"Mr. Baxter, Nate's French is really coming along." "Viveladifference!" "Am I right?" "You're right." "Ms. Perry..." "(LAUGHS)" "Looking forward to this month's PTA brunch." "Gonna keep the potato salad out of the sun this time." "Hi." "Sorry I'm late." "Car wouldn't start." "Truck blocked me in." "Lost my keys." "Holiday traffic." "Well, as long as you have a good excuse." "VICTOR:" "Ms. Davis!" "I made my parents take me to a salon for a real haircut, like you said." "Good job, Victor." "Much less DIY." "JOEL:" "Ooh, okay." "Candles?" "Strawberries?" "Looks like we're about to have sex in a Boyz II Men video." "Please." "There's got to be at least one single, rich dad here that wants to talk about their kid." "We can have a one-on-one now and then a one-on-one later on the floor of his home theater." "What about the floor of a regular theater?" "'Cause, you know, then I'd be back in this thing." "(SCOFFS)" "Wait." "Why are you so late, anyway?" "I got in a fight with Abby, the manager of the country club, in front of my entire tennis circuit." "She tried to tell me that I wasn't a member anymore because my dues hadn't been paid." "Oh, that bitch." "And I was like," ""Well, Abby, what do you think I'm doing here?" ""Trying to find a man to pay those dues."" "Ugh, some people, right?" "Yeah, some people." "MEREDITH:" "And I was actually really excited to..." "Can't believe people." "Are you done?" "I was actually really excited to come here tonight, because this is a place where people actually respect me." "This is Ms. Davis." "She's the most fun teacher I've ever had." "WOMAN:" "Oh, Harper loves your class." "It was so cool when you had them melt the gold jewelry." "What a fun way to learn about the Gold Rush." "Yeah." "Are we getting any of that back?" "So nice meeting you!" "Bye, Ms. D. Bye." "I mean..." "I'm like a god here." "Totally." "Totally." "JOEL:" "A jazz band?" "Hey, this is a classy open house, Carl." "Well, it needs to be." "'Cause these parents are breathing down my neck." "Tonight I need them to focus on the positive and not on the fact that these basketballs are dodgeballs painted orange." "Yeah." "Well, the smoked Gouda is amazing." "Ooh, fun fact." "It's regular Gouda that I browned in my roommate Ron's toaster oven." "That's what gives it the smoky flavor." "And the bagel seeds." "Huh." "Big money to win is..." "MAN:" "Hi." "I'm Keith's dad," "Mr. Mueller." "Hi." "(GIGGLES)" "Would you like a strawberry?" "Oh, sure." "And maybe one for my wife." "Oop." "Okay." "You can go." "Ugh." "It's like everyone's married." "Oh, no, no, no, no." "We're Victor Hu's moms." "Kid's a genius." "Thanks for coming by." "But he's not meeting his potential." "Well, no one is." "Too much TV." "Okay, good chat." "Glad you came." "Victor loves you." "Apparently, you give him a lot of fashion advice." "Yeah." "But you don't challenge him academically." "He says you show a lot of movies." "I like to make learning entertaining." "It's not a smart way to educate." "Everybody else seems to like it." "Well, we're doctors." "Oh..." "Doctors." "(LAUGHS)" "How long have you been trying to get that out?" "It's on our name tags." "(EXHALES)" "We just want to make sure Victor has good teachers." "He does." "Trust me." "Every parent here adores me." "For melting down their gold?" "It's called hands-on learning, Doctors." "(GROWLS)" "Sorry, Carl, I gotta leave early." "But we still have three hours left." "Lady business." "Poor kid." "Third time this month." "♪Nah,nah-nah, nah,nah,nah" "♪Nah-nah,nah-nah" "♪I amafascination" "♪I 'mhereto blowyourmind" "♪I 'llgive'emeducation" "♪Giveme thewineanddine" "♪Hey!" "♪Nah,nah,nah ,nah-nah" "♪Nah-nah,nah,nah-nah!" "♪" "♪Begood,begood ,begood" "♪Begood,begood , begood,be good ♪Johnny♪" "♪Begood,begood ,begood" "♪Begood,begood , begood... (CRUNCHES)" "Ah..." "It's not that bad." "♪Begood,begood" "♪Begood,begood ,begood" "♪Begood,begood , begood,be goodJohnny...