‘THE NANNY EXPRESS’

SYNOPSIS

Widower David Chandler is at his wit’s end: So far, his children—teenager Emily and nine-year- old Ben—have succeeded in sending six housekeepers packing with their outrageous antics.

Kate Hewitt is an aspiring teacher who is also caring for a sick father and volunteers her time tutoring low-income students at her neighborhood church. Her father, Jerry, urges her to follow her dream and finish her teaching degree. And, he adds, it wouldn’t hurt if she made some time for a date now and then. While Kate isn’t involved in a romance of her own, she takes great pleasure in following the romantic misadventures of her best friend Lisa, who is currently the reluctant object of bus driver Ray’s affections.

When Ray hears that Kate is looking for a job, he recommends that she contact his sister, who runs an agency that places nannies and housekeepers. Ray tells Kate that his sister has mentioned one particular family who is having trouble keeping a nanny. Then Kate comes into the Chandlers’ lives.

Kate’s first few days with the Chandlers are rocky, as Ben and Emily don’t make things easy on her. Emily gives Kate a frosty reception and Ben keeps her on her toes with tricks like overflowing the washing machine and leaving his pet rat, Louie, in a dresser drawer for Kate to find as she puts away the laundry. To cap Kate’s initiation, the kids turn the lawn sprinklers on her while she’s gathering flowers in the garden.

Unlike the previous nannies, however, Kate is not going anywhere. She needs this job to provide for herself and her dad, and the hours work perfectly with her class schedule. In short order, Kate turns the tables on the Chandler kids: She foils Ben’s next attempt to sabotage the washer, she wills herself not to scream when she encounters the infamous Louie again, and, oh yes, she learns to work the sprinkler system—just as Ben and Emily are walking across the lawn. But Kate’s not angry with the kids. In fact, it’s quite the opposite. She feels for the Chandler family: She knows the kids miss their mom terribly and she finds herself drawn to their father, David.

Slowly but surely, Kate begins to win over Ben by helping him with his homework, which the youngster actually finishes for a change. David is amazed. He thinks Kate is a miracle worker (and a beautiful one at that). Emily, however, is not so easily won over and she’s less than pleased that her father appears to be falling for the new nanny.

As Kate and Lisa ride the bus one day, Lisa suddenly realizes that Kate is wearing make-up and perfume, prompting Lisa to suspect that Kate is taken with her new boss, too. But Lisa has

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little time to ponder the changes in her best friend. As the bus doors open, there stands Ray in full courting mode—all dressed up in a fancy suit with a bouquet of flowers in his hand.

Meanwhile, Kate turns to her pastor, Reverand MacGregor, for advice on how to reach Emily. The minister seems mildly amused by Kate’s request and tells her that he recalls meeting a very sad and angry teen who had recently lost her mother to cancer. He tells Kate that this girl was “in a horrible place” and characterizes her as incorrigible, then adds that, little by little, she began to come around. And Kate smiles when she realizes that the Reverend is describing her at 16. “Put your trust in God,” he advises Kate, adding that faith—and a little patience—were all that was needed to turn her around.

Kate needs all the patience she can muster to deal with Emily, who continues to rebuff each of Kate’s overtures and push her away at every turn. Then, one evening, when Emily comes home from dance class to find Kate and David sharing a bottle of wine on the patio, she hatches a plan to drive a wedge between them.

At her dance recital, Emily introduces her father to her ballet teacher, Pam, in hopes of sparking a romance. She goes a step further by inviting Pam to join her family for a post-recital celebration and cutting Kate out of the festivities. The next day, Emily tells her father that Pam is having a meeting for parents about a summer-dance program that Emily wants to attend, but what the wily Emily is really doing is setting up her father and Pam on a dinner date. Then she sends Kate to the same restaurant, ensuring that Kate will see David and Pam together.

Kate is hurt by what she finds at the restaurant but she also sees the fine hand of Emily behind it. She returns to the Chandler home to confront Emily and to try to reach the girl once again by telling Emily that she understands what it’s like to lose your mother as a young girl, but Kate is interrupted by a phone call informing her that her father has been taken to the hospital. Later that night, with his daughter at his bedside, Jerry Hewitt passes away.

A few days later, after her father’s funeral, Kate attends Emily’s birthday party. She has a gift for Emily, which Emily turns up her nose at and sets aside. Kate sees David and Pam at the party and assumes that they are now a couple, so she decides to quit her job as the Chandlers’ nanny. What Kate doesn’t know—and Emily doesn’t know either—is that David has introduced Pam to his business partner, Chris, and the two have begun dating. When Emily realizes that her plan has backfired, she retreats to her room, where she finally opens Kate’s birthday gift. It is the journal Kate wrote as a teenager when she was coping with the loss of her own mother. Emily is truly touched by Kate’s gesture, and finally realizes that Kate does understand what she’s going through.

That evening, a remorseful Emily goes in search of Kate to thank her for the gift. The two reconcile and Kate promises to help Emily through this difficult time in her life. Then Emily

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returns home to confess to David about the terrible things she did to try and keep Kate and him apart—and to ask her father to forgive her.

Kate, meanwhile, celebrates the good news that Lisa and Ray are now engaged and embarks on her new career as a teacher. One day, she is talking to her first-grade class about fairy tales. So imagine Kate’s surprise when David—with Ben and Emily in tow—turns up at her classroom door with an armload of roses and asks Kate out on date. “And how do fairytales end?,” Kate asks her young students. Why happily ever after, of course!

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