Stuck at the hospital waiting for Frank after her car accident, in which the exam shows that the baby was uninjured and Sue herself only sustained minor injuries, Sue meets a woman named Samantha, who hands her a brochure on the Lamaze method. Sue is interested in trying it out as she feels it will give her control over her childbirth experience. Meanwhile, Frank is stuck at the airport trying to manage a backup in the baggage department resulting from the Mohican staff being dangerously inexperienced with the X-ray machine, while Big Bill tries to help smooth over the crowd's frustrations. Bill takes his frustrations with his father and grandfather out on the hockey rink, earning him praise from Coach Fitzsimmons and the nickname, "The Rat." Marie and Babe go searching for Anthony after he runs away during the baby shower. Maureen and Bridget break into the school, where Maureen finds out that Amy got the lead in the school play. Vic pressures Kevin and his band to play the easy listening music favored by the radio station.
Tropes:
- Bait-and-Switch Compassion: Frank yells at Red and Carl for being inside the X-ray machine when it is running, ostensibly out of concern for their safety, until he yells that they could break the machine. Carl has received a dose of X-rays and his face is burned and swollen.
- Captivity Harmonica: This is heard when Sue is forced to remain in a locked room at the hospital until Frank (or the next closest male relative) comes to get her, along with a number of other women in similar predicaments.
- Death by Irony: Dr. McAllister laughs so hard while dismissing Sue's concerns over the hospital's "barbaric" birthing procedures, which include being tied down and given large amounts of morphine, that he has a heart attack and falls to the floor of the exam room, dead. Given that he was coughing up smoke and appeared to be very pale and ill, it's likely his unhealthy habits caused his death. Beatrice quietly admits that his practices caused a lot of needless harm to his patients.Beatrice: He's with half of his patients now.
- Given Name Reveal: Babe tells Marie off for treating him like a baby, resulting in this apology from Marie followed by the beginnings of a make-up sex session that is interrupted when Babe sees Anthony's footprints.Marie: Oh, Nunzio! I had no idea I made you feel this way!
- I Just Want to Be Free: Sue sees the Lamaze method as a way for her to gain some control over her life, in contrast to her feeling like a figurative (and at the time, literal) hostage. Also, given by Babe as the reason why he was infatuated with Vic, compared to the heavy control Marie exerts over him.
- Shown Their Work: Twilight sleep, the birthing procedure Dr. McAllister uses that Sue feels is "barbaric," was an actual treatment common in the early 20th century that used a combination of morphine and scopolamine to induce conscious sedation during childbirth, despite the combination of drugs being potentially dangerous and even fatal if too much of either medication was administered. The combination really did cause some patients to thrash violently, requiring them to be restrained. It had fallen out of favor by the time World War I ended, which emphasizes how outdated Dr. McAllister's medical practices were. As was mentioned in the show, twilight sleep did not actually do anything for the pain of the childbirth process despite the use of morphine. Instead, the scopolamine induced an amnesiac response so that the mother would not remember the pain of the birthing process.
