Satan comes to Cicely as a whirlpool salesman; he offers to fulfill Shelly's fantasy of making the Brick a major casino. Ed makes a mistake and skews the results of a cold medicine test that Joel is running for John Hopkins. Chris gets a ventriloquist's dummy and adds him to his radio show, but the dummy becomes more popular, because he "shoots straight from the hip." Maurice is convinced that Joel's cold medicine contains a new appetite suppressant and he presses Joel to tell him what it is. When that doesn't work, he gets Hayden to try to steal the information. To make her fantasy come true, all Shelly must do is burn Holling's old bathrobe.

Maggie gets elected mayor. Joel invites Phil up river, for a game of golf and a test. Michelle covers Maggie's first city council meeting as mayor and Maggie makes her first motion for a centrally located dumpster but runs into opposition from the fiscal-restraint minded crowd. Maggie's power as mayor becomes a turn on for Chris. Marilyn invests money in a stud dog that doesn't want to mate.

Maggie outbids Maurice for the ownership of the town's rundown theater which she begins to run with help of Ed and Heather. When two professors come to Cicely for the oral examination for Chris' master's degree, they clash over Chris' dissertation. A young Canadian Air Force lieutenant claims that Holling is his father, something proven because Holling sent his mother money every month for 25 years. However, that's just covering up a secret from his past. The theatre business causes stress for Maggie.

Ed learns the responsibilities of parenthood when he begins caring for a lost bear cub. Maurice discovers that Cicely's population is declining. Chris uses a device that allows him to manipulate his dreams and work out some issues in his relationship with Maggie. Michelle waitresses at the Brick while continuing to work out her issues with Phil.

Chris begins taking dance lessons from Marilyn but she disciplines one of her other students into giving him the lessons only she doesn't want to be seen talking to him, even though they have similar interests. Philip offends Marilyn's mother when he breaks tribal protocols for manners and Michelle confirms his deficiency. Maurice and Barbara travel on a prisoner transport with Cal the violinist to bring him back to the sanitarium. Along the way she falls under the spell of his violin playing causing her to think about violating the rules and letting him go free.