Man With a Plan – Going All the Way

By: Ujjyani Banerjee

Adam (Matt LeBlanc) and Kate (Grace Kaufman) are hanging out in the living room. Kate wants twenty dollars, but her dad asks her to earn it. Andi (Liza Snyder) buys Teddy (Matthew McCann) a deodorant after the child cited an emergency. She goes upstairs to hand it over but is shocked to find him studying with a girl classmate, Madison (Makayla Lysiak). Andi yells “Girl” and rushes down looking worried. Adam asks her to calm down and remembers how they themselves fooled around back in the day. Kate leaves, feeling gross. The parents decide to talk to their son. Andi promises to not yell “Girl” in exchange for sharing milkshakes with Teddy every once in a while. Then, they lay down ground rules for having girls over: open door, no touching, no blankets, no sitting on the bed and always maintaining a two cushion-distance while sitting on the couch. Teddy reveals that he and Madison are just friends, but he wishes that she were his girlfriend. He continues that he’d like to sit with her at lunch, hold her hand and attend the upcoming Rose-Getting party with her where they’d go all the way around the rink for Couples Skate. Adam and Andi breathe a sigh of relief. Even though Andi wished that their son learned these things on his own, Adam offers to coach Teddy who feels proud that the Burns’ “ladies’ man” gene got passed on well. The father-son duo commence their first learning session when they get interrupted by Lowell (Matt Cook) and Don (Kevin Nealon). While Lowell notes how hard it is to get out of the friend zone Adam believes in strategic planning. Andi, who is surreptitiously listening to them the whole time, disagrees and rather believes that its nothing but fate and magic. Seeing Adam scoff, she makes him remember how on one of their early dates a waitress had called them “a perfect couple,” which made her believe that he was her meant-to-be. Teddy finally decides to sticks with dad on this.

Don and Adam begin to coach Teddy on how to steer conversations intelligently and manufacture “magic” moments such as flatten Madison’s bike tire on purpose and then fix it or at least walk her back home securing his chance to ask her out to the party. Adam adds that if the answer is “No” the reply would be “Just Kidding. The next day Andi finds Joe (Stacy Keach), Adam and Don celebrating with snacks and beer. Apparently, Teddy is asking out Madison and it is nothing but a sheer moment of glory for the Burns’ men. Teddy walks in grimly. It turns out that Madison said “No.” While Adam wracks his brains to figure something out, Andi uses the situation to successfully get Teddy on her side and asks him to trust a woman when it comes to understanding a woman. Adam gets frustrated and blurts out to Andi that the “waitress” moment was a result of planning as Adam has paid her ten dollars to say those nice things. He regrets what he said almost immediately as he spends that night apologizing to Andi and ends up revealing that all of their magical moments were nothing but planned. Andi is upset that there was no fateful powerless night or a wounded Dove that she considered as signs. Adam asks her to look at the bright side as it definitely worked out for them.

Teddy interrupts them as he wants to talk to Andi about Madison. Both mother and son chat for hours that night. The next day Adam notices how happy Andi is. He is sad that even though she had her share of advising their daughters, she also stole Teddy from him. He is curious as to what advice Andi gave to their son. It turns out that she asked him to text Madison stating his true feelings and leave the rest to fate. Just then, Andi gets a call from Madison’s mom Kathy (Tristen MacDonald) who is furious at Teddy sending weird texts to her daughter. She warns Andi that the school will be involved next if it doesn’t stop immediately. Adam and Andi yank out Teddy’s phone and are horrified to read texts such as “I drew your face on an apple and then I ate it” and “I follow you on Instagram and Twitter and secretly on your way home.” While Adam makes peace with the idea of getting their daughters married and having Teddy live with them for the rest of his life, Andi gets an idea where they could merge their strategic planning and magic prowesses and sort this mess out. They soon go to Madison and Kathy and apologize for pumping Teddy with wrong ideas and in no way was Teddy to be blamed for it. Just then, Kate drops by and takes the center stage. Apparently, she found Madison and Teddy so cute that she herself made a note about it on her phone. Madison believes Kate and, ultimately, Kathy allows her daughter to go to the skating party with Teddy.

Adam, Andi and Kate are relieved as the operation was successful. Kate gets her twenty dollars for her stint and another twenty dollars for keeping things from Teddy. That night Andi is watching TV and the lights go out. Adam walks in and is surprised by the coincidence as he just happened to hold a candle, two wine glasses and a bottle of fine wine. Andi realizes the planning involved, but decides to enjoy the moment as it feels nothing less than magical to be wrapped around Adam’s arms.