The Ties That Bind

At breakfast in the Parker house, the family talks over a strange conversation with a television producer about a show featuring a family fighting zombies in their own town. The Parkers notice that the TV family is nothing like theirs, and that traditional families hardly appear on television anymore, and when they do they are usually shown as foolish or secretly troubled. Camilla admits she sometimes feels weird for having just one mom, one dad, a brother, and a sister, and wonders aloud whether some people might be better off without families at all. Olivia blurts out that Camilla is only saying that because she thinks Buck's family-free life is cool. Olivia, still shaken by an experience in the Room of Consequence that she can't put into words, insists, "What happens to the family affects everything," and argues that people should start celebrating what is right about families instead of only pointing out what is wrong. After the kids head off, Eva tells David that Camilla's attitude worries her: Camilla seems to see Buck as a hero whose life is somehow better than her own, and the parents wonder how to help her understand the truth.

At Whit's End, Detective Polehouse waits over coffee to meet Wooton, whose house burned down the night before. The detective is troubled by the missing motive and by the possibility that the fire is connected to the earlier vandalism at Whit's End, as if the whole town is under attack. When Eugene walks in and finds the detective there, he becomes flustered and stammers, "Buck is fine. I mean, I'm fine," before fleeing upstairs, leaving both Polehouse and Connie certain he is hiding something.

Meanwhile, Whit, still in the hospital awaiting more tests, uses his free time to visit Randall Edgeware, the dying brother of Ms. Adelaide. Randall recognizes Whit as his old third-grade Sunday school teacher from the days when he went by Bobby, before he chose a new name and a new identity. Now in hospice care, he tells Whit plainly that his body is failing and that he owns the choices that brought him there, refusing to let his sister use him as a guilt card against Whit. He admits there were days he wishes he had listened to his old teacher, but his thinking went another direction. Touched that Whit came simply out of concern, the lonely man asks only for company, and the two sit down to a game of Scrabble.

At school, Ms. Adelaide hands back the gender essays she assigned and announces she may display some at the Let's Get Together Festival. Matthew receives a C and Emily a B-minus, with a note crediting only her clear handwriting, and both are convinced they were marked down simply for disagreeing with their teacher, though they cannot think of a way to prove it. Ms. Adelaide then assigns yet another opinion essay, this one about marriage. Later, when Matthew asks about his grade, she flatters him as a technological genius, then claims his essay was just parroting tired old ideas. Using a computer comparison, she tells him gender is not in the hardware but in the software, something that can be changed and adjusted, and warns him to do better next time because his grade needs it.

Elsewhere, Jay tells Vance about the fire at Wooton's house, and Vance slyly points out that Buck was out around the same time the fire started and is now wearing sunglasses. Soon Jay is repeating the rumor to Matthew and Emily that Buck burned down Wooton's house, in between bragging about the paid acting part he has landed in the zombie series. Matthew and Emily defend Buck and needle Jay about not even knowing what his part will be, leaving him puzzling over how a person practices spontaneity.

Back at Whit's End, Detective Polehouse gives Wooton, Penny, and Hadley the news about the house. The bad news is that it cannot be saved; large sections collapsed into the basement and destroyed everything. The best he can offer is that investigators traced the fire to the outlet near the desk in Wooton's studio, though evidence of a cloth inside makes it look suspicious rather than accidental. When Wooton suggests starting the investigation with the Perilous Pen, the mysterious online writer who leaks comic book secrets, the detective drops a bombshell: "The perilous pen doesn't exist." It is not one writer at all, but many stringers gathering information, which means someone in Odyssey, perhaps even a supposed friend, has been feeding out details about Wooton.

Camilla shows up at Whit's End eager to bring lemonade to Buck when he arrives to paint, gushing to Connie that she admires him as a loner who does whatever he wants without parents telling him what to do. Connie gently warns her that her picture of Buck may be a total fantasy and suggests they talk about choosing role models wisely, though Camilla happily compares him to Huck Finn. Before leaving, Polehouse tells Connie he will return to question Eugene and Buck. Once he is gone, Eugene confesses to Connie that he never expected parenting to be this hard this soon and that he longs for the simplicity of numbers and codes. He gets his wish when Wooton, Penny, and Hadley ask him to use his computer expertise to track down the Perilous Pen, hoping it will lead to whoever broke into the house and possibly burned it down. Since the hunt runs through blogs and websites, Eugene gladly agrees, and a grateful Wooton declares that Eugene may be his new best friend.