Jack & Bobby

The brothers are understandably suspicious when culinarily hopeless ma announces she's going to cook a Thanksgiving turkey for their guests. Jack's longstanding friend Matt Kramer has committed suicide, his class goes trough grief counseling. After seeing Tom hold hands with Leslie, an ex his age, Grace tells him no romantic involvement between them is possible and gets a surprise visit from her equally flippant, erudite, openly gay kid brother Jimmy, who is great with Bobby and can tell the boys more about their dad, which Grace avoids since he left them, but also has his own problems, especially with alcoholism... Only Jack knows Matt didn't break up with him and the team because of Missy, but was a closet-gay afraid to tell his bigot Missouri family and had a desperate crush on Jack, who is asked by the family to speak at the funeral.

Bobby is determined to repay chancellor Peter Benedict for 'saving his life' by doing chores, even if it turns out harmful for him or the home, till Benedict discovers him as talented chess partner and promising pupil instead- until he's caught losing on too respectful purpose, but Bobby is soon back bursting with belligerent confidence. While Tom persists in asking Grace's pointless 'academic advice', Jack is furious to desperate when she insist to make his social nightmare come true: meeting girlfriend Missy's non-revolutionary parents reverend and Evelyn Belknap at their dinner table, a recipe for religious war, while disloyal Marcus asks Courtney to a frat party, only to be ignored there. Afterward Jack tells his high, haughty ma what an inept, inconsiderate cow she was, as always, and tells her to but out; next morning she asks him to help her stop smoking weed for real. When she tells Tom to take another tutor because she's romantically attracted, he replies he therefore already took another, they kiss.

It's not bad enough that Grace ignores Bobby's warning not to volunteer as chaperon for his class trip, she pedantically takes over from the admiring female history teacher and turns the weekend in Philadelphia into such a teenager hell that all his classmates blame the poor boy, who cleverly gives her exactly what she deserves: their own declaration of independence, providing she may never play any part in any class activity. Yet Bobby grants her some time together, without third parties... Jack scolds Missy for attending a party with Randy, only to hear startled that's just to make him jealous. When the kids drive home, drunk Marcus and a passing deer cause them to have an accident in which pregnant Missy dies.