♪" "Joel!" "Doug Pilaf." "Math department." "Math department." "Uh, I hate to bug you, but..." "Listen, I know I still owe you those 50 bones, but I was able to pre-order the next  Halo, so thank you." "Wait." "You said it was an emergency." "Oh, my gosh, no..." "It was an emergency." "Yeah, you have to pay when you pre-order." "Um..." "You should come over and play sometime." "Oh." "I'll ask my wife." "Look, I don't quite have the funds to repay you just yet, but I do have a bear claw with your name on it." "Glaze is still melty." "Oh, well, my..." "My wife doesn't like me to have sweets on account of how hyper I get." "I won't tell if you don't." "(LAUGHS)" "So, uh..." "We cool?" "Yeah, we're cool." "This is really gonna hit the spot." "(GASPS) Thanks, math department." "JOEL:" "Hey, I heard you got into it with the Hu ladies last night." "Those stupid tiger moms were so disrespectful to me." "It's like they think just because they're doctors, they're better than everyone else." "Let me tell you something." "I've known a lot of doctors." "They're just like us." "They put their pants on after sex one leg at a time." "Man, every day's a gift with you." "It's bad enough I get no respect from people in my old life, and now I get no respect from people in my horrible new life." "CARL: (OVER PA) MeredithDavis, pleasereportto my office." "PrincipalCarl'soffice." "IamPrincipalCarl." "Ooh..." "Now what?" "I would really..." "DR. HU:" "Dr. Hu and I would like Meredith fired." "CARL:" "Meredith!" "Do you remember the Doctors Hu from the open house?" "Yeah, I could never forget an overly-confident woman in Uggs, never mind two." "(FORCED LAUGH) Such funny language." "Perhaps it was this robust sense of humor that these good folks misinterpreted as "rude indifference" at the open house." "Nothing that can't be cleared up with a firm handshake and an apology." "Meredith, what do you say?" "To what?" "Apologize to the Hu's." "To the Hu's?" "No, it should be from the Hu's." "Could you excuse us for a moment, ladies?" "DR. HU:" "And that's inappropriate attire." "Dude, you gotta bounce these chicks." "They're totally talking down to me." "Welcome to working with parents." "You need to apologize, Meredith." "Carl, we're friends, so trust me on this." "Those Bond villains are trying to destroy me." "You gotta have my back on this." "I acknowledge that most of the time you and I are a sassy, fun-loving duo, but in this instance, I need you to have my back and tell the Hu's you're sorry so we can all move on!" "Why would I apologize to them?" "I didn't do anything wrong." "They're trying to act like they're the boss of me." "Nobody is the boss of me." "I am literally the boss of you!" "I am not gonna do this." "I am telling you, you have to do this!" "Oh, just suck it up and lie, for God's sake!" "Don't lie on our account." "Oh, everyone, stay calm." "Here, have a butterscotch candy." "MEREDITH:" "Oh, don't mind if I do." "DR. HU:" "We're leaving." "Wait, wait, wait." "Mrs. and Mrs. Drs. Hu, uh, I apologize for both of us." "(CHOKING)" "(PANTING)" "You're welcome." "(GROWLS)" "Can I have another one?" "No, you may not." "That mocha latte smells mocha-tastic, Doris." "How about a little love for the home team?" "Mmm-hmm." "Attention, faculty!" "While Kim was vacuuming my rental car, she made an unsettling discovery." "Do not vacuum the change holder with the change in it." "There was a scuff." "A scratch." "On the rear quarter panel." "You will have difficulty seeing the note the driver left, because there wasn't one." "The world is going to hell." "Absolute hell." "Don't let Kim's double thumbs-up in the photos fool you." "This is a serious situation." "The inconsiderate coward who did this will likely never come forward." "(GRUNTS) My bad, Ginny." "I guess I forgot to leave a note." "But you know what will help is some of that delicious mocha latte that Doris brought in." "Check this out." "I..." "I love his face." "Coffee won't make this better." "I looked into the eyes of the man at the rental car counter, and I promised him that I would take care of that subcompact vehicle." "Hey, don't you worry." "I will do everything it takes to make this right." "You should ask him to do whatever it takes to make it wrong." "(LAUGHTER) Doris!" "It's not even lunchtime." "Behave." "Ginny, don't worry another second, okay?" "I got you covered." "See, he's a good guy." "Aw..." "Who doesn't