Hurricane Perkins

Carla Perkins and her daughter Bridget are loading a new rug into the car after a shopping trip to Connellsville when a friendly stranger returns the Taco Tipi punch card that has dropped out of Carla's purse. The stranger, Angela, notices the family's Marines bumper sticker and learns that Carla's husband is deployed overseas. Angela explains that she and her husband work with Cadence International, a ministry to the military, hosting parties, Bible studies, and other activities for military families at their "hospitality house." She invites the Perkinses to a barbecue that Saturday. Though Bridget grumbles about the drive from Odyssey and suspects the event will "morph into church," Carla accepts, glad for the chance to meet other military families.

At the barbecue, Angela introduces Carla to the Pulaskis, Howard and Shelly, an Army family who have just moved to Connellsville with their twins, Darcy and Miles. Each Perkins pairs off with a Pulaski. Out by the trampoline, Carla's son Wyatt bombards Miles with outrageous "facts," warning him that a kid on the trampoline has leprosy and that the holes by the horseshoe pit are nests of the Arabian death scorpion, which can supposedly paralyze a person with spit traveling 300 feet per second. Delighted, Miles declares he has much to learn. At the punch bowl, bubbly Darcy befriends Bridget instantly, announcing that Bridget is her fifteenth friend since the move. But when Darcy asks how many friends Bridget has, Bridget admits that constant Marine Corps moves brought so many painful goodbyes that she stopped making friends on purpose, and Darcy's smile fades as she wonders if the same thing will happen to her. Meanwhile Carla tells Shelly about the time an explosion struck fifty miles from her husband's station and she went three sleepless days without word from him. Shelly, whose husband has not yet deployed, quietly confesses she doesn't know if she could cope with that. The Perkinses drive home happy, agreeing to make the barbecue a family activity.

The next week, however, Howard pulls Carla aside with a devastating question: "What did you do to my family?" Darcy, usually a bundle of joy, has become mopey and has sworn off making friends. Miles refuses to drink milk because Wyatt told him store-bought milk is two percent rat milk and that doctors once found whiskers growing on a milk-drinker's liver. And Shelly has been having nightmares about Howard never coming home from war. Mortified, Carla gathers her children and retreats to the car, lamenting that they have destroyed an entire family in a single barbecue. Bridget jokes that they'd make a good sitcom about the souls left in the wake of "Hurricane Perkins." Then Wyatt makes a sharp observation: Mom is always warning them about bad influences, but this time they are the bad influences. That gives Carla an idea. If they can be bad influences, they can be good ones too. She sends everyone back inside to make things right.

The repair mission stumbles at first. When Wyatt admits the rat-milk article might not be true, Miles begins questioning everything else Wyatt ever told him, and Wyatt panics and bolts. Darcy refuses to talk to Bridget at all, reasoning that talking might lead to friendship, though Bridget can't stop herself from warning Darcy away from the gross meatless hot dogs. And when Carla tries to coach Shelly with her hard-won coping techniques, Shelly gently interrupts: Angela has already helped her, reminding her that God is in control and walks with her through hard times. Then Shelly turns the tables and asks to pray with Carla, lifting up Carla's own fears and asking God to help them both trust him when everything feels like it's crashing in. Carla, who came to give comfort, finds herself receiving it.

The others get help too. Angela nudges Wyatt toward the sad boy sitting alone by the trampoline, suggesting that silence is okay between friends. Wyatt apologizes to Miles and proposes a new arrangement: a trampoline-based friendship, "one with less talking and more bouncing." Howard finds Bridget and, rather than scolding her, tells her that Darcy listens to her and that she has influence whether she wants it or not. Bridget protests that she was only trying to guard Darcy's heart from being blindsided the way she was, but Howard answers that in protecting her heart, Darcy is losing who she is - vibrant, optimistic, playful. "So was I," Bridget admits quietly. Howard urges her not to shut Darcy out, and Bridget finds Darcy in the den with Angela, who has shared a Bible verse with her: "Perfect love casts out all fear." Darcy has decided to keep making friends, and she turns the lesson right back on Bridget, asking whether Bridget lets fear of losing people keep her from loving people. When Bridget admits she might, Darcy tells her she should stop. Bridget agrees, and learns she is now friend number sixteen, since Darcy made another friend on the way back from the bathroom.

As the Perkinses say goodbye, they promise to return for taco night the following week. Bridget tells Angela they've got themselves some return guests, adding with a grin that the Perkinses will try not to destroy any more families.