Michelle and her class are going on a field trip to a local Museum of Natural History and Danny is one of the chaperones. When the other chaperone, Ms. Gwelch, cancels because of illness, Danny finds himself in over his head with being the only adult in charge of sixteen kids.

Desperate to find a replacement before the trip, he persuades Jesse to come along. However, Danny’s feelings are hurt when Michelle chooses to be in Jesse’s group instead of his.

At the museum, Danny acts like a drill sergeant by constantly making up new rules and keeps his group on a tight leash. Jesse, on the other hand, lets his kids run wild throughout the exhibits. Danny also treats Jesse coldly and constantly lectures him on how to handle things, creating more tension between the two. While in the dinosaur exhibit, Michelle and Denise start playing a game of tag and accidentally knock over most of a $4,000,000 skeleton, effectively ending the field trip when the museum kicks them out.

Back at the house, Danny explodes at Jesse, berating him for letting his group get so out of control. Jesse tells Danny to give it a rest, stating that the dinosaur is going to be fixed and he had promised to do volunteer work at the museum: “For the next ten weekends in a row, I’m gonna be combing out the woolly mammoth”. He also says he was just trying to let the kids actually have some fun, which was the last thing Danny was doing. However, Danny asks Jesse when he will stop trying to be “Mr. Cool” and start taking his responsibilities more seriously. Jesse replies by asking “When are you gonna get off my back?”, and Danny replies that he will get off his back when he starts acting like a grown man. Finally, Michelle, fed up and angry, snaps at them to stop fighting, that she knocked over the dinosaur and that it was her fault, and then runs to her room in tears.

Realizing that their arguing did no good except hurt Michelle’s feelings, Danny and Jesse follow her to her room. There, they apologize for their behavior, and say that, while she did knock over the skeleton, the real reason the field trip was a disaster was because neither one of them did a good job at being in charge (Jesse with being too flexible and Danny with being too strict). Danny admits that the real reason he was so hard on Jesse was because he was a little hurt that Michelle wanted to be in his group instead of being with Danny, and apologizes to Jesse for not being very nice. In the end, Jesse promises to be more responsible when it comes to being in charge, but will still hang a little loose, while Danny promises to tone down the sergeant behavior and be more reasonable when it comes to making rules.