love coffee?" "DORIS:" "He's such a good guy." "I don't know what you're so stressed out about." "Great guy." "Great guy." "Why are you all encouraging him?" "CARL:" "One thing." "I needed you to do one thing." "A simple apology to the Hu's." "You cannot let these people walk all over you unless they are giving you a massage." "I am your boss." "And they are my boss." "And Victor Hu is the best student at Nixon." "His test scores pad the numbers for all the less gifted students." "And by "Less gifted," I'm being generous." "Last week, Tony Gutierrez got his head caught in the bike rack." "He did that to make five bucks." "That's really good business." "I would've given him ten if he'd lasted longer." "Victor Hu is special." "No, he's not, Carl." "There are other Asian kids." "Like, a billion." "I don't get why you're freaking out about two parents complaining." "It wasn't just two." "It was two dozen parent complaints." "About you." "You know, another principal would've acted on these immediately." "Yeah, but we're friends, so..." "Yeah, and-and that's why I gave you leeway." "Because I knew that your teaching methods were unorthodox, but that you did get through to the kids." "Thank you." "Well, maybe this was wrong." "No." "It was super right." "Parent groups are scrutinizing my every move." "I can't let our friendship force me to make bad decisions about this school." "I can't protect you anymore." "I don't care about your..." "Your, your car problems or your female troubles." "I gotta treat you like everybody else." "No more thinking with my downstairs brain." "What?" "My heart." "(CAR ALARM WHOOPING)" "Hey, hey!" "Check it out!" "The scratch is gone." "It is as good as new." "It was never new." "It's a rental." "Okay, then it's as good as used." "I called in a favor from the shop teacher." "He owes me." "I have to roll his joints for him 'cause he's missing a few fingers." "He might not be the best shop teacher, but he did a great job on this!" "So, uh..." "We cool, Ginny?" "LORNA:" "If anybody asks," "I'm going out to lunch." "Somebody ate my leftover lasagna from the fridge." "Ugh." "Is that marinara on your shirt, Joel?" "No." "Cuff me, Lorna." "I was powerless." "You are a magician with ricotta." "Aw, that's sweet." "I'm even better with fresh mozzarella." "I don't believe you." "I'll prove it." "I will make you baked ziti this weekend." "I dare you." "(LAUGHS)" "Lorna!" "Aren't you mad about the lasagna?" "Now you have nothing to eat for lunch." "Oh, it's okay." "It's nice to get some attention from a man who's not trying to sell me a reverse mortgage." "(GROANS)" "So, we cool, Lorna?" "Yeah, we cool." "(CHUCKLES)" "See that?" "Everybody's cool." "Everybody is not cool!" "Ginny is being so unreasonable." "I scratched her car, then I fixed it, but we're still not cool." "You want to hear about uncool?" "Victor Hu's moms tried to break up me and Carl." "They Yoko Ono'd us, and I'm not just saying that because they're horrible Asian women." "Wait, wait, wait, wait." "How?" "Carl demanded that I apologize to them for being rude, and I refused." "Well, were you being rude?" "Yeah, absolutely, but they were being disrespectful to me and talking down to me." "Look, I could be as successful as the Hu's." "I just didn't have the same opportunities that they had, because I could get by on my looks." "But if I were ugly, I could be a doctor and join any country club that I wanted." "Well, it's good to know you're thinking straight." "You know what?" "I'm gonna go down and give those doctors a taste of their own Chinese medicine." "That sounds like a bad idea." "Or the best idea ever." "No, I'm sticking with bad idea." "At least count to ten before you do something rash." "...eight, nine, ten." "Attention, Hu patients." "You can't stand on the furniture." "Oh, really, is it disrespectful?" "More like dangerous." "What's going on here?" "Oh." "Hey, you guys." "I thought I would just come by your place of work and complain about you, since you took time out of your busy schedule to come to my work and complain about me." "Complain about what?" "Oh, thank you so much for asking." "Ladies and gentlemen, I would like to