Send us Fan Mail

Jen and Chris Fenton are back in the kitchen—and this time, the house is actually theirs. With both 19-year-olds officially settled into sophomore year of college, the Fentons have fully reclaimed empty-nest life: no more last-minute Target runs for dorm stuff, no more competing for bathroom time, and plenty of space to actually finish a conversation. The freedom feels almost illegal.

The first order of business? Celebrating the household appliance that has apparently upgraded their son from “surviving” to “almost thriving.” After months of microwave meals and questionable takeout, the lacrosse house finally got a real stove. Cue the “gourmet” era. The boys are now attempting actual cooking—think protein-heavy pasta, suspiciously ambitious chicken, and whatever they can throw together after practice. Jen and Chris debate whether this counts as culinary progress or just organized chaos with extra dishes. Either way, they’re proud. Sort of.Then the conversation takes a hard left into the linguistic wilderness their kids now inhabit. The Fentons try (and frequently fail) to keep up with the latest slang: “sweats” (both the uniform of college life and the try-hard energy that ruins casual games), “aura” and aura farming (your invisible cool-point score that goes up or down based on whether you tripped in public), “rizz” (the charisma that gets you the number without even trying), and “NPC” (the person who just repeats the same lines and never has an original thought). They work through a handful of others that have leaked into family group chats, translating them the way only slightly embarrassed parents can—equal parts affection, confusion, and “we used to just say ‘cool.’”

From there they zoom out to the cultural whiplash of then versus now. In the ’80s, one camera, one roll of film, and one decent picture was enough to prove a night happened. Today it takes 70 nearly identical photos, a group-chat approval committee, and several rounds of “does this angle make my arm look weird?” before anything gets posted. The Fentons roast the ritual while admitting they now participate in it themselves.

The episode closes with a surprisingly revealing class-and-childhood comparison. Jen grew up in a house with three phone lines. Chris had one. That single detail still feels like a reliable rich-kid vs. middle-class indicator—though they quickly expand the list: Intellivision versus Atari, and Toto silent-flush toilets versus the ones that sound like a jet taking off. It’s part nostalgia, part social anthropology, and entirely the kind of conversation two empty nesters can finally have without anyone yelling “MOM” from another room.Funny, relatable, and just self-aware enough to go mildly viral with every parent whose kid just texted them something they had to Google.