SEASON 1 – CBS
The series was based on the British series Worst Week of My Life, which ran 2004-2006. A pilot was later filmed for Fox in 2005, also called Worst Week of My Life.
Created by Mark Bussell and Justin Sbresni as Worst Week of My Life, this American version developed by Matt Tarses
Theme music by David Schwartz
- 001. Pilot – 9/22/2008
- Sam Briggs (Kyle Bornheimer) is getting ready to travel with his pregnant fiancé Melanie Clayton (Erinn Hayes) to visit her parents Dick (Kurtwood Smith) and Angela (Nancy Lenehan) and announce both the pregnancy and engagement during a family gathering for Dick’s 65th birthday. Sam thinks that the parents already hate him so is nervous about the trip. Sam has to attend a company party, so Melanie goes on ahead of him. While at the party, a drunk girl named Nicky (Tamara Mello) flirts with him while he tries to talk to Melanie on the phone. After he leaves the party, he sees Melanie trying to drive and getting into a minor accident. He throws her into a cab and then escorts her home. Along the way, she tries to kiss him and winds up throwing up on him in the car. The cab driver (Toshi Toda) throws them out of the cab, so he has to carry her and push her along in a garbage can in the rain back to her house. When he gets there, he jumps in her shower but cannot find any towels when he gets out. She wakes up and sees him naked and throws him out of the house naked. He is forced to wear a garbage bag and take a cab to the Claytons’ house. He arrives still wearing the garbage bag like a diaper, and when Dick answers the door, he has to ask him for $80 to pay the cab. He tries to explain what happened but says that he helped a male co-worker home rather than the girl who was flirting with him. He asks to use the restroom, but when the power goes off, he accidentally pees in the pot that is holding the goose that Angela is preparing for dinner. He also spills some as he tries to get it to where he can rinse it off, but some spills on the floor. Dick trips in the urine and hits his head on the floor. Dick refuses to go to see a doctor and heads off to a luncheon the next day. Angela shows Sam and Melanie the painting she had commissioned of Dick. On the street, Dick gets dizzy and collapses on the sidewalk outside Hewitt’s Funeral Home. The Undertaker Martin (Steve Rankin) calls home and talks to Sam while Melanie and Angela are out. Sam gets the impression that Dick is dead and tells the ladies that when they get home. Angela is furious with Sam since she thinks he died when he slipped on the urine. After Dick recovers and leave on his own, Sam goes down to identify the body with one of the morgue employees (Aziz Ansari). He positively identifies one of the corpses because Dick’s glasses were still sitting beside it. Neither Angela nor Melanie can bring themselves to call Melanie’s brother Adam (voice of Jay Malone) and tell him that his father is dead. He can’t get a good connection and ends up yelling it at the top of his lungs. Melanie sends David out to refill her mother’s valium prescription. In a rush, he gets in a head on collision with… Dick. Sam is thrilled to see that he is alive, but he is now unconscious, so Sam drags him in the house. Angela thinks he is dead and starts beating Sam. When Dick wakes up, Angela faints. Eventually the family talks it out, and they are fine. Sam calms down and wants to tell them about the baby and the engagement, but Melanie thinks that maybe Sam should do something nice to make it up to Dick. When the power goes out again, Sam sees this as a good chance to make things right. He goes down in the cellar with a candle. Although he gets the power back on, he accidentally sets the blanket covering the new painting on fire, covering the painting with soot. 10/3/23
- 002. The Bird – 9/29/2008
- Sam thinks that it is because Dick intimidates him, he always screws up and causes bad things to happen to Dick. Consequently, he decides to focus on impressing Angela. Meanwhile, Melanie’s sister Sarah (Jessica St. Clair) with her young son Scotty (Parris Mosteller) and baby girl Abigail “Abby”. Melanie’s morning sickness kicks in and she vomits inside a giant vase. Sam goes to wash out the vase, but Angela takes it from him to put flower into and sees the vomit. Sam claims that the vomit is his, which causes Angela to think that her cooking makes Sam sick. He then accidentally walks into the bathroom where Sarah is pumping her breasts, causing her to freak out. Sam meets Dick’s birds, which he adores, and learns that the birds will eat anything. Angela offers to make a cheese and avocado omelet for Sam, and he accepts it despite the fact that he hates avocado. Dick notices an article in the paper about more burglaries in the area. He also plans to run into town to get motion sensors for the lights outside. He sneaks the avocados off his omelet and feeds them to the birds, not knowing that avocado is toxic to birds. Sarah forgives Sam for walking in on her and asks Sam and Melanie to watch Scotty while she goes out. Sam takes the dead bird that he killed to the bird store to try and get one like it. The bird store proprietor Phil (Ken Jeong) gives him another bird named Tomas, so Sam has him put it in a bag. When Dick walks in, Sam shoves Tomas in his pocket. Dick has the light sensors with