"Very funny, Hope, but, uh, you need your spoon to eat your oatmeal." "No!" "Denied." "She did the same thing to me last night when she wouldn't eat her peas." "Yeah, she's getting an attitude." "Yesterday I told her not to touch the knobs on the stove." "She didn't use her fingers, but her eyes were flipping me the bird." "She's just being funny." "She's testing you." "She's like that crazy old dead guy in North Korea with all those missiles." "She's almost as tall." "You need to keep that in check." "What do you mean, like yell at her or something?" "We're best friends." "Best friends don't yell at each other." "Sure they do, what about the Three Stooges?" "Or the Car Talk guys?" "Rizzoli and Isles." "Good morning." "Coffee?" "No thanks." "Do you guys have tea?" "Yes, we have tea after we finish cleaning our chimney." "What say we make a couple of mugs and sip it with our pinkies out, and then we'll put another shrimp on the barbie." "I'm just gonna take this little skit as your way of telling me that you don't have tea." "No, we have tea." "It's on that shelf behind the crackers next to the beef bouillon cubes." "I forgot about those." "Grab me one." "They're like meat-flavored hard candies." "Something's under the house." "No!" "What was that?" "I hear teeth." "I hear claws." "I hear a tail." "It's a beaver!" "It's not a beaver, you always say beaver." "I think you just like saying beaver." "I do like saying beaver." "Raccoon." "Don't worry." "I'll get rid of it." "Isn't that kind of more of a husband job?" "Well, you'd think." "Some people around here get a little nutty when it comes to small animals." "Just marsupials and aquatic mammals." "And raccoons, dirty little weasels." "And weasels." "Fortunately, I hate turning the lights on every Friday night for the orthodox Jewish family across the street, so Burt takes care of that." "Okay, all right, all right." "Give me one more shot." "Baruch atah Adonai Eloheinu melech ha-olam badoorah?" "Oy vay, those Bronsteins are so meshuganah." "She was the first Porkchester of my collection." "The little swine I feel in love with, who introduced me to the world of pig-ur-enes, and now she's gone." "Well, we could scoop up the pieces and put her in the urn with Paw Paw." "He'd probably like some company anyway." "Or, I could just try to fix her." "How is Hope?" "Well, her serial killer mother would be very proud." "She slaughtered her first victim today." "We lost a Porkchester." "I'm sorry." "Are you sure Hope did it?" "Yes, I'm sure she did it." "And that's not all, I caught her in the hallway today drawing on the wall with markers." "I washed it off, but then I had a big clean spot on the wall." "So, now I got to either wash the whole wall, or figure out how to make the spot dirty again." "We should only markers the color of our walls." "Then, when I was washing up the marker, she climbs up on the chair, grabs two Porkchesters, and throws them at me!" "I could only catch Paddy." "Did you yell at her?" "Well, I'm not yelling at her." "I want her to like me." "Well, I'm not yelling at her." "I want her to like me, too." "Well, grandmothers don't yell." "We get to give them butterscotch candies and nickels." "Parents have to do all the dirty work." "And besides, she's hardheaded like you were." "I don't think yelling's going to be strong enough." "Are you saying I should spank her?" "Not hard, just a... little eensy-weensy "boop," just to get her attention." "It worked with you." "Wait, are you saying you spanked me?" "See, you don't even remember it." "How bad could it have been?" "You were just a little older than Hope is now when you started to be a real pain in the butt about eating your vegetables." "Take a bite, Jimmy." "Bite me, Burt." "After we let you get away with that, you wouldn't listen to us when we told you it was time to turn off the TV and go to bed." "Come at me, bro!" "Come at me!" "Let's do this!" "Come at me, bro!" "" "We couldn't even get you to clean up your room." "Magazine says to be encouraging." "Son of mine." "What do you say we take some pride in our play space and clean up our room?" "How do you like me now, son?" "I think it's time to spank him." "I thought we both agreed to be the do-nothing-but-hope-for-the-best kind of parents?" "Well, that's not working anymore, and we're running