After learning about his dad’s living funeral, Carter, Meg, and Eleanor make their way from Los Angeles to Brooklyn. Immediately, Maryann takes Carter aside and tells him that he needs to convince his father not to go through with it. In the other ear, Carter’s sister Becca is telling him how important it is that it goes ahead.
Carter drives Sam to New Jersey to go pick up tonight’s eulogist, Sam’s sister Lily. Along the way, they talk about why he’s doing this, and who it’s for. After they get Lily, she tells unheard stories of Sam and her youth, giving some background as to why he is the way he is.
Meanwhile, Becca’s husband, Wilson, discovers one of his old songs is part of a viral meme on TikTok, to the point where his agent is actually calling him again. Is this the break he’s been waiting for the past… has it really been 20 years?
The evening’s eulogy eventually takes place at Sam’s favorite bar, where Lily delivers a tender defense of her brother’s life.
“I know that what I’m saying about my brother is exactly what we said about our dad. Made him a saint when we knew he really wasn’t. But nobody’s a saint, are they? And he was our dad. That counts for something, right?”
Sam accompanies Carter on a trip to the city to record an episode of Carter’s podcast, where he sees a vulnerable side of his son he never saw before. After that, Carter joins his dad as they meet up with, his father’s college friend and tonight’s co-eulogist, Stephen Pemberton, giving Carter a glimpse into the life his dad left behind.
Maryann finds herself taking an unexpected road trip to the Hamptons with Tess, Sam’s first love and tonight’s other eulogist. Over the course of the day, they confront each other’s long-held distrust of one another, finding out they have more in common than they thought.
Xander invites Eleanor to go to Coney Island for the day to escape the madness. After comparing notes on their respective families, their relaxing trip turns into an adventure when they try and help a lost old man, who happens to be going through a similar journey as their family.
Stephen gives a long, drunk and rambling eulogy in which he berates Sam for not doing as he did by just following the easy path. But in the end, he admits, that’s what always drew him to Sam.
“But you had to go and live the hard life. You thought it’d make you feel more unique. Like you’d be compromising by doing the easy thing like you thought I did. But where did it get you, Sam? It got you a sparsely-attended funeral at a shitty bar in Brooklyn.”
Maryann is the evening’s eulogist, looking back at the time she and Sam met and got married. Their “Happy Years.” It forces her, Sam, and everyone else to confront what went wrong since then, who is to blame, and whether it was actually doomed from the start.
Meg gets Carter a meeting with HBO, who is trying to sign her to a deal. Carter is conflicted as he really wants to work again and has some ideas he loves, but he also wants to do it on his own and without any favors from his wife.
After the drubbing he took at the previous night’s eulogy, Wilson feels bad for Sam, so he invites him to go on a pub crawl with him. Along the way, they bond over Sam’s take on his marriage and his relationship with his family.
Maryann is incredibly conflicted going into her speech. Is it about her? Is it about Sam? Ultimately, it is about the two of them, and that revelation leads her to do the unthinkable.
“The first years were nice, when we moved here and tried to establish a shared life. We stayed busy to hide our grief, but more importantly, to hide the fact that we’d made a huge mistake. It wasn’t love that kept us together. It was the memory of my dead brother.”
While Sam absorbs the news of his wife leaving him, it is Archie Eaton’s (Sam’s old work partner) turn for a eulogy. Archie has organized a lunch with all his old work friends, who paint a completely different picture of him than Carter has ever imagined.
Becca joins her mother and a realtor friend of theirs as they look at apartments. Becca, who has always seen her mom as being the antagonist in her parents’ relationship, gets to hear her mom’s side of the story, while, one prospective apartment at a time, Maryann sees a preview of what her future will be like.
Meg runs into issues at work as she tries to balance all the different obligations she has with her shows, her speaking engagements, and her role as a big-wig in Hollywood. All the feelings she’s dealing with connect back with the issues she’s having with Carter.
Archie’s eulogy is a celebration of a person who his family has never seen: a deeply loyal friend, a creative genius, and a civil rights defender. Maryann challenges Sam on his ability to be two entirely different people, and they got the worst version. In a surprise move, Sam defends himself.
“The only black guy in the room on every pitch, Sam was my only advocate, forcing people who otherwise wouldn’t work with me to take me seriously. We had to work twice as hard, working late, working weekends, to create work that, in the end, they couldn’t refuse. People respected Sam, and he made them respect me.”
It is Eleanor’s 16th Birthday, and with Meg away on business Carter wants to make this special. So he sets up a special day that immediately goes awry. After feeling like he’s sacrificed the past 16 years to be the primary caregiver, how can he still not know her?