lodge a formal complaint." "The Hu's the worst doctors in America." "They didn't spend enough time with me taking my temperature." "They didn't even know where to put the tongue depressor, and they were rude during my breast exam." "They're allergists." "So on top of everything, I might have been molested." "I mean, where does it end?" "(SCOFFS)" "Here." "MAN:" "Step down." "Why, thank you." "Ooh!" "These, they're mine." "Thanks for the ride." "I usually walk, but I forgot my mace." "It's really good for scaring people off, but it's pretty heavy to carry around on a daily basis." "I should really see if Medieval Times has a travel-sized one." "JOEL:" "Ginny, hey." "I know you're still mad at me, but..." "How many different ways can I say "Leave me alone"?" "There's nine ways in Eskimo, but most are used on bears." "Okay, I know the car is fixed, but I still want to give you something for your trouble." "So..." "(SIGHS)" "I got my second-to-last stamp on my sandwich card." "Now, the next one is full price, but the one after that, totally free." "Joel, you borrow money from people and then you don't pay it back." "You drink people's coffee, and when you ate Lorna's lasagna, did you even return the Tupperware?" "Well, no, it's soaking." "You want everything to be cool, but sometimes it isn't cool." "And then somehow I'm the uncool one because someone scratches my car, and I want them to leave a note!" "A note?" "It shouldn't be so hard to acknowledge that something happened, Joel." "To respect someone's feelings." "(ENGINE STARTS)" "(EASY LISTENING MUSIC BLARING)" "JOEL:" "What if I buy the next sandwich and then give you the card?" "Oh, do you think she's gonna circle back around?" "I, I don't get it." "I have tried everything." "Joel, walk with me." "You're a good kid, but you're prettier than you are smart." "So I am gonna help you out." "Three years ago, you kissed Ginny at the Christmas party, then said "We're cool" the next day." "(GROANS) She stopped talking to you for two weeks." "You didn't even notice." "I know this because I found her journal in a shoe box in back of her closet when I was house-sitting." "Man, I had no idea." "Yeah, I house-sit for her pretty regularly." "I'm super tight with her plants." "Ow." "What?" "I'm an inspiration?" "No." "Hey, you're the inspiration, kid." "I just got off the phone with the Hu's." "Apparently, you paid them a visit without my permission." "Well, I did go down there to demonstrate how out of line they'd been, and it was actually a very creative and well thought out plan, but they went nuts." "And you cannot trust anything that they say." "Well, you don't have to worry about the Hu's anymore." "They're taking Victor out of Nixon and transferring him over to Kennedy Middle." "I'm not supposed to say this, but he was my favorite." "It's all over." "Carl, it's not my fault." "I know it's not your fault." "(SIGHS) It's mine." "Oh, okay, good." "So, are we friends again?" "I don't know if we were ever friends, Meredith." "Crazy week, huh?" "Huh." "I heard Victor Hu is transferring." "Mmm-hmm." "That's a bummer." "He does my taxes." "Well, I say good riddance." "His moms are the pits." "Carl is so depressed about it and upset with me." "(SCOFFS) It's like, what's the fuss?" "It's one tiny student." "No, no, no, it..." "It's not just one student." "It, it's 30 students, three teachers and-and a janitor." "They've all transferred to Kennedy this year." "Wait, why?" "I don't know." "More money, better resources." "They don't have to inflate their basketballs at a gas station." "I mean, Carl's been doing backflips to make everyone so happy, but they keep jumping ship." "Who cares?" "Carl cares." "Why do you think he put on such a nice open house for the parents with the smooth jazz and the cheese?" "Why do you think he cares about you apologizing to the Hu's?" "You know, you've been so worried about being disrespected, when the real person being disrespected was Carl." "But by other people." "Really?" "(SCHOOL BELL RINGING)" "Hey." "Grab your coat." "We're going to Kennedy." "Why?" "Are they hiring?" "Come on!" "The juice bar lady said their tour started 15 minutes ago." "The Hu's