SEASON 1 – Fox (1-9) FX (10-13)
Created by Mitchell Hurwitz, Jim Vallely, and Will Arnett
Theme song by David Schwartz
- 001. Pilot – 9/21/2010
- A young girl named Puddle Kadubic (Stefania LaVie Owen) narrates the store of her mother Emmy (Keri Russell) and her ex-boyfriend from high school, the rich and spoiled Steven Wilde (Will Arnett), who is the heir to the Wilde Oil company. He is about to be honored at a party where he will be named Humanitarian of the Fiscal Year. Steve keeps himself surrounded by his sycophantic lifelong secretary Mr. Lunt (Robert Michael Morris), driver Migo Salazar (Mel Rodriguez), his lazy, rich, and completive neighbor and friend Fa’ad Shaoulian (Peter Serafinowicz). Steve tells Lunt to make sure that Emmy is invited to his party, even though she is currently working in the Amazon jungle with Ticunan tribesmen along with her boyfriend Andy Weeks (David Cross). The tribe is under threat of losing their tribal lands to Wilde Oil. Puddle doesn’t like life in the jungle, so for the past six months, she has refused to speak. Emmy tells Andy that they need to watch their step with the Wilde family, as she had once dated the spoiled rich kid Steve. Migo is able to track down Emmy and sends them an invitation to the party and reception for Steve Puddle sees this as a way back to civilization, so she is excited to go along. Steve arrives late and drunk to his reception and has an awkward reunion with Emmy. She begs him to ask his father to stop drilling where the tribe lives, but he tells her that he relies on his father for his trust fund. She tells him that he is supposed to do ‘good for nothing’ and not for an award, which she suddenly realizes he is giving to himself. Steve tells Lunt that he doesn’t want the award, but only wants Emmy, although the award is so big, he is sure it will make Fa’ad jealous. As Steve is telling Migo how he met Emmy, she is telling Puddle the same story. A young Emmy (Claire Robertson) was the daughter of one of young Steve’s (Tyler Johnston) father’s housekeepers. Emmy refused to go into the house, so Steve built her a treehouse where she could hang out. Migo reminds him that it was actually he who built the house for him. When Emmsy’s mother got fired, Emmy pleads with him to tell his father to re-hire her. Steve says he will demand that his father hire her back, but when his father bribes him with his first speedboat, Emmy never saw him again. In the present, Puddle realizes that her mother still has a thing for Steve, and she shows it by agreeing to give him another chance to do something good. They go to Steve’s house and he tells Emmy that she makes him want to be a better man. He shows her that he flew down to Peru and brought back the entire tribe and moved them into a fancy hotel, where they are currently using the pool. Emmy gets upset that he destroyed their 2000-year-old culture that she has worked six years to preserve all in one swift relocation. She tells Steve that she has to sacrifice for everything she’s worked for, while he has never sacrificed. She tells him that she is taking Puddle and going back to the jungle. Puddle hides in Steve’s car and tells him that she can really talk, although he is drunk and thinks he is reading her mind. She asks him to lie to her mother, so he gets Fa-ad to pose as a doctor and diagnose Puddle. He tells Emmy that Puddle cannot be moved and that she needs to go to an American school. Steve invites Emmy and Puddle to move in with him so she can attend a good local school. Since she doesn’t want Puddle to live in a ‘shrine of excess’, so he offers to let them live in the old treehouse. She agrees to stay, but then Steve accidentally gives away that his friend Fa’ad never worked a day in his life, giving up the ruse with the doctor. She storms out and tells Migo that everyone always sticks up for Steve and he has never stuck up for anyone. Puddle then speaks to her mother for the first time since she stopped and tells her that Steve stuck up for her and never told on her that the whole ruse was her idea. Emmy realizes that Steve did in fact do something “good for nothing.” She thinks that her good influence on him kept him from letting Emmy get into trouble. She decides to stay in the treehouse, undo every selfish impulse Steve ever had, and then together do good for the world. Ethan Trani is Migo’s son Carlos. Emanuel Fappas is Migo’s father. Daniel Perianu is young Migo. Sebastian Navarro is the band member. Rustin Gresiuk is the flirtatious boy. 7/1/23
- 002. Into the Wilde – 9/28/2010
