Dinner Roll Models

At breakfast in the Parker house, the family learns from the newspaper that Vince King, the father of Matthew's classmate Vance, has been arrested for embezzling and fraud at the Odyssey Bank. Olivia, who is helping Mr. Whittaker organize the Let's Get Together Festival as a celebration of families, announces that the Parkers ought to practice what they preach and become better role models at home, with more talking, patience, courtesy, and sharing. Her timing matters to her because Buck is coming to dinner that night while Eugene and Katrina have a date night, and Wooton and Penny are invited too. Matthew is uneasy about Buck, since he has seen him hanging around Vance's gang and spending time with a boy named Dion, but Olivia begs him not to bring it up. She wants Buck to feel like part of the family, declaring that they are going to be the perfect family.

Meanwhile, at Whit's End, Whit checks on Wooton, who has been bouncing between hotels since losing his house and renews his offer to let Wooton live with him and Jason. Whit then unveils a surprise: he has turned a room next to his office into a studio for Wooton, carefully recreated from an old newspaper photo to look just like the studio that burned, right down to the pencil holder and a swiveling chair. Whit admits he has an ulterior motive, hoping Wooton will create Sleuth Family Robinson artwork for the festival. Wooton is thrilled and wants to start immediately, but when Penny eagerly asks how they will begin, Wooton gently brushes her off, saying he works better alone. Penny leaves hurt, feeling banned from his workspace.

That evening the dinner party gets off to a bumpy start. The girls fuss over the menu and squabble over who gets Buck's attention, and David arrives at his own front door with Buck, having found him wandering the neighborhood unable to remember which house is theirs. Once everyone is seated, David asks Penny to pray for the meal, and she awkwardly refuses, uncomfortable with public displays of prayer. Buck steps in with a simple children's blessing, then explains that Mr. Skint taught it to him because praying came in useful when they were scamming people. Olivia's hopes for a flawless evening keep unraveling: she spills ice water on Wooton while insisting she can handle the heavy pitcher, Matthew blurts out his question about why Buck has been hanging around Vance's gang, and the sisters bicker over whether Camilla is pressuring Buck to talk about his past. Buck calmly answers Matthew that after everything that has happened, he would rather have the gang as friends than enemies, but the tension is impossible to hide, and Buck leaves early.

Afterward, when the kids start pointing fingers, Eva stops the blame game and delivers the heart of the matter: being a role model is not a public relations effort, because what people are on the outside has to come from who they are on the inside. "We can't fake being a perfect family because we aren't," she tells them; instead they are working on their imperfections while being transformed by their faith in Jesus. She assigns all three children to wash the dishes by hand, telling them not to interrupt unless there is an emergency, which she defines as "anything involving blood, broken bones, or fire."

In the family room, David and Eva turn to Wooton and Penny's premarital counseling, explaining that couples often discover small incompatibilities they have never had to face before, from money to holidays to praying out loud. When Eva notes that spiritual compatibility matters to a marriage even more than the other kinds, Penny concludes that she and Wooton are in trouble, saying, "I don't think we're spiritually compatible at all."

At the kitchen sink, Olivia stops the dishwashing to apologize to Matthew and Camilla. She admits she tried so hard to make them look like a perfect family for Buck that she ruined the evening herself, and that she should have let Buck simply see them be themselves, because they actually do all right when they are just being who they are. Her siblings accept the apology, and both offer to stay and help put the dishes away.

Late that night, Wooton returns to Whit's End and asks to use his new studio. Whit senses something is wrong, and Wooton confides that Penny no longer thinks they should get married, and that he is not sure anymore either, since they have had nothing but conflict since he proposed. Whit encourages him that engagement naturally stirs things up and suggests he talk with Eugene, who worked through the same question with Katrina, though ultimately Wooton will have to work it out with Penny. Whit calls it good practice for marriage, but Wooton can only answer, "Right now, I'm afraid it's over."