Man With a Plan – Holey War

By Julie Mante

On this week’s episode of Man with a Plan, Andi (Liza Snyder) is surprised to see that the kids brushed their teeth and went to bed without a fight. Her husband Adam (Matt LeBlanc) takes the credit. He tells her that after a Nerf ball incident, he lays down the law with their children and bans all “monkey business.” She tells him that he needs to expand his playbook because yelling at the kids will not always work. He tells her that he does not need to expand, his one move is enough.

The next day, Adam is outside on a work call when Andi comes home. They both notice that the kids are quiet until they hear a noise. They go inside the house to investigate and find a hole in the wall. Adam and Andi demand answers from the kids, but they are keeping quiet. Andi encourages Adam to meet in the kitchen to plan their strategy. They decide that the best way to find out the truth is to turn the siblings against each other. First, they start with the eldest child Katie (Grace Kaufman). They let Katie know that if she does not reveal what she knows about the wall that she will be not be allowed to go to volleyball camp this year. Katie remembers something that they do not. That weekend her parents would be alone because she would be at camp and her younger siblings would be staying at the grandparents’ house.

Thwarted by Katie, they decide to try their luck with their middle child, Teddy (Matthew McCann). Even though he is the “dumb” child, Katie made sure he would not crack because he surprised his parents with his knowledge of not talking without representation.

Their last hope is the baby of the family, Emme (Hala Finley). With her, they try scaring her with Santa putting her on the naughty list for not telling her parents the truth. Unfortunately for them, she does not fall for it. She says, “I’m comfortable with my relationship with Santa.” At a loss, the parents do not know what to do.

Adam is frustrated that no one is confessing and Andi is ready to fix the hole and ground all the children. Their next idea is to get Adam’s brother Don (Kevin Nealon) to talk to his son, Mikey, who was always in trouble when he was younger and now is struggling in adulthood. Andi and Adam hope the kids will be scared straight when they realize that bad behavior catches up to you. However, Don is able to put his son in a positive light when talking to his nephew and his nieces. Mikey is living in a studio apartment in Poughkeepsie, New York and working as a mascot for a minor league baseball team. The kids have a positive reaction to Mikey’s life. Don makes things worse by saying, “It doesn’t matter what you do as a kid, sometimes your dreams come true.”

The next day, Adam takes the kids to school and he tries again with getting information from Emme, but the young kindergartner will not budge. Her teacher Mrs. Rodriguez (Dianna Maria Riva) overhears the conversation and offers Adam some advice. She tells him that it is not a fair fight with kids these days. Parents and teachers have to do different things to punish kids. In her classroom, she uses a marble jar. If the kids are good, she puts one marble in the jar. When the jar is full, the kids get a party. What the kids do not know is that from time to time, she removes a large amount of marbles from the jar so the kids have to start all over.

Inspired by Emme’s teacher, Andi and Adam personalize the marble trick as their own. They take all of the kids’ Halloween candy and put it in a huge bowl. They say that the first child to tell them what happened with the hole gets all the candy. For the first time, the kids look rattled.

It looks like Teddy is going to crumble, but Katie is able to keep him in line and the kids do not budge. Frustrated, Andi tearfully confesses that she is tired of all the fighting and begins to cry. Seeing his mom in tears is too much for Teddy and he confesses to making the hole. He gets up and hugs his mom who is crying in Adam’s arms. Katie gets up to join the hug and also tells her parents that she was the one who got the banned skateboard out of the cubby and dared her younger brother to ride it. After she confessed, Andi reveals she was faking her tears. Adam grounds Teddy and Katie for two weeks – no computer and no phone.

While Adam is happy that the hole mystery has been solved, he tells Andi that the crying trick can only work once because now the kids know that she faked it. She assures him that it will always be an option because no one will know if she is faking it or not. This makes Adam wonder if she has used her tears on him before and it turns out she has.