- With vacation coming up, Steve is hoping that he can take Emmy and Puddle with him on a trip, but Fa’ad convinces him that Emmy would never agree to go along. Emmy starts to be seduced by the excesses of taking a hot bath, and also realizes that Steve is kinder than she first thought when he gives Puddle $500 for finding him when playing a game of hide and go seek that she didn’t know she was playing. Steve tells Puddle to tell Emmy that he’s going alone on vacation. She becomes angry when she thinks Steve is trying to prove that he’s better than them by not inviting them, but then when she confronts him, he invites her to go. Migo suggests that they vacation in the rustic hunting cabin that he built on their property, which Mr. Lunt has taken over and began restoring. As Emmy shaves her legs before the trip, Andy shows up after traveling to America on a garbage barge. When Andy and Steve see each other, it triggers an instant feud between them. Emmy decides to cancel the trip out of respect for Andy. Steve tells Emmy that she can do so much better than him, but Emmy tells him that she looks at people’s worth based on how he acts and not how rich he is. Migo advises Steve to be nice to Andy so that he will seem like a jerk if he pushes him away. Andy suggests to Emmy that they secretly fake-kidnap Steve and send a ransom note to his father, so that when the insurance company pays him off and they could buy back the land in the jungle. Andy pretends that he is nice to Steve, so he will trust him and take him on vacation, which he will pretend is the kidnapping. Andy and Steve then are both fake nice to one another. Fa’ad and his lipreading worker Saheem (Debargo Sanyal) spy on Andy and Steve to figure out what they are doing, and then report to Emmy that they are going on vacation together. Emmy realizes that Andy is kidnapping Steve, so she has Puddle go find Migo and Mr. Lunt, and she has Fa’ad take her to the cabin. However, he takes her to his cabin so they can get to know each other. She runs out and tries to track Andy and Steve, and eventually finds them. Andy has become ill and is lying on the ground covered by Steve’s backpack paper. She admits to Andy that she likes Steve and that he is her friend. She finds Steve in his cabin warming himself by the fire. Migo and Lunt show up, and Migo tells Steve that his father declined to report him missing when he got the hostage letter, as it would raise his premiums. Emmy tells Steve that he means a lot to them. They decide to continue with the family vacation and they invite Fa’ad to join them. Steve asks Migo to assemble a four-post bed for Emmy and Puddle. Dominic Colon is Martin, who finds Lunt’s China dolls. 7/1/23
- 003. Oil & Water – 10/5/2010
- Steve hangs out in the vodka freezer with Fa’ad in hopes of avoiding Andy, who is still hanging out on the grounds. Puddle suggests that Andy manufacture a big oil atrocity to get him to go visit it to stop it. Meanwhile, Puddle needs help with her science fair project, but when he brings in Paul Shaffer (himself) to write a musical about it. Emmy tries to convince Steve that real love is achieved by sacrifice rather than buying things, but since he’s never had a job, he wouldn’t know about that. Andy comes up with his own theory that Wilde oil is going to pollute the Inuits’ land in Alaska, so that the government will strip it of its protected status. Then Wilde Oil can step in and offer to ‘clean it up’ by drilling for oil. Emmy suggests that since Steve really doesn’t work at all, he couldn’t know about such intricate plots. Still, Steve convinces Andy to go to Alaska to fight it, and even offers to give him a coat for the cold weather. After Andy leaves, Steve confesses to Emmy that he does have a Wilde Oil office, as well as a suite of offices that report to him. He brings home $10,000 a week for this, but he has never actually been there. Emmy wants him to go in and quit the job, but when he shows up ther for the first time, he is greeted by the secretary Carol (Marcella Lowery) and the guy in charge, Rich Doyle (Matt Servitto). They all treat him so nicely and include him on bringing in KFC chicken for lunch that he enjoys being there and doesn’t in fact quit. Fa’ad is still locked in the vodka cellar and begins removing his clothes, rubbing ice on himself, and burning his clothes, having a faulty memory about what he needs to do in this situation. Emmy offers to come along with Steve to help him quit, and she gives him the information about Wilde Oil polluting the Inuits’ land. When Steve shares this idea with Board members, they all think it is a great idea. Emmy answers the phone in Steve’s office, which is the complaints line, and finds Andy on the other end. This gives Emmy the idea to move Steve up in the company and get herself hired on at the company so that she can expose more acts of destruction at Wilde Oil. She thinks that if they can move forward with polluting the Alaskan lands, this will help