Rules Get Broken on Freaky Tuesday

When last we checked out 8 Simple Rules for Dating My Teenage Daughter (Tuesdays at 8 pm/ET on ABC), the Hennessy household had been turned inside-out. Or was it upside-down? Or... Oh, it doesn't matter! Suffice it to say, things just weren't right: Manipulative party girl Bridget (Kaley Cuoco) was going steady with an MIA sailor boy and staying home on Saturday nights, while mopey kid sis Kerry (Amy Davidson), now dating her sibling's ex, had become the toast of their high school. What's up with that? And what's more, what's coming up?

"We're going to pick up pretty much where we left off [when we return on Sept. 23]," executive producer Tracy Gamble tells TV Guide Online. "We're going to deal with Kerry being popular and a little uncomfortable in her own skin, which she always is, and [we'll also address the question of] just how long Bridget can be down for the count before she comes roaring back.

"My guess," he continues, "is that Kerry, who is complicated and moody and passionate, will always be troubled no matter how popular she is. She'll always be searching. Meanwhile, Bridget walks through life with a confidence that everyone envies. So she can only be so unpopular for so long!"

Although fans of the quick-witted, warm-hearted sitcom — us included — will be loathe to see order restored to the Hennessy girls' lives, Gamble promises that he has another amusing maelstrom in mind — thanks in large part to the adolescents' talented-beyond-their-years portrayers. "Amy and Kaley make a lot of things work, and I try to play to their strengths," the boss explains. For instance: "Kaley used to be a junior-ranked tennis player, and we wrote a tennis episode. So this year, I'd like to put Bridget on the tennis team. I think it would be funny if [because of her court success] she started getting letters from Harvard and Princeton while Kerry's killing herself, hoping to get into Eastern Michigan U."

He's even got the first punch line all worked out: "I got this letter from someplace called Tulane," he imagines Bridget saying. "I don't know... Is it any good?" As always, the joke works. It has to; it's one of the, uh, rules.