All for the Guest

Wooton Bassett rides home on a sputtering vintage motorcycle he has just bought and cheerfully announces to his wife Penny that Bradford, the beloved butler from his childhood home, is flying in for a visit - arriving the very same day as Penny's parents, who are coming for their first weekend stay at the couple's house. To make room for everyone, Wooton installs a fold-out Murphy bed in his office, though he forgets to attach the weights that keep it from snapping shut. Wooton plans fancy dishes like bacon-wrapped shrimp and quail eggs to pamper Bradford, who has spent his whole life serving others, while Penny worries about pleasing her down-to-earth parents. Her solution seems perfect: the Regent Plaza, a luxury hotel with a chandelier-lit bowling alley - elegant enough for Bradford, and bowling for her dad.

The visit wobbles from the start. Penny's parents, Frank and Eleanor Wise, arrive with their own microwavable meat pies, and Frank declares he only wants to relax. Bradford turns up by cab, politely declines the shrimp because he has just become vegetarian, and manages to ruffle Frank without meaning to. At the fancy bowling alley, complete with a "personal bowling butler" named Reginald, everything goes wrong. Frank grumbles about the salad and the sleepy string music, and his coaching - telling Bradford to hate the pins and "crush them like beetles in your cornflakes" - ends with Bradford's finger stuck in the ball, a hard fall, and a bumped head. A squabble over sparkling water versus bathroom-tap water sends Bradford off to rest, and Frank sulks over the worst game he's bowled in years.

Back home, disaster piles up. Eleanor climbs onto the unweighted Murphy bed and it folds up into the wall with her inside. Frank rescues her, appalled to find Wooton's toolbox holds a meat hammer, a glue stick, gummy bears, and plastic Ozzie the Otter collector coins. When Penny and Wooton suggest a symphony in the park, Frank finally boils over, complaining that snooty Bradford has taken over the weekend. Later, while everyone marvels at Wooton's enormous walk-in pantry, Wooton finds a note: Bradford overheard the argument, apologized for causing trouble, and has borrowed the motorcycle to ride to the airport. Worse, Frank has just rehung the pantry with a spare door whose lock is broken - trapping all four of them inside. Wooton saves the day by remembering the prize buried in his Choco Puffs cereal: an otter coin that works as a screwdriver, letting Frank take the door off its hinges.

They race after Bradford and find him stranded by the roadside, because the motorcycle Wooton never finished fixing has lost its flywheel. Penny laughs, "I'm so glad you forget to finish things, Wooton." With everyone gathered, Frank confesses the truth: after thirty years, he was laid off from the factory last week, and he arrived with a chip on his shoulder. Rescuing Eleanor from the Murphy bed was actually his favorite part of the trip, because, as he admits, "I liked having something to fix. I liked having purpose." Bradford agrees that he too would rather do things for people than be waited on, and the group heads home to restart the weekend their own way. Bradford happily serves meat pies and reorganizes Frank's toolbox, while Frank blissfully repairs the pantry door, the squeaky Murphy bed, and anything else he can find. When Wooton asks whether Frank truly enjoys all this fixing, Eleanor explains it's his second favorite thing to do - and as Frank grouses about loose molding in the next room, Penny reveals his first: complaining about it.