As Iron Sharpens Iron

At a church in Odyssey, Carla Perkins waits for her son Wyatt to finish his Bible study while her older daughter Bridget sits absorbed in her phone, claiming to text an old acquaintance from Virginia. Carla gently nudges Bridget toward the church youth group, and Pastor Wilson Knox extends the invitation himself, but Bridget insists her Tuesday shifts at Burger World make it impossible. "Burger buns stop for no one," she jokes. Meanwhile, Wyatt has been captivated by Pastor Knox's lesson on Proverbs 27:17, "As iron sharpens iron, so one man sharpens another," and has coined a term for the kind of best friend who makes you a better person: an iron companion.

Bridget, it turns out, has been meeting a real friend after all: Kandy Morris, a former Burger World coworker. When Kandy mentions needing to catch a bus to her old house in Connellsville, Bridget offers to drive her. At the house, Kandy gathers belongings she left behind after moving in with her dad following her parents' divorce. While Kandy is out of the room, her mother, Grace, bluntly warns Bridget that Kandy was fired for stealing, calls her a thief who excuses it as "balancing economic inequality," and predicts she will end up in jail. The visit ends coldly, though Kandy shrugs it off as normal for the two of them.

Back in Odyssey, Wyatt has reviewed every kid he knows and decided none of them qualifies as an iron companion. So, with help from his friend Vincent Smouse, he builds a virtual friend on an app called Ether, naming him Erwin, which Vincent says means honorable friend. Erwin proves endlessly agreeable, praising Wyatt's every idea. When Erwin assures Wyatt he would be a great cook, Wyatt attempts a surprise shakshuka dinner, complete with a paper towel draped over spattering oil and four eggs, still in their shells, cooking in the microwave. Carla arrives home just in time to stop a fire but not the exploding eggs.

On the drive home from Connellsville, a police officer pulls Bridget over. Grace has reported that Kandy left with two hundred dollars' worth of jewelry. Kandy calmly phones her mother and suggests she check her sewing box, where the jewelry turns up, and the girls are released. Shaken, Bridget later realizes the truth: Kandy hid the jewelry in the sewing box herself so that her mother, who has called the police on her before, would look silly. Kandy apologizes for dragging Bridget into it and admits she really has stolen, though she insists she would never steal from family or friends. Only, as Bridget dryly puts it, from soulless corporations.

Waiting for Bible study, a discouraged Wyatt tells Pastor Knox that Erwin hasn't sharpened him at all. Knox, who once tested Ether himself and found it agreed even that beets were the tastiest vegetable on the planet, explains how sharpening a knife works: the blade is ground against a whetstone, and tiny flecks of steel must be shaved away. A friend who only agrees with you can never sharpen you; real iron companions bring disagreements, debates, and warnings not to microwave that egg, because sometimes we have bad ideas. Wyatt and Knox pray for God to send the right friend, and moments later Vincent walks up, having come to try the Bible study Wyatt recommended. Wyatt suddenly sees what has been in front of him all along and asks Vincent to be his iron companion. "Did that take you long enough?" Vincent replies.

At home, Wyatt deletes the Ether app for good and heads off to build a fort in the woods with Vincent. But Bridget, who has just heard all about an app that lets you make virtual friends, picks up her phone and murmurs, "Ether, huh?"