While at Shea Stadium covering a Mets game, Ray is asked to sub for an absent panelist on a live television sports talk program. After his nerves trip him up on camera, however, the family's subsequent painful viewing of the show leads them to later suggest that appearing on camera isn't Ray's thing.
After being berated by Debra for copping out of their parenting classes, Ray decides to use one of the classes' techniques called "active listening" which works wonders on understanding his own parents.
When Debra, Frank, and Marie all suggest Ray go out with Robert on the anniversary of Robert's divorce, the two begin to bond with one another before Robert tries to dig deeper into Ray's emotions.
Ray resumes taking piano lessons from Marie when he decides to set an example for Ally about not quitting her own piano lessons.
Ray's golf skills begin to falter when, after tricking Debra into letting him play golf, his guilty conscience takes over.
After learning during his parents' 40th anniversary party that the couple once split up and then got back together when he injured himself as a kid, Ray wonders if he's to blame for their long, crazy marriage.
Debra coaxes Ray into creating an office at home in the basement so he can be closer to the family.
Debra decides to write her own children's book when she tires of the same old storybooks she reads to Ally. Things get competitive with Ray, however, when she lets him be a part of the writing and he takes the process too seriously.
Frank is elated when Ray buys an expensive aquarium to make up for only giving him a card on his 65th birthday, but Frank begins to dislike the gift when one of the fish dies.
Ray and Debra attend their 20-year high school reunion, where Ray is shocked to learn that Debra was one of the cool people who used to push him into the bathgroom when he was considered nerdy.
When Marie crashes Debra's tupperware party, Debra decides to write Marie a brutally honest letter documenting the ways she has meddled in her family's life. Though Ray is unable to thwart the letter, Marie is suprisingly able to handle the criticism.
Ray wants to get some intimate time with Debra for Chirstmas, but she's not really feeling it. When he does manage to get her into the idea on Christmas Day, he soon must fend off his family, who is at the front door ready to unwrap gifts and eat together.
In order to wrangle out of attending a baby shower, Ray decides to spend some time with Frank by joining him in a re-enactment of a civil war battle.
To help Ally with her class report on her family history, Ray seeks out his oldest relative, Aunt Sarina, but his offer to Sarina to come by if she's ever in town is immediately taken up, with Sarina coming by for a stay. Ray soon suspects Sarina is little too perfect an old, Italian aunt.
Ray chooses Marie's time-honored meatballs over Debra's chicken dish, which upsets Debra, prompting Ray to ask his mother to teach her how to make the meatballs.
Debra prods Ray to take over the household finances, but when the figures go way off, he tries to borrow money from Robert by telling him Debra has outrageous spending habits.
Ray is bored when he decides to sit in the back seat of Robert's police car for a ride-along, but when the police are called in to stop a robbery in progress at Nemo's, Ray learns firsthand a thing or two about his brother's life as a cop.
Ray and Debra have trouble getting sleep when Ally begins having nightmares about monsters.
Debra gets jealous when Marie starts liking Robert's girlfriend Amy more because she's a wholesome girl, leading Ray to tell his mother lies about Debra's romantic experiences in younger days. Soon, everyone learns where Marie's point-of-view on the matter came from.
Debra is upset with Ray's lack of support for her when she takes on a parent coordinating Ally's T-ball game who has informed her she's brought a snack that wasn't on a list of acceptable snacks.
Realizing his traffic school teaching skills are boring his class, Robert decides to use a ventriloquist's dummy named "Traffic Cop Timmy" to make his lectures come alive.
Ray has a midlife crisis when he realizes he's getting older and has lost an inch in height, so Debra instructs him in the ways of an effective midlife crisis. Meanwhile, Marie gets upset with Frank when he tells her that he sold off half of their burial plot.
While laying out items for Frank's garage sale, Ray shockingly learns that Debra doesn't want to have any more kids when he notices all their baby furniture and clothes up for sale.
As the Barones ready for a wedding, Ray learns that Debra needed a little more convincing to marry him than he thought and looks back on the very confusing night he asked her to become his wife.
Ray gets very nervous as the wedding approaches and wonders if he is Debra's true love or if she just likes that idea of the perfect wedding she has had since childhood.