy and cracking jokes. Once Jen decides to order her tea, Heather, Tim’s wife, wants to make sure if Jen needs another opinion to see if she really wants the tea. It turns out that they do know after all. Jen does not back down and tells both Tim and Jen she is happy that she got the second opinion. Later at home, the second doctor calls her and informs her that she will actually need to get surgery like Tim said. Humbled, Jen heads back to Tim’s office to schedule an appointment for her surgery. She apologizes, but Jen and Tim do not want to let her off the hook easily. Finally, it ends with Tim hugging Jen so all is good again with the family.

At the same dinner where Tim and Heather were confronting Jen on her second opinion, Matt (Thomas Sadoski) was trying to get his fiancée Colleen (Angelique Cabral) to stop overdoing it with his mother Joan (Dianne Wiest). He says, “Would you stop trying to please my mother? She already kisses you on the lips. That’s as far as you want it to go.”

Joan hands her son a garlic knot and he is terrified when he sees a spider crawling on it. Obviously, he freaks out but realizes later that his mom pranked him again with a fake spider. Matt and his siblings tell Joan to stop scaring them, but she feels it’s too fun to give it up. Back at their apartment, Matt thinks he’s getting lucky but Colleen shows him a spider instead. He freaks out once more, but she assures him that the spider is fake. Colleen encourages him to give his mom a taste of her medicine. Later, Greg, Heather, Matt and Colleen brainstorm ways to prank Joan. They decide on John’s “new robot vacuum.” Using a remote control, they make the creepy vacuum come to life and scare Joan. Things take a bad turn when Joan ends up on the floor. They race to see if she’s okay. They tell Matt to go find the first aid kit. When Matt opens the first kit, he is shocked to find lots of spider crawling inside. While he’s freaked out, he tries to find the bug spray and finds a tarantula there and he’s terrified. In a turn of events it seems Joan is too good to be pranked. Greg, Heather and Colleen were all in the ultimate joke.

Jen asks Greg when he’s going to shave his “Amish farmer” beard. He tells her that beard is here to stay. Jen asks Heather for advice and Jen decides to use it on Greg. She tells Greg that he has inspired her not to shave anymore either. Greg does not fall into her trap.

Round one: beard.

The next day, Jen asks Greg again to shave the beard when he is holding their daughter Lark. Again, he refuses and tells her that Lark likes the beard, too. It seems that Lark doesn’t like the beard afterall because she pukes all over it.

Round two: Jen.

At the dinner mentioned in the other stories, Matt smells Greg’s vomit flavored beard. Tim suggests Greg use Benihana because “you don’t stop smelling, but you smell like shrimp.” Greg takes Tim’s advice, but Jen is still disgusted by the rancid smell of Greg’s beard.

She’s says, “Oh, no, no, it’s worse! Oh, no, how it can be worse? Now it smells like vomit on a hibachi.”

Greg finally succumbs. Bye bye smelly beard.

Round three: Jen