out of options." "And windows." "I guess it needs to be done." "Okay, good luck." "Wait, why do I have to spank him?" "If you do the spanking, I'll do something you don't want to do." "What do you hate doing?" "Answering stupid questions." "Sorry, but you just set me up so perfectly" " Burt, pick something." " Okay," "You're responsible for getting all the rodents out from under the house." "And for picking up dog poop, if we ever get a dog." "Deal." "And while you're spanking your son, make sure you tell him he's never getting a dog." "As hard as it was to do, after that one spanking, you were like a totally different kid." "We didn't even have to tell you to clean your room anymore." "All clean!" "Please don't spank me again." "You ate your vegetables..." "Delicious, Mommy." "Please don't spank me again." "and you stopped putting up a fight at bedtime." "Okay, Jimmy, time for bed." "Time to hit the sack." "Please don't spank me again." "I can't believe you spanked me." "It had to be done." "And it only had to be done once." "No, no, no." "No, no." "Don't, don't, don't, don't." "Don't, don't, don't, don't, don't!" " Okay." "Okay, deep breaths!" "Deep breaths." "Look, I know this looks bad, but kids go through phases, and I'm not ruining my relationship with her as a quick-fix for this phase." "Yeah, well, when you finally come to your senses and end up spanking her, you'll see we're not the idiots you think we are." "Why did you stop?" "Burt?" "Do you have superglue on your finger?" "Okay, no problem." "On the count of three, we'll just pull apart like a wishbone." "Well, my wish is that I end up with a little piece of your finger on my nose instead of you having a little piece of my nose on your finger." "Okay, I'm going to wish for the opposite of that." "Understood." "So, whoever gets the bigger piece gets their wish." " You ready?" " No." "Too bad." "One, two, three." "What are you doing?" "Preparing a date for Mr. Raccoon." ""Jennifer Aniston" by Jennifer Aniston." "No man can resist this." "Except Brad Pitt." "And John Mayer." " And Vince Vaughn." " And Bradley Cooper." "And that homeless-looking guy from Counting Crows." "So you're just going to lure him out and trap him humanely?" "No." "I stuffed a bunch of razor blades in here." "He's gonna hump this thing to death." "Could I just suggest something else?" " 'Cause I could sing to him, and then we could lure him out." "Just think, we could set him free." "He could live a long comfortable life in the wild." "It's a filthy raccoon." "It's not a whale." "We're not freeing Willy." "Come on, Virginia." "Look at his face." "I mean, I'm sure if we got to know him..." "All right." "Stop." "If you want to sing a song, just give it a shot." "Do you know any raccoon songs?" "Yeah, I do actually." "I wrote a song when I was six to help lure my cat out from under my bed." "I'm just going to change the words so it should be perfect." "You fixed the Porkchesters." "Well, I couldn't find every piece but..." "Do you think your mom will notice that Polly Porkchester has a piece of macaroni for a snout?" "No, but she might notice that you used cheese puffs for hooves." "No." "No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no." "What are you doing?" "I thought we were buddies." "Buddies don't do this." "Yeah, I don't think it's working." "I think he's fallen asleep." "Yeah, he might be a little bit bored." "But I think he'll love the techno remix." "I'm going to go get Shelley's laptop and turntables." "All right, buddy, you had your chance." "Let's do this thing." "That's right, give it a sniff." "Damn." "Another rejection for Jennifer Aniston." "What do you got there, honey?" "No, Hope." "You took the knobs off the stove?" "Way to go, Dad." "Hope wondered into your zone and you just let her play with the stove again." "Dad?" "What the hell's going on?" "You can't park your bike there, man." "Hope took all the knobs off the stove again." "I guess she left the gas on." "I opened all the windows and the doors." "Should be cleared out soon." "Here it comes!" "Jimmy, she could have killed your father." "She could have killed all of us." "We keep telling her "no" and she's not listening." "You need to make her not so abstinent." "You're right." "You're right." "I can't believe I'm saying this but I guess I have