Steve’s career, so she creates a scale model of the lands and a plan how to pollute it. All of this sounds irresponsible to Steve, but he enjoys spending time with Emmy, especially when she gets hired as Steve’s secretary. When Emmy finds Fa’ad in the vodka freezer, she equates all of the idiotic things that he did to try and save warm only to encounter a slippery slope of ice with what she is doing at the oil company to ultimately achieve a greater goal. She decides to tell Steve to call of presenting the Board with the model she made, but when she finds him, she finds out that Steve has already quit the job and is using her model as Puddle’s science project, showing what not to do to the Inuits’ land. Emmy is impressed with his quitting in protest to their practices, but the real reason is that he found out that the weekend didn’t start on Wednesday. He also claims that he didn’t like the person that Emmy was becoming… but he was referring to her wearing her hair in a bun. In Alaska, the Inuits turn on Andy when a Wilde trucker (Steve Greenstein) points out that he is wearing a Wilde Oil jacket. Mike Still is the man with the files. J. LaRose is the Inuit man. Larry S. Gregory and Steve Greenstein are office workers. 9/18/23
- 004. The Junior Affair – 10/12/2010
- Steve is excited to chaperone Puddle to the Fall Formal at school and is equally as excited that Emmy will be going along as well. She points out that he let her down back in eighth grade when she wanted to dance with him to the song More Than Words, but Steve’s father wouldn’t let him take her since she wasn’t rich. Puddle tells them that they can both forget chaperoning because her date Lane Thorngood’s (James Lukens) father Dan (Andy Richter) has forbidden him from taking her for the same reason. Emmy decides to pretend she ran out of gas so that she can stop and wait for Lane to pass by and then tell him that he needs to stand up to his father. With Steve still bitter over his own father’s controlling way over him, he equates this with telling off Mr. Thorngood for preventing his son from taking Puddle. When he shows up at his Thorngood’s office, he tells Steve that he ‘doesn’t have time for this’ just like his own father used to say. Steve talks to Fa’ad about this and decides to return and get a bit tougher and have Dan thrown out of the country club where they both attend. Fa’ad wants to use the acting experience that he got under training with Alan Alda and pose as a New York thug named Mickey and scare Dan. When Steve confronts Dan, it greatly impresses him, which makes Steve start to look at Dan as a loving father-figure. When another club member named Charlie (John Henry Cox) starts to give Steve a hard time, Dan threatens him… and winds up scaring off Fa’ad. Emmy has another meeting with Lane to convince him that he she feel like he can go after whoever he is attracted to. It begins to come clear that Lane thinks he is now dating Emmy, while Dan thinks he is dating Steve. Dan and Steve play tennis together and then Steve offers to wash Dan’s car. Since he has never done it before, his washing becomes overtly seductive, and the two men wind up wrestling in the yard. On the night of the dance, Steve and Dan go together, and when Dan kisses Steve multiple times, Steve thinks it is a fatherly kiss. Emmy and Lane also show up together, and Lane goes to get Emmy so that he can break up with her and tell her that he is now dating Emmy. Both girls are utterly shocked. Fa’ad shows up speaking like Alan Alda as a tough guy to threaten Dan, who thinks that Fa’ad is Steve’s boyfriend. Steve suddenly realizes that Dan thought that he was dating him. Puddle instantly forgives her mother when a more attractive boy named Brad (Evan Robert Smith) asks her to dance. An embarrassed Steve and Emmy retreat outside, and when they hear More Than Words start to play, they try to go back in and dance to it… but they are locked out. Jeevan D’Souza is the bad cop, and Catherine LeFrere is the woman in the movie Gangs and Gangsters. 9/18/23
- 005. The Party – 10/19/2010
