After Mike and Dr. Jerome get into an ongoing battle over the sign outside their office, Nancy initially brings in Toby to do some conflict management, but is later forced to take matters into her own hands to resolve the dispute; Mark feels responsible when another student's gastric bypass surgery doesn't turn out so well; Ed and Frankie work through the problems of an office romance as they represent an attorney who wants to be released from a contract to marry another lawyer; Carol is shocked and less than thrilled when Ed tells his friends about his romance with Frankie.

Business As Usual

Tom Cavanagh

Julie Bowen

Michael Ian Black

Lesley Boone

Jana Marie Hupp

Rachel Cronin

Mike Starr

Justin Long

Josh Randall

Timothy Busfield

Aaron Ehasz

Babysitting

Captain Lucidity

Ed is forced to defend the scam artist who manipulated Mike into betting and losing $3,000 on a baseball game; Carol, still furious at Ed for kissing her before she left on her trip with Dennis, finally makes a decision about her romantic future; Kenny bowls a perfect game, then bids adieu to Stuckeyville to pursue new adventures; and Ed hires a new supervising manager for Stuckeybowl.

Human Nature

Ed is shocked when Carol announces her engagement to Dennis; Mark agrees to go on a diet if Diane enters the Miss Stuckeybowl pageant; Diane's participation in the pageant pits Carol against Ed; Phil and Eli continue to clash.

Miss Stuckeyville

Overwhelmed by Carol's wedding preparations, Ed decides to take to the road for awhile, but finds the peace and quiet more than he can bear; Eli and Phil duke it out on the basketball court for the right to use Ed's office while he's away; Dennis makes Nancy prove her mettle before hiring her as a guidance counselor by assigning her to turn around a multi-cut slacker; Carol plays passive-agressive games with Dennis over plans for their upcoming nuptials; Carol tries to connect with Ed, but he won't admit his true feelings.

The Road

Carol's father returns from Florida in time for his birthday party, unaware that she's engaged. When she finally springs the news on him, he's hurt that she's marrying someone he's never even met. At his birthday party, he gives Carol and Dennis the cold shoulder and refuses to speak to her or accept her apology. When she goes to his house to explain, she is shocked to discover that her father remarried a year earlier without telling her. Carol goes ballistic until she finds out that her father may be sick. When she asks him, he denies it. Finally, he visits her and they talk about how they have tried to protect each other ever since her mother died. He finally admits that he's scared and asks Carol to come with him to his doctor's appointment, where they get good news.

Warren freaks out about the unfairness of the SAT system and mounts a one-man protest he calls ""Pencils Down!"". After several fruitless attempts to be taken seriously and enroll anyone else in his boycott, he finally fa

Charlotte and Wilbur

Ed represents a pair of squabbling morning radio hosts who want to split up after a twenty year friendship; Mike and Nancy find that their preemptive marriage counselor is more of a hinderance than a help; and Molly knocks some sense into Ed and Carol to prevent them from destroying their friendship.

The Divorce

Jennifer Bradley breezes back into Ed's life claiming that she needs his legal advice; Ed accepts Dennis's sarcastic offer to be his best man; Carol's impending marriage is making Molly feel neglected.

May the Best Man Win

The families converge for the wedding, and Carol begins to have second thoughts after talking to her father about her parents' courtship; Warren enlists the help of Carol's sister Stella in writing a song for the bride, and the two hit it off better than Warren could have dreamed, leading him to seek out Eli for advice about women; Ed decides not to attend the wedding, but Carol begs him to reconsider; Jennifer encourages Ed to break up the wedding and he decides to go for it and ride up to the church on a white steed, but the horse he ends up with has other ideas; Dennis makes a painful decision to tell the truth at a crucial moment.

The Wedding

Tired of the continuing Carol/Ed saga, the pair's friends trap them in Stuckeybowl until they finally work things out, one way or another.

Trapped

Lloyd returns to Stuckeyville, and his new scheme is selling makeup for men. When he's prosecuted for being part of a pyramid scheme, Ed doubts Lloyd's claims that he knew nothing about it, creating friction between the brothers. After Mark's father has a heart attack and Mark gets bad news about his own health at his annual checkup, Mike and Warren convince him to have gastric bypass surgery. Ed and Carol smooth over the rough patch in their relationship and become friendly again.

Makeovers

When a new lawyer arrives in Stuckeyville and encourages neighbors to sue each other, Ed hatches a scheme worthy of Phil to get Stuckeyvillans back together again; Carol urges Molly to become a candidate for Stuckeyville High principal, now that Dennis is teaching in Minneapolis; Mike prepares to take over Ed's crown as the Stuckeyville Recliner Rally champion; inspired by Mark's upcoming surgery, Phil connives with Eli to become the ""Jared"" of a local sandwich shop.

Neighbors

As Ed takes the case of a injured high school football player who's suing another player for unnecessary roughness, he meets an enthusiastic law school graduate eager for a job; Eli helps Warren and Diane give Mark his last great meal before surgery; Molly does her best to be the coolest principal ever.

