Was I the only person watching Madam Secretary last night who thought the episode might have been brought to us by SkillsUSA?

Because when Secretary of State Elizabeth McCord’s water pipes burst in her D.C. brownstone, Earl the Plumber was talking more sense than the Commander-in-Chief. His commonsense and seasonally appropriate monologue about strong foundations made for a great endorsement for the skilled trades.

In fact, I half-expected Earl’s salty and rather smug wisdom–“The point here isn’t to be right. The point here is to learn from your mistakes.”– to serve as an analogy for MadSec’s diplomacy later in the episode.

(That did not turn out to be the case, which seemed like a lost opportunity.)

I won’t spoil the “Sound and Fury” episode for you, but as temperatures threaten to drop to the teens in Nashville again tonight, I might suggest we all take a page from Earl the Plumber and keep some water running through the pipes.

Furthermore, we should all be a little more like MadSec’s husband, Henry McCord. Never mind the fact that the ridiculously accomplished theologian/Marine fighter pilot/CIA operative routinely saves the world with his winning combo of Aramaic fluency and killer abs. The man knows how to shut off the water at the main valve, which makes him a hero in my book.

To find your main shut-off valve, start by looking in the basement, near the street side of the house. Or call the water company. There are a lot of things about Elizabeth McCord worth emulating–including her diplomatic sangfroid and her inscrutable wardrobe–but a flooded basement is not among them.