- To celebrate their first day in the treehouse of Neverwood, Steve arranges a giant breakfast be catered for Emmy and Puddle including a waffle bar for Puddle. He also presents Emmy with a new electric car after having her old car removed. Since Emmy’s wardrobe was in the back of her old car, Steve also gives her a fashion show in the house so that she can pick out new clothes. Although Emmy is partially lured by all of the extravagance, she also tells Steve that this is what she doesn’t like, and furthermore does not want Puddle to be around. Puddle convinces her mother that she needs to help Steve tone things down. However, Steve has a giant party planned for the weekend, another in a long succession of trying to outdo the parties of Fa’ad, all of which are thrown to celebrate everything from microscopic events to nothing in particular. Steve tries to get Puddle to keep the party from Emmy, but Emmy overhears the conversation. Steve admits to Emmy that he knows she will try to make the party ‘not fun’. She again agrees to help Steve with toning down the party, which will include scaling it down in cost and alcohol. Emmy takes him to a super-size store where they buy tons of cheap snacks in bulk. Fa’ad is fascinated by the theme of the party as they look over the spread. It nearly drives them both mad and they try to overturn the table of snacks but can’t lift the table. Steve tries to pass off the party to his guests as being ironic, but he is quite embarrassed by it. The party bottoms out when Emmy starts showing her slides of her miserable experiences in Peru. By the time she is done with the presentation, everyone has left. Steve finally demands that she stop presenting and tells her that she killed the party. Steve blames her for changing his party, but she insists that he asked her to help him change. She gets so angry that she overturns the snack table that he couldn’t lift. Emmy admits that she is still intimidated by being there, still thinking of herself as the housekeeper’s daughter. Steve tells her that he never really enjoyed the party, but always wanted someone like her to hang out with after the party. Emmy agrees that if she wants Steve to change, she herself might need to change a little bit too. Emmy offers to go with Steve to Fa’ad’s party, but nervous about what they might see there, Steve asks her to show him some more of the slide show. Daniel Raymont, Sarah Kate Jackson, and Kahan James are party guests. 1/14/24
- 006. Best Man – 11/9/2010
- Steve has been setting up subliminal messages all over the house in order to guide Emmy’s dreams toward Steve being a horse-mounted hero who will rescue her from the clutches of Andy. However, Emmy quickly figures this out when she finds his multiple books about subliminal messages around the house. She instead tells him that she dreamed of Andy rescuing her from Steve. He finally confronts her and asks why she loves him so much, and if she does, why she hasn’t married him. Emmy tells him that they cannot afford to get married right now, so Steve offers to pay for the wedding just to call her bluff. She accepts his offer gleefully, but then tells Puddle that she knows what he is doing and refuses to be manipulated. She tells Puddle that she won’t let him spend any real money on the wedding, so Puddle tells Steve what Emmy said. However, when Steve starts with the wedding planning, it keeps getting bigger and bigger, and Emmy winds up caught up in the excitement. Before all is said and done, they have planned out a three-day event open to the public that will include medieval costumes and games. Migo warns Steve that it is not looking like Emmy has any intention of backing down and suggests that he tell her the truth, that it will kill him if she marries Andy. However, when he goes to tell her, he chickens out and continues saying that he only wants what is best for her, even if that means marrying Andy. During the wedding rehearsal, Steve stands in for Andy and gives a very heartfelt rendition of true vows to her that he wrote. Emmy is visibly touched, and then mentions that she has not told Andy about the wedding. Steve suggests that he could continue to stand in for Andy all the way through the ceremony, and they start to kiss. Mr. Lunt then interrupts and tells them that he did in fact tell Andy about the wedding and sent a ride to pick him up. They hold a wedding banquet in full medieval garb, with Fa’ad narrating the proceedings with a lute and medieval music narration. Andy second guesses Steve’s intentions for throwing the wedding and tells him that Emmy is his and that Steve will never have her. They wind up getting into an argument and agreeing to have a jousting contest, with the winner getting Emmy’s hand and the loser walking away forever. Mr. Lunt tells Emmy about the contest, and she worries because Andy once worked at Medieval Times as a jouster. During the competition, Steve gets scared and veers off the path with his horse, and although Andy is unable to joust him, he chases him and knocks him off. However, once he has victory, he continues riding his horse into Canada where he is arrested. Emmy admits that she isn’t ready to get married to anyone including Andy, and they agree to stop playing these games of chicken. Emmy admits that she and Andy have problems, and Steve again tries to bluff about how he’d be glad to pay for their relationship counseling. 1/14/24
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