Frankie

Ed and Frankie represent a man who is suing his sister for ""outing"" him, even though he insists he's not gay; Carol goes looking for love in all the wrong places; by attempting to drive away all his patients, Dr. Jerome drives Mike crazy until Mike uncovers Dr. Jerome's real motivation in trying to drive him out of business.

Partners

Carol decides to be objective after debating whether she should avenge Rich Keenan's cruel high school hoax on Molly by writing a negative review of his restaurant in the ""Stuckeyville Progress"". As it happens, she sincerely hates the food and writes a scathing review, which prompts Rich to sue her for maliciously ruining his business.  Ed and Frankie represent her in a bench trial before a judge who doesn't care for Ed, but who manages to be objective nonetheless. Although Carol wins the case, she is forced to deal with the aftermath of a secret that's revealed during the proceedings.

Phil's latest lamebrained scheme to increase business at Stuckeybowl by attracting a younger crowd gives rise to ""Extreme Bowling"", an idea Ed quickly vetoes before it burns the building down.

Molly is stymied about how to help a young geek from being harassed by other students until she devises an ingenious scheme to ensure his popularity, while all kinds of sparks fly between her and the boy's single f

Hyenas & Wildebeests

Ed takes on his first homicide case when Eli's friend is charged with second degree murder after another friend dies during the drunken recreation of an old high school prank; Frankie and Eli provide the key to the outcome of the trial after damaging testimony nearly sinks the case; Molly develops a crush on Ryan's dad, and tries to mend the relationship between father and son.

The Case

Ed becomes concerned about his legacy after taking a longevity test and learning that his life expectancy is ""only"" 83 years; Stella returns to Stuckeyville after breaking up with her boyfriend, who follows her there; hoping to cash in on the royalty market, Phil and  Eli compete to create a new birthday song; Frankie and Leon come to a parting of the ways; Warren's high-flying approach to playing Cupid for Stella on Valentine's Day gets him the thank-you of his dreams.

Blips

Frankie defends Ed when he's sued for breaking a man's thumb while rescuing him from a burning car; Molly contends with Ryan's disapproval as she gets closer to Sean; Warren refuses to let Stella pull away from him after their night together; Carol gives Ed a little relationship advice about giving Frankie relationship advice, and discovers a small truth about herself; Stella chafes as Carol tries to mother her.

Good Advice

Ed tries lucid dreaming to figure out if he should pursue a relationship with Frankie.

As Mike and Nancy endure a weekend at a bed-and-breakfast run by a over-enthusiastic owner with her own agenda, Ed babysits for Sarah while Frankie is out of town; when it becomes obvious that Sarah requires a woman's touch, Carol comes to his rescue and sees Ed in a new, more flattering light;  Ed and Carol take Sarah's rejection by another toddler personally, and show the world how to host the ultimate playdate; ever the publicity hound, Phil attempts to spark some interest in an ""ebony and ivory"" newspaper story about his friendship with Eli, but Jerry Dobbs is only interested in writing about Eli.

Frankie becomes upset when she learns that Ed has not been entirely forthcoming about his past with Carol; when the gang helps him save his former restaurant from going bankrupt, Eli sadly reflects how his life has changed since his accident; Carol dates the handsome new teacher in town, and finally realizes that it's Ed that she wants; to Nancy's delight, Mike picks up some slick moves from a video about becoming a better lover, but he's not so sure he's ready for the increased responsibilies his new-found skills have brought him; Frankie and Carol each make a romantic gesture to win Ed's heart.

Second Chances

When Carol is discouraged after Ed spurns her feelings as ""not real"", Molly becomes the catalyst in helping Ed to rethink his position; Ed helps an old friend achieve his dream of making a movie; Nancy and Mike dip their toes into show business as Mike and Phil pester the star of the movie; claiming that it's never over between Ed and Carol, Frankie flees to Houston to visit Leon; Warren is heartbroken when Stella decides to return to Boston to finish school.

The Movie

Eli, Phil and Shirley take over preparations for Stuckeybowl's 75th birthday party; Carol completely freaks out when Ed tells her that Molly stole her journal and read parts of it to him, but she can't resist asking Molly about his reaction; bored with their friends' dinner parties, Mike and Nancy accept an invitation to a kegger from Stacie and Jenny, coeds they find stranded by the side of the road with a flat tire; over his better judgment, Eli takes Phil's advice to invite Vivian to the party, and gets turned down; while one college party and its hangover are enough for Nancy, Mike decides to take the plunge again by attending ""Luau Night"" after helping Stacie and Jenny study for their chemistry exam, but gets more than he bargained for when he's forced to turn down Stacie's proposition; Shirley comes up with the right person and the right motivation, and Eli finally gets up the courage to approach a pretty woman at the party; Warren's band gets booked to play at the festivities an

The Decision

After his wife leaves him and he's fired from his job at a high-profile New York city law firm, Ed Stevens moves back to his small hometown of Stuckeyville where he buys the local bowling alley and attempts to win the heart of his high school crush.

Business As Usual

Seasons4

Season 3 Episodes22

Cast9

Crew2

Discussion

Episode Summary