Rules of Engagement: 2.12 ‘Optimal Male’ Recap
May 4, 2008 by Chandra
Original Air Date: April 28, 2008
Now that JEFF and AUDREY have decided to start a family, it’s important for everything to be in order, like their life insurance. It’s time for Jeff’s annual physical, which he’s not too concerned about because he thinks he still weighs the same amount he did in college. If true, that makes him an optimal male in the insurance’s three way system of overweight male, average male, and optimal male.
Audrey bursts Jeff’s bubble, however, by telling him he’s been using the happy scale that’s set ten pounds lower. According to their bitchy scale in the closet, Jeff is really just an average male, a designation he’s determined to shake by losing ten pounds over one weekend. He thinks it will be easy, too, because he lost weight rapidly all the time in school for wrestling purposes.
Later, ADAM bumps into his ex-girlfriend STACY (Guest Star Valerie Azlynn) while he, JENNIFER, and Audrey are out running errands. To Audrey’s astonishment, Jennifer doesn’t protest when the two leave to have coffee alone. Jennifer claims she can’t say no to such requests because Adam was raised by hippies, leaving him with no sense of boundaries.
In other words, he has no problem remaining close friends with exes, and he doesn’t care if Jennifer is friends with hers either. In fact, Jennifer returns home to discover that Adam has offered to let Stacy stay with them because her hotel lost her reservation and doesn’t have another room available.
Jennifer gets to put Adam’s perspective to the test when she invites her self-involved ex-lover DRAKE (Guest Star Teddy Sears) to the Gentle Embrace Society charity function that RUSSELL, desperate to fill eight seats at a table so he can get on the organization’s board and nail a high-class socialite member named CLARISSA (Guest Star Josie Davis), invites them all to attend.
Adam and Drake seem to hit it off, although Adam admits to Jennifer later that for the first time ever in a relationship, he feels jealous that his significant other used to be with another guy. He’s even prepared to ask Stacy to leave, which becomes unnecessary when she hooks up with Russell, whose chances with the socialite are dashed by Audrey.
She gets revenge on him for making fun of her Midwestern background by volunteering him to give a speech about the charity, knowing full well that he doesn’t know or care what it’s for. So, he embarrasses himself on the podium when he misidentifies the group’s focus, which is literacy, as leprosy.
Meanwhile, after a night spent successfully avoiding the food at the charity event, Jeff turns up at a Bar Mitzvah, where he destroys his chances of being an optimal when he downs seven hot dogs. Thankfully for him, Audrey doesn’t care in the least.