him and asks Sam to give him a ride home. Melanie lets Scotty eat 48 jellybeans which causes a sugar rush. When Sam gets back, he puts Tomas in the cage, letting out the other bird Jekyll. He catches it on top of the piano just as Dick walks in the room, which causes Sam to put the bird in his pocket. He then walks in on Sarah while she is breast feeding, and when the bird moves in his pocket it looks like he has gotten aroused. He smacks the bird, which kills it. Dick asks Sam to come him with the motion sensor lights outside. When he tries to throw away the dead bird, the dog keeps fetching and returning it to him. Eventually, they finish the job. Dick finds the missing bird, but Melanie, whose face is covered with marker thanks to Scotty, takes the rap for letting it fly out. She gets ‘the look’ from her father and tells Sam that he’s on his own from now on. Sam gets ready to go bury the bird, and on the way out, he jokingly tries on the breast pumps for Melanie. He is again caught by Sarah. While Sam is outside burying the bird, he spots a black man trying to break into the house. Sam hits the man over the head with the shovel and thinks he has captured the prowler. When he proudly wakes everyone up to show them what he has done. It turns out to be another one of Melanie’s brothers named David (RonReaco Lee). 10/3/23
- 003. The Monitor – 10/6/2008
- Sam invites his friend Adam (Nick Kroll) to come over to the house to fix the portrait of Dick. He also tries to make amends with David for attacking him, but he gets off to a rocky start when he knocks over the chess board that David and Dick are playing on. However, David is following the peaceful teachings of Raychandbhai, and quickly forgives Adam for everything. Scotty wants to go and see the peace-loving character Peacemon (Matt Walsh) at the mall, so Sam agrees to take him. Melanie’s other sister Chloe (Brooke Nevin) shows up at the house, crying because she caught her boyfriend Bryce cheating on her. Sam is able to cheer her up by telling her that he met Melanie at the vet’s office after his girlfriend left him, which caused him to forget to feed his cat Brian. While trying to cheer up a crying Scotty by jumping on Dick’s bed, he causes the leg of it to fall off. On the way to the house, Adam is messing with his GPS and nearly runs into Dick and David while they are taking a walk, covering David in mud. Dick isn’t surprised when he gets home and finds that Adam is one of Sam’s friends. Chloe takes an immediate liking to Adam, who starts to fall for her quickly. Sam smacks him upside the head to get him re-focused on fixing the painting. During his visit to the mall with Scotty to see Peacemon, Sam gets a call from Melanie asking him to get back quickly, as she is having trouble keeping her mom from showing off the painting. Since Peacemon has gone on break, Sam goes back into his break area where he is smoking pot and demands that he come back out. They wind up in a fist fight, much to the delight of Scotty. They get back on home in time to catch the fight on the news in full view of the entire family. Adam does a great job on the painting, so Sam thanks him and tries to rush him out of the house so that he doesn’t anger Dick. Chloe has other ideas and insists that he stay for dinner. When Sam notices Chloe getting frisky with Adam, he tries to throw a napkin at him and winds up catching David’s rum cake on fire. Chloe invites Adam to stay for a movie, so Dick says he’ll watch two and sits between them on the couch. Sam and Melinda offer to take the baby monitor from Sarah since she has had an exhausting day. When Scotty uses the leg of the bed to hit Sam, emulating his earlier fight with Peacemon, Sam returns the leg to the bed, but leaves the baby monitor under the bed. Dick tells Adam he needs to leave as they are all going to bed, but as soon as he heads upstairs, Chloe sneaks Adam back in. Sarah decides to keep the baby in her room, so Chloe and Adam sneak into the nursery. After Sam apologizes to David for all of the accident that made it seem like he was trying to kill him, he goes back into David’s room while he is sleeping to look for the baby monitor. This time the angry side of David emerges as he thinks Sam really is trying to kill him. Dick and Angela go to bed but hear Adam and Chloe making love over the baby monitor. When Dick goes under the bed to retrieve it, Angela sits on the bed which causes the leg to come loose and the bed to crush Dick. Sam walks in and finds Dick in this state. Robin Thede is the newscaster. 1/30/24
- 004. The Truck – 10/13/2008