to spank her." "Hopefully it'll just be the one time." "And not too hard." "Just enough so she knows you still love her, but also so she knows you mean business." "Somewhere between Mary Poppins and Precious." "I'm okay." "Yeah." "I'm good." "Hope, sometimes a father has to spank his child." "It could be worse." "In Modern Family, that guy shot his kid to teach him a lesson." "And everybody just loved that." "Jimmy, wait!" "Don't do it." "I can't let you spank her." "Look, I don't like it either, but she's out of control, and it worked when you spanked me, so..." "No, it didn't." "I told your mother I'd spank you but I couldn't bring myself to do it." "You never actually got better." "I just made your mother think you did." "Delicious, Mommy." "Please don't spank me again." "Anything you refused to do, I did for you." "And the thing I couldn't do for you, I faked." "Don't forget to use those headphones I bought you." "I-I can't believe that you didn't spank me." "I mean, you told me to spank Hope because it worked when you spanked me." "I'm not perfect." "Nobody's perfect." "Look at you." "You're made of triangles." "Okay, might have a lile gas left in my brain." "I'm telling Mom." "So now you're a rat." "Nice." "I didn't see you so anxious to tell the truth when you were the only kid in preschool who got to watch Arsenio." "I think he's covering up his ears." "How'd it go?" "Did you spank her?" "Did she cry?" "I couldn't hear over DJ Jazzy Sabrina." "No, I didn't spank her." "Dad never spanked me." "He only pretended to, and then let me do whatever I wanted behind your back." "Is that true, Burt?" "You're a jerk, you know that?" "When you were four, we promised we'd never tell." "We made a cross-the-streams-and- hope-to-die pee-pee promise." "You never spanked him?" "You lied to me?" "Yes, I lied." "We are no longer pee-pee brothers." "I'm okay with that." "Guys." "Guys, keep arguing." "I think it's freaking him out." "He's looking for a way out." "Do you know how many critters" "I have had to wrangle from underneath this house because I thought you spanked our son?" "Forty-six, Virginia!" "Forty-six!" "Guys..." "Guys, maybe take it down a notch, he's starting to look a little aggressive." "Two dozen rats, 12 possums, seven raccoons, and three rabid squirrels." "You think this hasn't been hard on me?" "Hard on you?" "Burt, I got rabies." "Rabies!" "So now that's a bad thing?" "When's the last party we were at where you didn't have half a dozen people around you laughing at your "How I got rabies" story?" "Dear God!" "God!" "It all makes sense now." "They never disciplined me." "I still don't eat vegetables, my room's a mess, and I can't fall asleep without thinking about things that make me go "hmm."" "Do you think that raccoon is going to be okay?" "I mean, I'm really glad that I took that infant CPR class, but it's just..." "the shape of the mouth is completely different on these creatures." "It's impossible to get a tight seal." "I can't do the same thing my dad did." "I have to stop trying to be Hope's friend and make sure that she-she grows up with discipline." "And I'm not going to be lazy about it." "I'm going to read the books and I'm-I'm gonna do this right." "Jimmy..." "my raccoon might be dead and this is all you're thinking about?" ""Your" raccoon?" "God, I'm sorry." ""Our" raccoon." " God, he's alive." " Yep." "It's probably got a concussion, so the most important thing is to keep it awake for the next 48 hours." "If it seems okay after that, then you can let it go." " And if he doesn't seem okay?" " I'd still let it go." "Well..." "I've got good news and I've got bad news." "Unfortunately, the good news isn't for you." "What's that?" "Chicken wire." "I'm gonna put it up around the porch so no more animals can get underneath us." "I know, it's an old house, you shouldn't sink money into it, but what the hell?" "Why didn't you ever do that before?" "It was never my job before." "So you wouldn't do it to make my life a little easier?" "Did you ever want to help me clean the bugs out of the light fixtures?" "There's just so many of them." "It's tragic." "They're flies, Virginia." "They're born in poop." "Every day after that is a gift." "We never should have done the crappy jobs separately." "We should've worked together." "You're right." "No more