In the cafeteria one day Louis saves the school's sort-of celebrity Blake Thompson (who's made a couple of TV commercials) from choking. Blake is grateful and takes a liking to Louis, inviting him to join his ""in"" crowd. Louis takes to his new status right away, putting a strain on his old friendships with Twitty and Tawny. But as soon as Blake sees that Louis is gaining some popularity himself, he drops him like a hot potato. The result is that Louis is out of favor with both his new friends and the old ones, too. Tawny comes up with a ""life-saving"" scheme, though.

Meanwhile, Ren is being given a hard time in her job as school policy monitor by Larry Beale, who heckles her when she speaks at lunch and fills her suggestion box with not-so-nice suggestions. Ren feels like she's ""lost her mojo"" when it comes to handling Larry and is going to quit her policy monitor position, but she gets some encouragement from Louis--and unexpectedly, from Larry, too.

Louis tries to butter up his father so he'll buy him a used Sludgee machine from the convenience store, but Mr. Stevens has three words for him: get a job. Ren is a volunteer career counselor at school and she gets Louis three different jobs, including one in ""journalism"" (a paper route), but he blows all three. Finally Louis comes up with his own brainstorm, a dogsitting service. Louis fills the house with canines who run wild and drive Ren to distraction, but when he comes up one dog short at the end of the day, she rescues him by finding ""Poopsie."" Also, Donnie and Mr. Stevens get out the big old birdhouse they never finished. But when they start working together, they realize why they left it incomplete. Father and son don't get back on good terms until they take a couple of hammers to the project.

Louis finds a penny on the school grounds. As he bends over to pick it up, a scaffolding with workmen on it tumbles to the ground around him, but it misses him. A uncanny lucky streak begins for Louis. A dreaded test is cancelled, he wins a free fashion makeover, he get a reward when someone's lost bird flies right to him. Meanwhile Ren is worried about Ruby's obsession with the British pop trio BBMak, as is Ruby's friend Nelson. After Ruby stays up all night listening to the radio trying to win a contest with the prize of attending BBMak's recording session in Sacramento, Ren and Nelson decide to stage an intervention for her. They tell her to stop with her fantasies about the group and focus her feelings on a person who is attainable. The intervention seems to have worked. As Ruby leaves the Stevens house, she passes the newly-made-over Louis. Later she tells Ren she's already found a new love in her life. To Ren's horror, she says that it's...Louis! In an effort to turn her off of L

Louis and Twitty are having a good time making prank phone calls, including one to Ren, claiming to be Bobby Deaver. When she finds out about their deception, she blasts them with a super-soaker! At school, Ren meets her old neighbor Nelson, who is a real hypochondriac with allergies to everything. At lunch he embarrasses her with all his symptoms. Then when she gets home, she's not happy to hear that her parents have made plans to go out to dinner with her and Nelson and his parents.

Louis and Twitty are back on the phone again, this time calling up Tawny's house claiming to be the "$1 Million Trivia Challenge" from a radio station. Tawny puts her dad, Dr. Dean, on the line and he answers the questions. Louis tells them they've won a million dollars and Tawny and her father jump up and down celebrating. Bobby Deaver calls Ren. She thinks it's a another prank at first, but she recovers in time for Bobby to ask her out ice skating. But the date is the same day as the dinner with Nelson's family.

In Mr. Lopez's algebra class, Tawny and Twitty are doing great, but Louis is pretty much clueless. Despite his teacher's warning about the upcoming mid-term, Louis shows no concern about learning the material. Instead he spends his time with Beans working on some strange device. We soon learn what its purpose is: it's a snow machine, and Louis takes it to Principal Wexler's house to try and fool him by faking a blizzard so he will cancel classes on the day of the algebra exam. The ruse almost works until Ren comes along and blows Louis' cover. In a meeting with Mr. and Mrs. Stevens, Wexler comes down hard on Louis, suspending him for a week.

Eileen Stevens takes the job of tutoring her son while he's out of school and she puts him through a tough course of learning. But Louis still gets nowhere with the algebra. Ren confronts Louis and asks why he went to such trouble to get out of a test. Louis admits that he just doesn't understand anything about algebra but is embarrassed to admit t