Unrelatable

It is broadcast day at the radio station, where Connie Kendall's call-in advice program, Candid Conversations with Connie, runs right before Wooton Bassett's Comic Book Cavalcade. Connie's last caller of the hour is a young man named Wes, a first-time listener who is not impressed. He tells Connie that her advice is unrealistic, that she acts as if doing the right thing is easy, and that since she has plenty of friends, she can't understand a lonely girl being told to walk away from a bad one. He says he needs advice from somebody who won't expect him to be superhuman, and before hanging up he delivers the word that lodges in Connie's brain: "You're... unrelatable."

Connie cannot let it go. She barges into Wooton's airtime, announces a new topic, and asks her listeners to call in and tell her honestly whether she is relatable. It does not go well at first. A boy named Jeremy would rather ask Wooton about a girl he likes than talk to Connie, Wooton cheerfully answers questions about weddings and green sweaters, and a grumpy online commenter named Jackson keeps asking if there is a way to mute Connie's microphone.

Then comes the caller Connie has been waiting for. A man named Spencer says he went to Odyssey High School a year behind her, that he admired her from afar because she seemed approachable, and that he has made a big mess of his life. While Connie chose good influences and became a Christian, Spencer chose a friend who stole chips from vending machines. He explains that the small wrong choices led to bigger crimes, so gradually that he never noticed himself changing. Connie warms to him; this is exactly the kind of understanding, relatable conversation she has been hoping for.

During a commercial break, Jason Whittaker rushes in with alarming news. He has been following the story of a prison break near Chicago, where an inmate escaped in a laundry truck two nights earlier, and everything Spencer has said matches the fugitive, a man named Bradley Turnbaum. Jason asks Connie to keep Spencer talking and coax out more details for Detective Polehouse. Using an old high school webpage, Connie steers the conversation to astronomy, and Spencer proudly admits he was in the astronomy club all four years. The police compare his voice to a recording and confirm the match, but he is calling from an untraceable phone, so Connie must keep him on the line until he gives away his location.

As they talk, Spencer opens up. He has no wife or children, barely speaks to his family, and has been avoiding his mother ever since she asked him a question he still cannot answer. He has written a letter, and Connie is in it. He tells her about the moment he thinks about most: in the school hallway, he once walked up to her while she was posting a flyer for a Bible study, meaning to ask about it. But he spotted a friend who might make fun of him, lost his nerve, and instead just told her she had a pen mark on her cheek. He believes that if he had introduced himself that day, her friendship could have changed his whole life.

Then Connie hears something in the background of the call that makes her blood run cold: the voice of her own malfunctioning smoke detector, the one that shouts at her to proceed to exit the house. Spencer is inside her home. Shaken, she confirms with Jason that her housemates are safely away at the mall, and the police race toward the house while Connie steadies herself and gets back on the air.

She tells Spencer to stop dwelling on what he did years ago and to think about the choices in front of him now, insisting that everyone gets ten thousand choices a day and that "Jesus can redeem you right here, right now." When she warns that they don't have much time, Spencer understands everything. She knows who he is, and she has turned him in. Hurt, he accuses her of playing him and asks whether it ever crossed her mind to give him a head start on the police. Connie answers honestly: no. After a moment, Spencer admits that if she had helped him escape, she wouldn't be the person he admired all those years, "because Connie Kendall does the right thing." Helping him run would have been the real betrayal.

With sirens wailing outside and the police surrounding the house, Spencer sheepishly confesses that he ate a mango and a couple of snickerdoodles, threw out some expired ham, cleaned up after shaving in her sink, and admired the toaster painting her old roommate made. Then he walks out the front door with his hands in the air.

In the show's final minute, Connie reflects on a listener's comment about how sad it is that one bad moment seemed to change Spencer's whole life. She agrees that one moment shouldn't define a person, but sometimes it does, which is why everyone should guard their moments by making Jesus the Lord of their choices. Maybe that is what makes her unrelatable to some people, and maybe she even lost some listeners today, but she doesn't apologize for it. Wooton gets the last laugh, suggesting the episode be renamed Bizarre Behavior with Bassett, because at least he can pronounce it.