American Housewife - Cheaters Sometimes Win - Review: "Mama Says"

Grandmas are all about cookies and knitting and love, right? Not Katie's mom Kathryn, who shows up on the Otto doorstep this week - five pieces of luggage and all!

Katie and Greg are in the middle of trying to get Taylor to do the SAT workbook they bought her (Oliver's doing it instead!), when Katie's chain-smoking, mojito drinking mama shows up! Kathryn quickly gets to work undoing all of Katie and Greg's parenting. She reinforces Taylor's plan of not going to college and instead spending the years hanging off guys' shoulders and traveling the world partying. She also convinces Anna-Kat that she should never have kids because they're "not worth it."

The next day, Katie is looking forward to her first day off when she gets a call to come to talk to the principal about Oliver. Apparently, he turned in a store-bought birdhouse as his own in shop class. He's getting suspended for the week, going to have to repeat the class over the summer, and the incident is going on his school record. When he points out to Katie that she always says cheating is the sign of a winner, Katie finds herself eating her words!

Having realized that Greg will look at her as morally corrupting their kids the same way her mom is trying to, when he finds out Oliver's rationale for cheating, Katie resolves not to tell Greg about the suspension and hide Oliver out for the week - with Doris, who uses Oliver as a chew toy for her German Shepherds! After a day of "attack dog," Oliver decides he can't handle a whole week of it and fesses up to Greg about his cheating.

Greg is, predictably, pissed, but after finding out that the incident will go on Oliver's record (and probably keep him from getting into his dream school), he resolves to talk to the principal "educator to educator" and see if he can convince him otherwise. Things might have gone differently, but Greg makes the mistake of saying "After all, it's only shop class." And guess who's apparently a shop classaholic? Yep, Principal Ablin.

Having exhausted all options, Greg and Katie tell Oliver he's just going to have to take responsibility for his actions and hope for the best. Kathryn suggests Oliver just become a stewardess with Taylor. Katie again asks Kathryn why she's there and it comes out that she's broke ("My pension from Pan Am didn't exactly pan out.) and is having to Airbnb her apartment to a group of Germans for an extended period of time to make some money. After hearing this, Katie accuses her mother of being a bad influence on the kids, but the kids come to her defense, saying Katie is just like her, which Greg agrees with.

Katie realizes she really may be turning into her mother and after talking with both Greg and Kathryn, during which Greg surmises that "Some families pass on high blood pressure. Yours passes on terribleness," Katie decides she has to stop the kids from keeping up with the terrible family traits.

Katie apologizes for sending the message that cheating was okay to Oliver, and tells him not to "let one mistake derail your whole life." Kathryn tells Taylor she needs to go to college, so "you'll have other options for when your airline goes bankrupt, taking your pension with it. And you won't wind up broke with six Germans crammed in your apartment, ordering weird movies with your iTunes, like "FernGully," while you're two states away sponging off your kid." Plus, now Kathryn can come visit her at college ("Frat boys love me!").

Taylor actually starts studying for the SAT ("Oh no. I'm learning things!") and Oliver resolves that if he has to go to Cornell instead of Harvard, "[he'll] be right next to Niagra Falls. So, when [he] gets too depressed, [he'll] just hop in a barrel and throw [himself] over!" For his punishment, Katie and Greg decide to make Oliver tutor Taylor, although he eventually decides that being chased around by Doris's dogs is the better option, and goes back to that!

Oh, and Kathryn also figures out a way to get Oliver's cheating off his record. She sleeps with Principal Adlin!

Random Thoughts:
-I loved Greg's "I'm changing the wifi password. I'll reveal one character for each hour you study!" That's genius!

-Best line goes to Doris. "If you don't have anything destructive to say, don't say anything at all!"

How long do you think Kathryn's going to be around for? Is Taylor really going to go to college? Let me know what you think below!