Episode 3, Season 1

The mail delivers double trouble for the Winslow’s: Carl loses his marbles over a high water bill; Harriette’s sister Rachel receives a rejection letter from a science fiction magazine for her tattoo-alien-trucker story. Edward continues his usual bumbling and floods the front yard after he left the sprinkler on all day adding fuel to the fire for Carl’s water bill woes, “I have to rent scuba gear to get the evening paper!” Rachel solves her writers block and gets a short story purchased by a national magazine after taking on the advice from Harriette about writing something she is familiar with, and her niece’s passing comment about how she should write about their feuding family “People love stories of domestic violence!” The family reads the story and discovers it’s a trashy piece focusing on thinly veiled copies of them highlighting their negative attributes. This sours Rachel and Harriette's relationship because Harriette feels she was cast as an overbearing tyrant. Edward feels he is cast in a great light as a babe magnet and coins himself Edward “Stud” Winslow and uses the story as a confidence booster to ask a girl out. Carl convinces the two sisters to speak to each other and overcome their differences. Rachel owes up to her true feelings about how her older sister treats her; Harriette realizes she has been bossy and agrees to show Rachel more respect. The chapter ends with Edward returning home disheveled after getting beaten up by the girl’s boyfriend ‘Bubba’.

LESSON: Just forget about the water bill.