The Smiths are forced to move into a hotel for a week. Francine, dissatisfied with her life, gets into a convention for concrete executives. Steve gets enthralled with a painting of a beautiful woman, and tries to find a way to meet her.
Tropes:
- Adam Westing: Héctor Elizondo is the hotel's concierge, describing it as his true passion.Woman: Excuse me, where can I get some tampons?Héctor Elizondo: Right over here, Miss. I keep them next to my Tony.
- Ax-Crazy: Invoked by Francine to make everyone shut up and eat. We're treated to a lengthy sequence of Francine describing her usual day while she brutally murders Stan, Steve, and Roger for complaining about making okra casserole instead of zucchini. It's then revealed Francine was imagining it while holding a giant meat cleaver and saying she can always make the guys something else before slamming the cleaver into the kitchen table.
- Be Careful What You Wish For: Francine becomes a concrete executive but finds it lonely without her family.
- Boomerang Bigot: Francine, who was adopted by Chinese parents and knows both the language and the culture, improvises a speech that blames China for hurting the American concrete industry. She even uses the racist term "yellow" and inspires two members of the convention to go after an Asian man.
- Dead Person Impersonation: Francine takes the name badge of Sarah Blanch, who was believed to have been in a car crash. It's then shown that Sarah had initially survived the car crash but was then hit by a log and swept away. Ten years later, Francine is still going by her assumed name.
- Epic Fail: Without Francine, Stan can't even dress himself.
- The Faceless: Ten years in the future, Francine returns to Langley Falls and briefly stops by the Smith house. She sees that Stan has moved on with another woman, but doesn't see her face.
- Imagine Spot: When the men are dissatisfied with Francine's dinner, she then imagines stabbing Roger, decapitating Stan, and snapping Steve's neck. They are suitably freaked out when it's over.
- I Warned You: Even after Francine's threats, Roger refuses to eat the dinner because "okra gives him pretty bad gas." Stan tells him to just eat it anyway. That night, they are all awakened by what they initially think is a house fire.Roger: Ugh, who farted? This guy!
- Readings Are Off the Scale: Roger's fart is described by a biohazard specialist as "off-the-charts toxic."
- Ridiculously Human Robots: Francine's assistant in the future is a robot, who she shuts down.
- Shout-Out:
- Steve dresses like Marty McFly for his time travel trip.
- Steve's plot of becoming enthralled with a painting and then using his mind to time travel is taken from the film Somewhere in Time.
- Past!Francine describes Future!Francine as having Paulie Walnuts hair.
- Stable Time Loop: Because of Steve's time travel, he becomes the subject of the painting that he became enthralled with.
- Yellow Peril: Invoked. After struggling to bullshit her way through the speech Sarah was scheduled to have at the convention, Francine notices an Asian-American concrete executive silently encourage her... which inspires her to fearmonger about the threat that Chinese people pose to the American concrete industry, capping it off with an inflammatory comment about keeping "the yellow" out of "our red, white, and blue". It's heavily implied that the man trying to help her gets assaulted for his race by some other convention goers because of this.
