First Things First

Wooton Bassett's beloved, one-of-a-kind house has burned down, thanks to his cousin Hadley trying to smother an electrical fire with a flammable robe. Standing in the ashes, Wooton has asked Penny to marry him, and Penny has answered not with a yes or a no, but with a question: what does it really mean to be married? Now the two of them are trying to figure that out together before she gives her answer.

At Henri's Art Gallery, where Penny is preparing for a group of Japanese art collectors, she and Wooton decide they need a signal for whenever they want to discuss the big question. After Penny's suggestions of finger-snapping, throat-clearing, and a long-retired gymnastics move, they settle on simply saying so out loud. Wooton also invites Penny to a two o'clock meeting with an architect about rebuilding his house. First, though, Wooton visits the burned ruins, where his prickly neighbor Mrs. Kramer offers sympathy "in a neighborly way" while admitting she always considered his house a blight on the landscape. She drops a cryptic warning: before he rebuilds, his architect had better check the city's updated zoning laws.

The architect turns out to be David Parker, and when Penny learns he is married, she impulsively begs him and his wife Eva to give the couple some pre-engagement counseling. A hesitant Eva agrees, worried they might put the pair off marriage completely. Meanwhile, Penny throws herself into studying marriage, starting a list of topics like commitment, trust, and expectations. At Hal's Diner she spirals into a breathless monologue about cooking, careers, and eating out, until Wooton gently untangles the real issue: expectations, especially the hidden kind. Using the diner's banana cream pie as his example, he shows how impossible it is to meet a wish nobody has spoken aloud, and how much safer it is to simply ask.

Before the pie even arrives, David texts with bad news. The zoning laws have changed, and most of Wooton's neighbors have signed a petition to stop him from rebuilding anything like his old house. The organizer is Mrs. Kramer. When Wooton confronts her, she is cheerfully unapologetic, telling him, "You're like a walking carnival, Bassett," and suggesting he rebuild somewhere more suitable, like a vacant corner of Disneyland or New Zealand. Penny is furious and urges Wooton to fight back, to stand up to Mrs. Kramer and prove he won't be pushed around. Wooton would rather move than battle his neighbors, and Penny goes home disappointed in him.

Penny skips the first counseling session with a headache, so Wooton meets the Parkers alone. Eva tells the story of their first landlord, who tried to cheat them with bogus charges. David didn't think it was worth fighting over, but for newlywed Eva it was secretly a test of whether her husband would fight to protect them. Wooton instantly recognizes another unspoken expectation, just like the banana cream pie, and the Parkers explain that the only cure is getting expectations out in the open, along with plenty of patience, grace, and forgiveness. Then David reveals a surprising discovery about Wooton's property, which, sadly, is not that it was a major site in the Campbell County Llama Battle of 1893.

The next morning, Wooton bursts in on Penny and Connie announcing that he is going to throw Mrs. Kramer out as a trespasser. David has found that, through an old mix-up in the deeds, Wooton's land extends right under Mrs. Kramer's house. He declares he will be tough, just like Penny wanted. But hearing her own expectation played back to her shocks Penny to her senses. That kind of toughness, she tells him, "wouldn't be you," and she apologizes for expecting him to be someone he isn't, freeing Wooton to handle things his own way.

His own way turns out to be pure Wooton. He knocks on Mrs. Kramer's door and offers a deal: he will sell his land at an unbeatable bargain price to her or any neighbor who wants it, and even clear away the remains of his house, calling it a fire sale. He hands her a document laying it all out, along with some special considerations she might want to know about. A baffled Mrs. Kramer asks if anyone has ever called him a chump, then promises to get back to him. As Wooton strolls away, she is left staring at the paper, muttering, "Well, I didn't expect that."