Man With a Plan – Adam Acts His Age

By: Ujjyani Banerjee

The Burns family raises a toast upon successfully selling their flip house. Don (Kevin Nealon) flashes the bonuses each have earned and Adam (Matt LeBlanc) asks them to spend it on something rewarding like how he and Don shall be spending it on his 50th birthday by celebrating it in classic Burns style. Lowell (Matt Cook) asks them to count him in already. Adam says they’ll be in Colorado dirt-biking for a week along a gnarly trail called The Devil’s Tail Pipe. Lowell backs off already; he’d prefer paddling around a lake in swan boats. Andi (Liza Snyder) feels dirt bikes are dangerous at age fifty and asks Marcy (Kali Rocha) if she’s cool with it. She’s not. Don mentions it’ll either be him coming back home energized or her getting rich with his life insurance paid. Marcy’s on board.

It’s unwrap-the-gifts time at home. Andi has gotten her husband a shirt. Marcy is pissed that Don didn’t mention gifts. He wishes Adam “the best” from both himself and Marcy. Bev (Swoosie Kurtz) and Joe (Stacy Keach) have gotten him a socks puller. Adam exclaims he’s just middle aged, but Joe corrects it 2/3rd aged. Lowell has gotten him a GoPro camera, which Adam’s excited to take to the Devil’s Tail Pipe. Bev wonders if it’s a sex club. Andi clears it up for her and notes how it’s a bad idea. Adam argues as he still feels like a kid at heart. Bev asks Andi to allow him to go as one day her husband would love nothing more that sitting on a couch all day as she eyes Joe surreptitiously. He asks where she wants him to go. Bev suggests on a nature walk. Joe says Vietnam was his nature walk. Just then the kids bring in the cake and they all sing as Adam bends down to blow the candles. Well, he cracks his hip. Bent, he hurries off asking Don to follow. Everybody is left awed of what just happened. Don tries adjusting his hip, but makes it worse.

Adam hides his agony infront of Andi as he doesn’t want to have his dirt bike week cancelled. She’s no fool and challenges him to simply lift the gift his kids got him – a bowling ball. He obviously cannot and asks Don to have it as he’s had many. Adam assures Andi that he’ll be fine, but she reminds him that she’s the protector of their family since she told Kate (Grace Kaufman) that she cannot zipline over a volcano. She told Teddy (Matthew McCann) he can’t jump over Emme (Hala Finley) with his bicycle and she is forbidding Adam from dirt biking in this condition. He asks if he’d be allowed if he furnishes a note from the doctor that says he’s good to go. It would work for Andi, who just hopes he can successfully lift that note.

At the clinic Adam’s X-rays prevent him from getting the clean slate he wanted. He tells the doc how it was his lifelong dream to dirt bike the trail, but in return the doc shares his lost dream of becoming a jazz pianist. According to the doctor if he were a pianist now he’d play a sad piece on how Adam won’t be allowed to go to Devil’s Tail Pipe. He gives him a list of exercises to practice for a speedy recovery.

At home Andi asks Lowell what he’d use his bonus for. Lowell is torn between a savings bond and a pot belly pig. Don advises him to go with the pig as that’d make a killer sandwich if things were to go wrong, unlike some savings bond. Andi shares she’d hire a professional photographer for a family photograph and summons the kids whom she’s dressed up as peasants to give Don and Lowell an idea of the picture. Teddy claims this is the most unhappy he’s been, Emme finds it uncool and Kate feels she looks like a girl who just escaped polygamy! Just then Adam walks in wearing a lumbar belt. Kate asks if he’s okay. Teddy continues that if he is he must help them. Don calls it one fancy lingerie. When Andi asks how it went Adam reveals the no on the bike trip and how on his way out the clinic the nurse commented he’d gotten an inch shorter than his last visit. Lowell gives a raincheck on the swan boat as he now has to check if Adam will be eligible height-wise. Adam is pissed and barks that they’re not riding those swans. Andi asks if Adam’s fine as his mood seems off. He says he’s feeling fine but he’s just decided he’ll settle on the couch henceforth. He sits down next to Joe and they start behaving similarly – laughing and sighing while watching The Weather Channel. Don, Lowell and Andi stare at the father-son duo as they start behaving like twins.

A week goes by and Andi feels sick of Adam who in Joe’s company, who has found his new solace on the couch watching TV all day. Bev walks in and takes Joe out for a walk around the park. On his way out he wishes that a hawk flies off with him. Andi reminds Adam to do the stretches the doctor gave him to do. She even invites him for some adult time. Nothing moves him. Worried about his mind more than his body, Andi swears she’ll let him go on the dirt bike if he does the stretches and got fit in the coming weeks. This inspires and gets Adam his fire back. He starts a rigorous training along with Bev and within a few weeks he’s back on the wagon.

On the day of his bike trail Adam is happy that he’s finally looking forward to Devil’s Tail Pipe. Andi feels happy for him, too. She bids him and Don, who are looking like Bob The Builder and the Red Power Ranger, goodbye respectively. In no time Adam comes back with the back pain and a pissed off brother tagging behind. Don walks off thanking Adam for the wonderful day. According to him, people say mean things when you’re dressed as a power ranger but aren’t riding a bike. Andi apologizes to Adam for having forced him and gets him some water and aspirin. Adam is in too much pain and cannot bend to get the glass. Andi says she’ll help him and picks the glass up. It slips out her hand but Adam catches it in time by ducking. He is super embarrassed as his facade of “having a backache” is now wide open in front of Andi. She is secretly relieved that he’s not suffering but wonders why he was lying this time. He reveals he doesn’t want to risk his family by putting his life in danger. He’s accepted that there are certain wishes in life one must let go as age catches on. Andi is amazed at his maturity and finds him another less intense trail called “Marshmallow Flats.” Slightly older folks ride it and it’s got a deli in the middle with a B&B along the way.

A few days later after the photo comes in Andi shows the family picture to the kids. Emme spots her eyes being closed. Teddy shows how he was captured while he was sneezing and Kate points at her culty look. Soon Don and Adam return from their “Marshmallow Flats” trail. Adam says he loved the rides and excitedly tells he was told to speed down! Don, however; goes straight to the dining table and sits down grabbing his tummy blaming the hot deli food to have gone overboard for him.