should be in auditorium three." "Man, what school has three auditoriums?" "This place is like Versailles, which I toured once..." "Virtually." "Nope, Esteban, you quit." "You are dead to me." "(CLASSICAL MUSIC PLAYING)" "How can they afford all this teak?" "I don't know." "MEREDITH:" "Victor!" "Seriously?" "Again?" "Man, the acoustics in here are amazing." "Unique New York, unique New York." "MAN:" "Excuse me." "Hi." "You here with the tour?" "We need to talk to Victor." "We want him back." "We're not listening to this." "Mom, they've been good to me." "Let them speak." "Victor, you belong at Nixon." "DR. HU:" "But everything's better here." "Not everything at Kennedy is better." "At Nixon, you only have 21 kids per class." "At Kennedy, you have 28." "Well, because so many Nixon students keep transferring to Kennedy." "(LAUGHTER)" "If you're looking for a Nixon-Kennedy debate, pal, you just found one." "Wonderful." "Oh, now you leave a note." "Oh." "(CHUCKLES)" "Hey, I really am sorry." "I'm sorry about a lot of things." "Too little, too late, Joel." "But the thing I'm most sorry about is that we never talked about what happened at the Christmas party, you know." "So you do remember." "Yeah, of course." "I mean, the two of us under the mistletoe." "In the parking lot." "Well, we had a lot of eggnog." "(SIGHS)" "Yeah, I, I rarely drink anymore." "No good comes from it." "Well, I mean, some good came from it." "I got to make out with a really hot girl in a light-up Rudolph sweater." "That was the one literal bright light in a pretty rough Christmas." "I, I had just broken up with my long-term girlfriend." "We were supposed to get married." "You know, I, I bought a ring and everything." "You never told me that." "Not to mention," "I had just gotten bumped from the playoffs in my fantasy football league." "Yeah, you told me about that several times." "Anyways, um, I'm sorry I didn't handle things well." "But you're right." "I need to start owning my mistakes, so..." "Okay." "We're cool." "Cool." "(KNOCKING)" "Kiss her!" "Not that kind of moment, Kim." "Kiss me." "Our soda machines only charge 75 cents a can." "I noticed yours charge a dollar." "We discourage our students from drinking soda." "That's why we offer a complimentary fresh juice bar." "Oh." "Juice." "Well, maybe Victor doesn't like fresh juice." "Are you kidding?" "I love fresh juice." "Okay, Meredith, this isn't working." "No, no, not yet." "He forgot the most important thing at Nixon Middle." "He's standing right here." "This man cares so much that he ignored, like, a huge file of complaints about me." "(COUGHS LOUDLY)" "And more importantly, he has not missed one day of school." "That is, count them..." "Five days a week." "Which feels excessive to me, but not to him." "He's even been teaching Victor calculus in his free time." "It was your Christmas present, Moms." "Aw." "Last year, we got trigonometry." "Look, Carl lives and breathes Nixon so much that it's easy to take him for granted and forget everything that he does for us." "And, uh..." "And I honestly never thought I would say this about a middle school principal, but..." "I respect him." "(WHISPERING) Now say it's fine and walk away." "Okay." "Okay." "You know what, Victor?" "If you want to stay at Kennedy, then you should stay." "I don't know about this, Meredith." "Hey, people respond to those that reject them, okay?" "This is sort of my area of expertise." "It's gonna be good." "Well, I've always said, Meredith, you are unorthodox." "Principal Carl?" "But I get through to the kids." "And that is why I respect you." "VICTOR:" "Principal Carl..." "I choose Nixon." "Let him hang." "This is where we go for something extra." "Maybe new earrings for me, maybe a beanbag chair for you." "I'm just saying." "Yeah, but I already got everything I wanted." "(GRUNTS)" "If Victor wants to stay, it's okay." "We want him to be happy." "So do we." "That's one thing we can agree on." "I guess so." "But we're keeping our eyes on you." "It's hard to take your eyes off me." "I get it." "That's not what I meant." "(SIGHS)" "Damn, that was a good Christmas." "♪Begood,begood , begood,be good" "♪Begood,begood !" "♪Johnny!" "♪"