- Sam thinks he might be ready to tell Melanie’s parents that they are having a baby as they prepare for a visit to the gynecologist for an ultrasound. Meanwhile, the family awaits the arrival of Sarah’s husband Chad (Hayes MacArthur) after his business trip to Austria. Sam offers to take the family German Shepherd Texaco for a walk, but then loses control of the dog when he goes after a rabbit and loses him in the neighborhood. Chad finds him as he’s showing up and becomes the hero to already-adoring Dick. Chad brings Dick a gift of mirrors for his antique Chevy truck. Sam and Melanie tell Angela that the will be leaving that afternoon to go to Sam’s haircut appointment when they are really going for the Ultrasound. In order to explain why Melaine has to go, she tells her that Sam is scared of scissors. With everyone getting ready for a family portrait that afternoon, Dick assigns Sam to rake the yard. While Dick and Chad are checking out the truck, Sam gets a rake from the garage and causes a ball to roll under the car, where he gets burned by the undercarriage which runs hot. Sam does a bang-up job on the leaves, but Angela points out that he missed the twigs. As he’s trying to gather them, he hits a water line and sprays muddy water all over Angela. Sam cannot find his car keys when it is time for the doctor, so they search through all of the leaf bags. In an act of desperation, they take Dick’s antique truck. Sam drives it so slowly that they are an hour late to the appointment. After not holding the elevator door for a woman, they later realize that she is the doctor’s receptionist Peg (Loni Love), and since they are an hour late, she makes them wait all day long until they are almost late for the family portrait. Additionally, Dr. Royce (Brian Huskey) takes forever as he wants to talk about his own kids as he’s performing the ultrasound. Sam then drives the truck at high speeds to get home, and the parks it over the exposed leaves. When they go to take the photo, Angela tells them that the picture will not include boyfriends. Melanie can’t hold her tongue any longer and reveals that they are having a baby and are getting married. Dick and Angela finally accept Sam and invite him to be in the picture, but just as the picture is being snapped, the truck explodes in the backyard, having burned the leaves a causing a major fire. 1/31/24
- 005. The Party – 6/6/2009
- The burnt remains of Dick’s truck must be hauled over the house using a crane, but the crane runs out of power and is left hanging in front of the house, just at the family is getting ready for Dick’s birthday party. Dick requests from Angela that he be permitted to smoke a cigar on his special day, but she refuses to allow it because of his health. Sam decides to surprise Dick by calling Adam and asking him to bring a couple of very special cigars so that he can give them to Dick. He also offers his assistance to get ready for the party, so Angela asks him to bring some chairs up from the basement. With Angela not preparing anything vegetarian for David, Sam volunteers to pick up some vegetable for him at the store, and Chloe asks him to bring her back some contact solution since she is forced to wear her glasses until she gets some. As he is leaving, Scotty asks him to play with him, and when Dick criticizes him for saying that he doesn’t have time, Sam allows Scotty to put him in vampire makeup, dons Dick’s judge cape, and they head to the basement so that he can get the chairs. When he scares Scotty at the boy’s request, Scotty runs out of the basement and locks Sam inside a junk room. Same has to escape out of the basement window, but his pants get caught on the window and he comes up naked from the waist down. Unable to retrieve his pants, he wears the judge’s robe as he sneaks back into the house. He is finally seen by everyone when he sneaks into the empty den, only to be surprised as Angela takes Dick and all of the guest into the room to unveil the painting. Adam shows up with the cigars, and then insists on staying so that he can see Chloe. Sam presents Dick with the cigars, for which Dick is truly appreciative. However, Sam then finds out from Adam that the cigars were truly ‘special’ in that they are laced with marijuana. Chad is hard on Sam for showing up in the den naked, and then seemingly purposely tries to interrupt Sam whenever he tries to retrieve the cigars from Dick. He tells Mel about the cigars, and she too tries to get them from him, but Dick is onto her and tells her that she can’t take them. Meanwhile, since David has nothing that he can eat, he keeps eyeing a party guest who is eating a pastry, causing Sam to think that he is interested in the guy, not the food. Thinking that David is gay, Sam encourages him to be himself and do what makes him feel good. This leads to David eating all of the junk food that comes his way and invoking the anger of Chloe and Sarah. While he is trying to get David back on the wagon with his junk food, Melanie notices that her father is getting ready to light up his cigars. With no other option to keep him from getting high, Sam tells Angela that Dick is going to smoke, so she comes out and stops him, giving the cigars to Sam to dispose of. Dick tells Sam that he doesn’t understand why he would ruin his nice gesture by ratting him out. Sam becomes depressed and wanders away from the party. He later confesses to Dick that he has been trying too hard because he loves Sam so much and wanted to impress him. Dick tells him that their family is now his family too, and they finally share a heartfelt moment. Dick finds the cigars in Sam’s jacket pocket and lights them up. Not long after, both Dick and David are chowing down on cake in the living room, while Dick is completely stoned. Eugene Collier is the crane operator. Gwil Richards is Uncle Trevor. NOTE: This episode was not aired in the correct sequence, but it is listed here in filming order to fit in with the storyline. 6/18/24
- 006. The Club – 10/20/2008
