It all starts with a $4 box of trash bags.
Katie is already having a hard day. Both her daughters aren’t listening to her. Taylor is still moping about her high-heels-induced ankle injury ending her volleyball career. She refuses to get up out of her funk, even when Katie orders her to start thinking about a new after-school activity.
Anna-Kat, meanwhile, has procrastinated on her Paintings for Pandas fundraiser. She needs to sell paintings to theoretically save some pandas. It is unclear how. Katie tells Anna-Kat to start calling relatives and calling in favors. Anna-Kat reminds her that family members like Aunt Jean tend to give raisins for Christmas.
Katie’s help is rebuffed by both her daughters. Taylor instead asks Greg for help, thinking it might be a little easier to weasel out of starting another activity if she’s dealing with the pushover parent. Then she can just go back to watching Korean soap-operas. Anna-Kat decides to go to the person in the house most acquainted with the nuances of capitalism and asks Oliver for help selling her paintings. He tells her to ditch Aunt Jean and start using her cute face to guilt strangers into helping her. Oliver, of course, isn’t doing it just to help Anna-Kat. The winner of the contest gets a Gamestop giftcard.
Katie obviously thinks that both teams are destined for failure, which only strengthens Taylor’s and Anna-Kat’s resolve. Anna-Kat lets it slip that the kids have their own nickname for Katie that begins with “Colonel” and ends in “Control Freak.” The Ottos decide to make it a contest. If Taylor and Anna-Kat can solve their problems without Katie’s help, she’ll admit defeat. If they can’t, they will treated to her dreaded condescending mom smile. She gives a demonstration and literally everyone who sees it recoils in fear.
Without any problem to solve for her loved ones, Katie is left to her own devices and begins fixating on defective trashbags. She bought the bags at Jeffers because they said they were a “Smart Buy,” but every bag makes her seem like those hapless people on tv infomercials. They break in every way imaginable. Angela nixed Katie’s idea of filing a class-action lawsuit on behalf of upset mothers. All Katie can do is complain to the manager. They just give her a replacement box of defective bags.
Katie starts going crazy and using the bag problem as an outlet for her frustrations as a mother. She warns a scared shopper away from the bags yelling that she knows best. It’s clear that Katie has a problem of her own to solve, and it has nothing to do with the bags.
Before Katie has to think too hard about her need to solve everyone’s problems, everyone’s problems pop up once again. Both teams start out ok. Greg and Taylor pick synchronized swimming as her new activity. It’s perfect for her physical therapy and appeals to her nature as a follower. Greg is so proud of himself, he practices his own condescending smile in the rear-view mirror. Oliver and Anna-Kat are doing well too. They manage to sell 221 panda paintings before Katie gives them a reality check. Oliver has been thinking that there are magical painting people that produce the paintings, much like he got others to sew the logos on his defective polo shirts. Katie gets to trot out the smile when she informs her very-stupid son that he is the one who is going to have to paint 221 pandas.
Taylor and Greg also hit a snag that only Katie can solve. Taylor, to use Greg’s euphemism, is getting her monthly bill. She is way too embarrassed to tell this clearly to her father, and it all ends with Katie advising Greg over speakerphone about tampons, mentally scarring Oliver in the process.
Katie rushes home in time to comfort Taylor and talk Oliver out of a panda-painting mental breakdown. The Colonel announces that all hands are on deck and the Ottos work their way through 221 panda paintings. To thank Katie for her problem-solving skills, the rest accompany her back to Jeffers to get rid of those horrible plastic bags.
Katie may be the Colonel, but she is very good at her job.
What did you think of this week’s episode? Let me know in the comments!
