Jay Hadley (David Koechner) is an anthropology professor at Grey who tries to convince Thurber to sabotage Grasso’s career – while being simultaneously obsessed with trying to prove the authenticity of Bigfoot.
Meanwhile, Thurber struggles with a series of personal problems: his sister, Margarette Sasha Alexander), pesters him for money to pay for the retirement home of their father, William (Bob Gunton); a smitten female student, Beth (Rosemarie DeWitt), is pressingly flirtatious; and rather than admit he's single, Thurber hires Beth (Rosemarie DeWitt), a woman of questionable sanity, to act as his girlfriend for a dinner with Grasso and her snobbish boyfriend Warren (Andrew Daly).
Thurber is offered probational tenure, with the caveat that his classroom teaching will be severely reduced so that he can devote more time to publishing in respectable academic outlets.
We see Thurber getting into a class to start teaching at another college, evidently having chosen to quit Grey in order to continue what he is best at, as his father keeps reminding him, which is to be the teacher of students in a classroom.
"[4] Variety's Ronnie Scheib found the film never anchoring itself firmly enough in academia to successfully parody it, "despite excellent thesping by Wilson and Gunton, and a hilarious extracurricular turn by Rosemarie DeWitt.