Dobie joins the school band solely to be close to piccolo player Esme Lauterbach, who is interested in Maynard. Maynard enters Dobie's old school essay My Dog in a newspaper Father's Day contest ...

Dobie names Thaila as his beneficiary on a life insurance policy, then becomes paranoid that she and Maynard are trying to kill him. Mrs. Gillis's cousin Virgil visits and gets the Gillises to ...