According to Jim: 7.9 ‘Goodwill Hunting’ Recap
Original Air Date: February 26, 2008
After a silly opening scene where JIM and ANDY mop the kitchen floor with KYLE, who’s wrapped in paper, the men hold band practice in the garage. The group is just a trio of harmonica, keyboards, and drums after Jim fired the other two members due to the five-piece band’s inability to fit in the crowded garage. Boxes are everywhere, and they’re filled with the kids’ baby stuff, which CHERYL is saving because she’s a hoarder.
Jim, looking extremely forward to his three children growing up and getting out, is convinced they don’t need any of the stuff anymore. As a result, he decides to get rid of it all while his wife’s in Florida because it is easier to ask for forgiveness after the fact rather than permission beforehand.
So, Jim arranges for a homeless charity to stop by and pick up everything that belonged to the kids when they were younger. This scene includes a very unflattering and unfunny segment with Jim first remarking to his daughter RUBY that the charity is for kids in Africa, and then repeatedly calling the homeless “hobos” when the charity’s representative, PHIL (Bruce Jarchow), corrects him. Talk about tasteless.
Phil also informs Jim that donations can be claimed at tax time. Since his thrift store operates on an honor system, Jim doesn’t need to provide receipts — he can just give guesstimates for the value of items. Jim being Jim, he inflates the amounts, claiming that just about every item is worth $1,000, including a crib and the kids’ pajamas.
After Phil takes the last of the donated items, Andy comes back into the garage and blows up some inflatable furniture to turn the area into a proper men’s hangout. Jim is called to the computer soon, where Cheryl, on video chat, informs him that she became pregnant from their little tryst in the airport bathroom on the previous episode “The Rendezvous.” Even worse (for Jim, that is), she’s heading home tomorrow after her sister Dana arrives to look after their mom.
Jim is now double screwed because he doesn’t want anymore children and he already got rid of the things that Cheryl, who’s overjoyed to be pregnant, wants to start sorting through when she gets home. Eventually, he also regrets exaggerating the value of his donations when Phil refuses to give the items back for anything less than the $700,000 Jim claimed they were worth.
What’s Jim’s response? He and Andy break into the thrift shop to steal the stuff back … and, thankfully, Phil catches them in the act. He grows more sympathetic, however, when Jim mentions he’s overwhelmed after just learning he’s going to have a fourth child.
Phil agrees to return the donations in exchange for Jim’s pro bono construction work expanding the mission. It won’t cost Jim anything in the long run because that, too, would be a tax write-off. This is a good thing since when Cheryl returns, she reveals that she’s not only carrying twins, but she’s decided that Jim was right about buying new baby stuff, and she’s already purchased two sets of everything online.
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Tags: ABC, According to Jim, billi-bruno, bruce jarchow, comedies, comedy, conner-rayburn, courtney-thorne-smith, goodwill hunting, jim-belushi, kimberly-williams-paisley, larry-joe-campbell, Recaps, Sitcoms, situation-comedies, taylor-atelian, Television, tv, Winter 2008Related Stories
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