Jay gets fired in front of the girls on “take your daughter to work day”. She comes home devastated, but for Michael having Jay home is a dream come true. Jay runs out of things to do around the house, and seeing his wife miserable, Michael decides to make a few calls and get her a job. Jay is happy about it, but not as much as she is after helping Jr. work on his Shakespeare and taking Claire to the mall, something she wouldn’t have time for if she still had her job.

The pregnancy test was Charmaine’s, who is thinking about running away from home. Thanks to Michael’s advice on teen parenting (something he had to go through himself); Charmaine decides to talk to her parents about it. Meanwhile, Michael tries to prove to Jr. that his friends are not as friendly as he thinks, something Jr. only realizes after one of the guys tries to hit on his sister Claire. And Michael goes on with the story on Kady’s birth, how he took over the pregnancy for Jay and how she ended up with Shaquille O’Neal thanks to a hospital mixup.

Michael accidentally kills Kady’s hamster and doesn’t have the courage to tell her right away, which results in Kady playing around with a dead hamster. Meanwhile, Claire pretends to be sick to skip school and have a boy over, but Michael suspects she’s up to something and doesn’t leave the house until he catches them. He promises not to tell Jay – who ends up forgiving Claire and letting her date the boy – if Claire takes responsibility for the dead hamster. And Michael also suspects their neighbor is spying on him while he’s on the bathroom.

Michael is on a mission — to get his notoriously late family dressed and ready to go to a wedding in 15 minutes, but everybody has some sort of problem that keeps them from getting fully ready. First it’s Jay, who insists on having Michael’s opinion on her outfit (so she can pick the exact opposite) and has a problem with his clapping. Then there’s Claire, who picked a not-so-formal dress. On top of that there’s Kady, who decided to eat chocolate pudding and ruined her clothes. When they are finally ready to go, Kady has a bathroom urge, and the entire family goes back to the house. Finally, Jr. has a heart-to-heart talk with his dad about his mean jokes to him and they leave, missing a phone call from Michael’s aunt saying the wedding is cancelled.