Dick, fearing that Mary has him wrapped around her little finger, takes lessons in being "manly"---from Harry. Sally and Tommy have a showdown with the game Monopoly.

Dick's rudeness lands him in a sensitivity-training session. Dubcek's daughter takes Harry to her high-school reunion. Officer Don teaches Tommy how to drive.

Dick attends a function with Mary and finds that, because she is Dean, he is ignored by everybody except the wives of the other Deans. In order to prove his worth, he decides to hold a fashion show to raise enough money to have the dilapidated statue of Admiral Pendleton restored. Meanwhile, Sally is horrified when she learns that Don had dated other women before her, and strives to track them all down. Harry and Tommy try to raise their own funds by setting up a lemonade stand.

As 1998 comes to close, Dick worries that he hasn't accomplished anything worthwhile and struggles to do something to make the past year count. Meanwhile, Officer Don becomes annoyed with Sally after she uses her feminine wiles to persuade him to get tickets for Rutherford's exclusive Starlight Room, then changes her mind when he succeeds. At Happy Doug's bar, Harry and Tommy plan an explosive New Year's party and Harry hires on his old night school friends, Larry and Mrs. Deguzman, but they turn out to be layabouts.

Dick is jealous when fellow physics professor Vincent Strudwick publishes a critically acclaimed, bestselling book on physics, and, while Mary busies herself showing the visiting Nobel Prize winners around the campus, he decides to write a second book that will better Strudwick's. He then realizes, however, that he cannot publish all the secrets of the universe without raising unwanted questions, and so looks for another way to get at Strudwick, using Tommy and Alissa - who, it turns out, is Strudwick's daughter. Sally and Don decide to start hanging out as friends, but soon find themselves unable to resist each other.

When Sally, Harry and Tommy are nearly crushed by a chandelier in a restaurant, they feel reborn, as if they are discovering everything for the first time. Dick is jealous, however, and while Sally and Harry volunteer themselves at a homeless shelter, he strives to have a near-death experience so that he might enjoy life like they do - and a faculty trip into the mountains presents itself as the perfect opportunity. Meanwhile, Tommy decides to waste no more time in his life - and asks Alissa to marry him.

When a drunk Mary tells Dick she once had a fling with his archenemy Vincent Strudwick, he is outraged and decides to get even with the pair of them by convincing Strudwick's wife to sleep with him. Tommy supports Dick's decision, imagining double dates - himself with Alissa and Dick with Strudwick's wife. Meanwhile, Sally gets the hots for Don after he starts riding a police motorbike, but the pair crash and Don ends up in full body plaster.

At a charity auction for the Rutherford Boys Home, Dick wants everybody to applaud him and so starts a bidding war with Studwick for a painting and ends up paying seventeen hundred dollars for it. Meanwhile, Don complains when Sally's snoring keeps him up all night, so she decides to try to stay awake all night so that he can sleep, but ends up keeping him awake anyway. Back at home, Harry and Tommy have been given the job of devising a new mission statement, and so try to work out what their purpose is on Earth.

After hearing of how well his colleagues are doing in the stock market, Dick claims that he has earned enough money to share a holiday with Mary in Cancun. As a result, Dick is forced buy into the market in order to actually pay for the holiday, but he soon begins to lose money when the company he invests in is rumored on CNN to have overspent. Meanwhile, Sally cannot stand it when a tougher woman than her arrives in town, in the form of police officer Janice. Janice and Harry, however, take to each other.

Pendelton University has a new chancellor, who causes anger when he cuts funding and takes away tenure, so Dick holds a meeting, in which he convinces the faculty to resign en masse. Unfortunately, the chancellor accepts the resignations and leaves everybody in the faculty, bar Dick - who withdrew his own, without a job. Upon finding out about his betrayal, the faculty protest outside Dick's classroom and Mary refuses to be seen with him. Meanwhile, Tommy begins working at a pretzel store with his girlfriend Alissa, but begins to dislike working with her and gives Sally and Harry free pretzels, with which they start their own business right in front of the store.

Dick and Mary are getting ready for the annual Rutherford Badger Day Dance Contest, but there's a small problem - Mary can't dance. Harry however has teamed up with Nina, but when Dick sees just how good a dancer she is, he orders Harry to let him dance with her instead. Meanwhile, Tommy and Don become exasperated when Alissa and Sally become friends and try on nearly everything in the clothes store. Jealousy arises, however, when Tommy discovers that Sally saw Alissa naked in the changing room, and then Sally discovers that Alissa accidentally walked in on Don changing in the Solomons' toilet. After Dick (and Nina) win the dance competition, the episode closes with a wordless pas de deux, complete with orchestral accompaniment of George Gershwin's "He Loves and She Loves", in a tribute to the final scene of the 1957 film Funny Face starring Fred Astaire and Audrey Hepburn. A portion of the film's choreography is re-created by Dick and Mary.

It's a nice day and Dick doesn't want to be stuck in the workplace, so he decides to do something that he thinks has never been done before - fake a sick day. Mary soon finds out what he's up to and decides to join him, and the pair run into Strudwick, who is doing the same thing. Meanwhile, Sally, Harry and Tommy find a police scanner that Don has left lying around and begin listening to a woman named Andrea's phone conversations. Things take an interesting twist, however, when Harry begins dating her.

Tommy is still reeling from his breakup with Alissa, but Sally and Harry convince him that if he can find an excuse to go over to her house, he can persuade her to watch a movie with him. When the pair leave the house together, however, Strudwick is suspicious and confronts Dick. Mrs. Dubcek suggests that they could have eloped, so Dick and Strudwick rush off to track them down before there's a baby on the scene, managing to accidentally abandon Mary in the process. Meanwhile, Tommy has rented a scary movie to watch with Alissa, in the hope that it might bring her into his arms, but Sally and Harry decide to show up and make it more real.

The Solomons visit a parallel universe, in which they are living in New York City, where Dick is a highly regarded attorney, Sally writes a sex column and Harry is President of NBC, while Tommy is a star on Saturday Night Live. Despite this, Dick is unhappy because he cannot find Mary; however, upon entering a basement bar he discovers her, a failed actress-turned torch singer who has renamed herself Kiki Lyle. Meanwhile, Sally discovers that Don is the Mayor of New York, and that she isn't his girlfriend, but his mistress.

With the identity of Scoochie revealed to be Liam Neesam, who had visited Pendelton three years ago, Dick is panicked, and follows Liam and Mary to dinner, where he overhears Liam offering her a job with a six-figure salary. The other Solomons suggest that Dick reveal himself as another alien in order to gain Liam's respect. When he does, however, Liam reveals that he doesn't care for Mary, but that she is part of a huge plan to transform the Earth's entire population into monkeys, and rename it Planet Monkey World, so that it may be an exhibit for aliens. Meanwhile, Sally, Harry and Tommy discover that their favorite movie, Arthur 2: On the Rocks' has a 'prequel' - Arthur.

The Solomons are struggling to take in the news - they have been ordered back home due to Dick's transgression with Liam. Dick's first instinct is to ask Mary to come, so he takes her to the planetarium before breaking the news to her that they are leaving, and asking her if she will join them. Meanwhile, since admitting his fear to Sally, Don has decided to quit the police force and open a muffin store, but Sally is disgusted by this career choice and decides to whip Don into shape - and turn him into a hardy police officer. At home, Harry and Tommy are attempting to organize a farewell party for the aliens, but have no money, so they decide to max out their credit cards and not worry about paying the bill, since they'll be halfway across the galaxy - they even hire Elvis Costello to sing Fly Me to the Moon.