Zoe Hawn, Sam’s one-time affair and the controversial choice for the evening’s eulogist shows up at the house. As she and Sam tour the city together, Zoe is a both a confidante and a speaker of hard truths to Sam, just as she was during their affair.
Xander’s birth mother makes a surprise appearance at their door. She just wants to meet her son before she left the country. With a class trip to the zoo already in motion, Becca invites the woman along, bringing up lots of big feelings and questions from everyone.
Zoe gets up and acknowledges how awkward this is for everyone, especially Maryann. She describes the Sam she knew, how in many ways he saved her, but that doesn’t make what he did any better. But the fact that he invited her to speak should be seen as a way of him truly dealing with something bigger than all of our individual squabbles.
“38 years ago, I met a man who was funny, self-deprecating, attractive, and, wouldn’t you know, just as lost as I was. So we talked, and connected, and suddenly, neither of us felt as lost as we once did. And that was a great feeling. And we held on to that feeling as long as possible because, deep down, we knew the terrible truth.”
With Sam in much worse shape today, Maryann accompanies him to the doctor. He’s now questioning his whole eulogy idea, but she now believes it’s been beneficial. They talk about how their kids are facing their own fears because of what they’ve heard. “You’re an anti-role model.” He’d laugh, but it hurts.
Back from her trip to Atlanta, Meg crashes Carter’s podcast to work through some things. He faces the fact that he’s used his podcast about other people’s failures as a way of avoiding confronting his own failures.
After Xander’s birth mother’s visit, Becca and Wilson realize that they aren’t following their dreams anymore. Becca deals with it as she does an endless series of parent-teacher conferences, while Wilson spends the day with a #1 fan who won a “Day With a Rockstar” at the school auction.
Becca really doesn’t want to be giving the eulogy this evening, especially with all the personal reflecting she’s doing. But then it dawns on her that these eulogies are the impetus for her looking inward, and that it’s, in fact, making her a stronger person.
“I’ve been your biggest fan for as long as I can remember, even when I probably shouldn’t have been. I used to yell at mom for being so mean to you. I still do. But you want to know why? Because sometimes you need a #1 fan. It’s too hard to become a better person if you’re the only one who believes in you.”
As his health deteriorates, the family decides to take Sam to the hospital, perhaps for good. He asks Becca and Wilson to drive him around to some of his favorite spots before they go. Not only do they get lost, but Sam starts confusing past and present, leading to revealing confessions.
Carter and Maryann prepare for Sam to move into the hospital. The simple art of packing a bag for him leads to them sharing memories from growing up which has them alternately laughing and crying. They realize that their biggest bond was their shared animosity towards Sam. Now that this is ebbing, they find something new.
Xander and Eleanor, with some help from Meg, spend the day preparing for their multi-media eulogy. As “fun grandpa,” they have no feelings of failure or disappointment for Sam, but instead they discuss what they’d say at their own parents’ funerals. As Meg listens in, she gets a new perspective on her life as a mother and wife.
“We know not of this Sam person you’ve been speaking of. To us, any faults are buried under 16 years of cards and letters, flowers for terrible ballet recitals and band performances, hugs when we fell down, cheers for when we got back up, bedtime reads and breakfast bagels, secret desserts and conspiratorial winks. Your “Sam” is our Bampa and you will never take him from us.”
After waking up in the hospital, Sam sees that his initial goal of giving everyone a fuller picture of his life has, in fact, succeeded. With Maryann and Becca by his side, he makes peace with each of his eulogists as they visit him throughout the day. But as the day progresses, he awaits a visit from his most challenging connection, his son.
As he tries to write his eulogy, Carter is suffering from the worst-timed case of writer’s block, sending him into a spiral of self-doubt about whether he was ever good at his job in the first place. He understands his father now, but that doesn’t make him want to become him any more than it used to. Fortunately, he has a great writer to help him work it out: Meg.
Discouraged from seeing Sam in the hospital, Eleanor and Xander stay at home with Wilson. As the kids go through waves of emotion, Wilson confronts the fact that he’s the adult in the room and helps guide them through grief, while confronting grief of his own.
At the bar, Carter delivers his eulogy. But as he speaks, about everything he learned this week from each eulogist, and about the man his father was and is, we see that he has also given the same eulogy to his father to his face at the hospital. Sam is gone.
“I’ve never wanted to be like my dad. I mean, listening to the eulogies of the past week, who would? But genetics had a different plan and here I am, your thankless, sad sack doppelganger, still deeply disappointed in you, but also fully understanding why you are who you are.”
