Plot
Michael Bluth is disappointed with George Michael's latest test grade, an A-minus. Conversely, Lindsay is quite impressed with Maeby's C-minus because she didn't even study. Michael advises Lindsay to set boundaries for her daughter; Lindsay counters that Michael puts pressure on George Michael and is like their father, George Sr., who once used a one-armed former employee named J. Walter Weatherman to scare his children into learning what he considered valuable life lessons. Gob and his mother, Lucille, come in; Lucille needs someone to help her doctor some receipts of purchases made using company money before giving them to the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC). When Michael says he can't help her, she asks Lindsay. Lindsay refuses, but when she sees Maeby's latest grade, a D-minus, she realizes that perhaps Michael was right and decides to send Maeby to do the work as punishment.
At the same time, Michael overhears George Michael berate himself as he struggles with a math problem and realizes that maybe Lindsay was right: he is pushing George Michael too hard. He tells him to take some time off and relax. George Michael grows bored, though, and decides to work in the banana stand the next day, where he is confronted by his uncle Buster. Buster tells George Michael that his girlfriend, Lucille Austero's vertigo is acting up and she's experiencing some nausea. He has decided to ask George Michael, the most streetwise kid he knew, to obtain some pot (marijuana) for Lucille. George Michael, surprised, tells Buster that he has no idea where to find illegal drugs, which Buster refuses to believe, seeing as the Bluth Banana Stand used to be a well-known location for drug dealers. Michael finds his son working and chides him for not taking time off; he gives him $20 to spend on himself. Buster pretends to agree with Michael, and gives George Michael $225, which Buster hopes he will use to buy pot.
Maeby is spending time with Lucille, examining jewelry. Lucille finds a brooch that Lindsay always wanted and decides to give it to Maeby. Maeby is excited at the chance to make her mother jealous, but is bothered by a remark Lucille makes about her freckles. George Michael, meanwhile, does not find Gob on the yacht, so he leaves a note asking if he can buy him some pot. Gob does, but tells Michael. Michael quizzes his son, who nervously denies it. Michael decides to teach his son a lesson like his father used to teach them. He visits George Sr. to get the contact information for the one-armed man, but George Sr. tells Michael he should just talk to his son. But Michael is still set on the lesson. With Gob's help, Michael hires some "Hot Cops" (strippers in policeman costumes) to stage a fake drug bust.
Lindsay finds out that her daughter got the brooch she always wanted, and worse, was getting along with her mother, who has criticized and insulted Lindsay her entire life. But when Lucille begins to do the same thing to Maeby, Maeby decides she's spent enough time with her grandmother. Meanwhile, George Michael heads for the yacht to pick up the pot. He boards, and Gob flashes the lights. Quickly, two men appear with a bag of pot and George Michael reluctantly completes the deal. That's when the Hot Cops spring into action, cranking some music and dancing around. Michael appears and tells George Michael a lesson has been instilled. But Buster, deciding to stand up for himself, comes forward and admits that the weed was for him, not George Michael. Michael, upset with Buster, tells him to take his son home.
Just as they leave, though, two real drug dealers, having seen Gob's light flashing, come forward with a supply of weed. But before Gob can explain, a police boat comes up, flashing its lights. The dealers, thinking they were set up, pull out their guns, and Michael and Gob become trapped in a gun battle. The brothers are terrified, until one of the dealers loses an arm, and they look up to see the face of J. Walter Weatherman. Michael realizes that, once again, his father had taught him an elaborate lesson: not to teach lessons. That night, back at the model home, Maeby gives her mother the brooch, glad to have a mother who doesn't treat her the way Lucille treats Lindsay. And Michael encourages George Michael to be honest with him. George Michael admits that he has a crush on Maeby, but Michael thinks he's joking.
Read more about this topic: Pier Pressure (Arrested Development)
Famous quotes containing the word plot:
“The plot was most interesting. It belonged to no particular age, people, or country, and was perhaps the more delightful on that account, as nobody’s previous information could afford the remotest glimmering of what would ever come of it.”
—Charles Dickens (1812–1870)
“Those blessed structures, plot and rhyme—
why are they no help to me now
I want to make
something imagined, not recalled?”
—Robert Lowell (1917–1977)
“James’s great gift, of course, was his ability to tell a plot in shimmering detail with such delicacy of treatment and such fine aloofness—that is, reluctance to engage in any direct grappling with what, in the play or story, had actually “taken place”Mthat his listeners often did not, in the end, know what had, to put it in another way, “gone on.””
—James Thurber (1894–1961)