S05-E12, directed by James Broderick, is a tidy tale of a messy subject: grade school bullying. The victim is Annie (Quinn Cummings) and the principle bully is one of her classmates (a malicious Dana Hill). Their teacher seems to understand what's happening but doesn't intervene--she's the proverbial well-meaning, let's-get-back-to-learning waste of space--and Annie won't talk about her problems to Kate, so she starts playing hooky. Meanwhile, in an unconvincing semi-parallel side-plot, Doug is helping Buddy prepare for her SAT's, but is putting too much pressure on her. From what we know about Buddy, she's not the type to fall apart apart so dramatically that she doesn't even report to the testing room, but all this striding up and down is really meant to help Doug learn a lesson about being obsessive over his children (if they're going to fail, let them fail on their own). It's ridiculous that Buddy is so upset over the SAT's that she's considering not going to college at all and has Willie helping her look through the want ads for job openings! Meanwhile, whip-smart Annie faces her hostile classroom with a speech about fitting in that might have gone over-the-top were it not for Broderick's sensitive staging of the scene and Cummings' strong performance. This is the first (perhaps only) time Cummings got a substantial plot-line to herself, and she's reigned in nicely.
