A Bus Bench and Faith out the Wazoo
Georgie needs help with the financial records for the shop and his decisions pit his mother and Mandy’s mother against each other. Meanwhile, Jim has to come to terms with aging as he struggles with being able to pass the eye test at the DMV.
Warning: Spoilers Below
Money Problems
Georgie is handling the accounting for the shop and things aren’t looking good. He’s constantly busy and doesn’t know how he’s going to make it. Ruben won’t let him hire an accountant because they are struggling so much. Mandy points out that her mother used to do it for her Dad, but Georgie is reluctant to ask. He doesn’t want to look stupid compared to his mother-in-law, which is saying something since she clearly doesn’t think he’s all that smart. Mandy suggests his own mother since she handles the church’s financial records.
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Georgie goes down to the church to talk to Mary. At first, she says she’s too busy but eventually she agrees since she used her house as collateral to help Georgie buy the shop. When she shows up, Georgie tells Ruben to keep anything that seems ungodly out of sight. Ruben overcompensates by trying to be a perfect little angel and Mary can see right through it. She shows them the numbers and tells them they have to cut back a little bit more but they aren’t underwater, so there’s still hope. This frustrates Georgie, so he makes a rash decision.
Going to Audrey
Georgie doesn’t want to cut back spending, he wants to make money and is looking for a creative way to advertise the business. He goes to Audrey who teases him a bit about moving away from his mother’s advice into hers, but she eventually agrees to help. Mary is driving along when she sees an advertisement for the shop that she knows they don’t have the money for which to pay. She confronts Georgie who tries to explain how and she quickly realizes he went to Audrey, so she heads over to the McAllisters.
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Mary confronts Audrey and the pair have another one of their many arguments over their different ways of handling. Mary reveals she’s scared since she used her house and Audrey finally sees her, not as a competitor, but as a loving mother who wants to support her son but has already lost so much since her husband died. The two mothers talk about how their kids would pit them against their husbands and they bond could be bad news for Georgie.
Confronting Georgie
Georgie arrives home to find his mother and mother-in-law waiting for him like two parents who caught their kid in a lie and are waiting for them to confess. To be fair, that’s exactly what happened, it’s just involving a 20 year old instead of an actual child. Both mothers start tearing into Georgie about pitting them against each other and praising each other for how they’ve handled the situation. It appears they are on the same page, until they aren’t.
Troy Harvey / 2025 Warner Bros. Entertainment Inc.
During their rants, the differences between Audrey and Mary bubble up and the pair who were showing a united front mere seconds previously start arguing with each other. Georgie is able to slip out of the conversation without any real punishment other than having his mother and mother-in-law yell at him for a few minutes. It’s one of the most realistic endings to a sitcom episode I’ve seen in quite a while.
Jim’s Aging
While Georgie, Audrey and Mary have the serious storyline of this episode, Jim and Mandy get roped into the more humorous B-plot. Jim goes down to renew his license but fails the eye exam. This means he can’t renew his license. All he needs is a pair of glasses to help him see, but he’s too stubborn to get glasses and too stubborn to ask for help.
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Later in the episode, he and Mandy are driving when he’s rear-ended. He fights giving his license to the responding officer until it’s revealed he doesn’t have his license. Mandy drives him home and is shocked that he let her ride in the car with him when he didn’t have a license because he failed the eye exam. Eventually, he goes down and gets glasses then returns and passes the eye exam and gets his license back. Jim acts like a visionary superhero when, in reality, he’s just me, someone who needs corrective lenses to be able to drive.
What’s Next?
This episode does a great job of capturing the heart of this series while highlighting the humor. Georgie is trying to please everybody and quickly finds out he can’t do that. Mary is fighting for herself and her son but is also motivated to be chosen over Audrey. Audrey is familiar with the store and wants to feel needed, and she also wants to be chosen over Mary. Meanwhile, Jim’s storyline brings about simple laughs as it would easily be resolved with a visit to an optometrist. And Ruben somehow steals every scene with his attempts at choir boy behavior. It nails what it needs to nail and finds a way to hit its stride.
Check out Georgie and Mandy’s First Marriage on CBS and Paramount Plus.
Article Written By: Jeremy Brown for Stelmach Brown Media 2025
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