of that." "Too bad we didn't learn this sooner." "Maybe Jimmy wouldn't be so screwed up." "He's not that screwed up." "Come on, he's a slob with lousy sleep habits who never eats his vegetables." "He's like Dennis the Menace except he doesn't make us laugh every day." "Well, maybe it's not too late." "We are still his parents." "Yeah, you're right." "And if he's going to live under our roof, he's going to live under our rules." "Burt, it's not our roof." "Don't bring that up when I'm laying down the law." "All right, Hope, we are gonna do this by the book." "Dah, dah, dah, dah." ""Daddy loves you very much," ""but it's time for you to go to bed." ""Half circle." ""Gently stroking head, loving but firm." ""Half circle." "I will see you in the morning."" "I'll see you in the morning." " You ready?" " I guess." "What was that?" "Don't look." "Well, I did it." "Hope's in bed." "Fingers crossed she stays there, because I want to watch some..." "Where's the TV?" "There is no more TV." "Not after 8:00." "It doesn't encourage good sleep habits." " You're kidding, right?" " No." "We are absolutely serious, and committed to follow through." "Guys, quit being jerks." "This is the finale of Celebrity Pet Swap." "Flavor Flav's getting his cat back tonight." "It wears a little clock on the collar." "I'm sorry, Jimmy." "Actions have consequences." "Yeah." "You guys acted like terrible parents, and now you have to deal with the consequences." "Watch your tone, young man." "You guys just feel guilty." "These techniques are for little kids." "You missed your chance to do the right thing." "Hi." "I, however, did not." "Hope, you need to stay in your crib." "It's sleep time." "Come on." "I'm serious, Hope." "You have to stay in your bed." "And I know you can understand me." "If Dick Cheney's spider monkey can understand Flavor Flav, you can understand me." "What are you doing?" "I'm getting a sweet treat." "Is it still okay if I have a sweet treat?" "This is ridiculous." "What, am I not allowed to eat anymore?" "No, you're allowed to eat." "And you can even have a sweet treat." "As soon as you finish your dinner." "Did you get that out of the garbage?" "Yes, but it was between two other TV dinners, so it's only been touched by its own kind." "And you, young man, are not allowed to eat anything else until you have finished your peas." "This is ridiculous." "All right, I'm going to Sabrina's." " Where are my keys?" " You mean these?" " My keys, to my van?" " It's my van." "No, this was my pee-pee brother's van, and he's dead." "Give me those keys." "Go fish." "Get your hand out of my..." "What the hell was that?" "It's my bottle opener key chain." "Give me those!" "You're not going anywhere!" "You're not getting a sweet treat until you eat your peas!" "You don't tell me what to do." "I'm your father." " You will eat your peas." " No!" " Eat your peas!" " Screw you!" "That is it, young man!" " Eat your peas!" " What are you doing?" "What I should've done 20 years ago." "Eat your peas!" "I hate you!" "Eat your peas!" "My God." "She ate a pea." "I bet it's because she saw your dad spanking you." "She doesn't want it to happen to her." "Eat your peas." "I don't know if we just got incredible lucky but we invented a new form of discipline." "But it work really well for us." "And except a few times when dad got carried away, it wasn't too bad for me." "Pick up your toys!" "We never did figure out whether spanking was right or wrong, but we did find out that by working together, we can come up with the best solution for a problem." "And that wasn't true just for spanking, it was true for a lot of things." "One of the best parts of being in a relationship is doing things together." "Even if it is spending the one night you get alone with your girlfriend keeping a raccoon with a concussion awake... or setting the little guy free." "Things are always easier if you have a partner..." "Okay." "Yeah." "Good bye, Robert." "Or Roberta." "I never really did get a good look." "And Mom and dad learnt that the chores they thought were so unpleasant, weren't so bad when they weren't doing them alone." "It is better doing stuff together." "Even if all you're doing is making more stuff for you to do together tomorow." "Dad and I even became pee-pee brothers again." "But you don't want to see that."