- Around a month after Dick’s party, Sam and Mel are closing in on the wedding date, and Mel tells Sam how much it will mean to have the wedding take place in the gazebo at her parents’ golf club. However, Mel decides to cancel the meeting with the wedding planner that afternoon and stay home and watch baby birthing videos. Sam goes off to work, where he cautions Adam to be quiet about the wedding as he only invited him and their boss. However, when Adam starts talking about how none of them care about going to his wedding, two of his co-workers, Steve (Scott Beehner) and Lon (Alex Enriquez) get upset, so Sam invites them and other to come to the wedding. When he mentions more guests to Mel, she is adamant about him inviting no one else, so Sam lies and tells his friends that the wedding is off because Sam has cold feet. This information gets back to Adam, who tells Chloe, who tells her parents. Dick is so happy about the wedding being canceled that he makes love to Angela on the den floor, breaking a coffee mug in the process. Dick also calls and cancels the gazebo. When Sam shows up at their house with the invitations, he explains to Dick and Angela how the rumor got started and assures them that the wedding is still on. Dick tries to get the gazebo back, but it has already been snatched by his club rival Charles Waverly (Rick Scarry). Dick and Sam head to the club to try and win the gazebo back for the wedding, but Sam is no good at Bridge, and Dick winds up losing his watch. Sam then challenges and his wife Margaret (Susan Blakely) to a game of tennis for all of the marbles. When Sam applies sunscreen to his own hands and Dick’s head, Dick tries to wipe it off and winds up getting it all over his hands. When he tries to swing his racquet, he loses control of it and it hits Waverly in the crotch. Sam doesn’t want to give up and causes Dick to crash the golf car that Sam rented at the club. Meanwhile, Mel goes to see her mother to head to the club to meet with the wedding planner after all. When she sees the broken coffee mug on the floor and questions what happened, Angela concocts a wild story about throwing the cup at Mel’s father. Sam returns the damaged golf cart, and when Tim (Matt Winston) sees the wreckage, he leaves to track down Sam. Another member takes the cart, not realizing that the brakes are now shot. When Angela and Mel arrive at the club, Sam and Dick try to hide and wind up in the ladies changing room. Sam hides in a locker and ends up seeing Margaret naked. Sam finally gets to plead his case about why they’d like the gazebo for the wedding since it was Mel’s dream. Surprisingly, the agree to give it up since they think the wedding is most important. Angela and Mel see them at the club, and Dick gives Angela the word that everything is now okay, giving full credit to Sam as he puts his hand on Sam’s shoulder. Tim tracks down Sam and begins yelling at him about the golf cart, as Sam yells back that a golf cart doesn’t even need breaks. Just then the runaway cart crashes through the beloved gazebo, completely obliterating it. 6/18/24
- 007. The Ring – 11/3/2008
- With the gazebo destroyed at the golf club, the family decides to hold the wedding at the home of Dick and Angela. Melanie reveals to Sam that she hates her mother’s wedding dress that she has agreed to wear and has dreams about it being destroyed, even hoping that Sam might find a way to do it. Sam thinks that she should tell her mother how she feels before they schedule the alterations. Meanwhile, Angela is clearly feeling stressed, and Dick tells Sam that the reason is because his mother June is coming to the wedding, and they have never gotten along. Sam offers to babysit for Abby, who has been putting everything in her mouth lately, while Sarah picks up Grandma June, but she suggests that Sam pick up June instead. He winds up picking up the incorrect grandmother and comes home with a lady named Ruth (Connie Sawyer) who hits on him on the drive back. Eventually they take her back and pick up the real Grandma June (Olympia Dukakis), who immediately starts taking jabs at Angela. She also gives Melanie a pair of rings that were family heirlooms for her to wear in the wedding. She asks Sam to come to her room to get to know him. Angela warns Sam that she will try to turn him against her, so Sam tries to stay neutral with both of them. When June asks Sam to get her a scotch, he does so and leaves the bottle. While Sam is on the phone with the caterer Evelyn (Elizabeth McNaughton), Sarah asks Sam to keep an eye on Abby while she goes to see Melanie in the awful dress. While Sam is talking on the phone, Abby eats one of the rings that June brought. Sam calls a pediatrician friend, who suggests that the ring will eventually come out in her diaper. Sam approaches Sarah and tells her that he wants to be prepared for fatherhood and asks if he can help change her next poopy diaper. Sam then tries to feed Abby prunes for lunch to get her to go sooner. While feeding her, he chats with Dick about the issues between Angela and June, and Dick says that his mother can be like a tornado, and it is a horrible idea for her to drink. Sam runs up to try and stop her from finishing the scotch, but he and the others then spot her on the zipline in the backyard falling into Angela’s tulip garden while wearing Melanie’s veil. Sarah tells Sam that he missed Abby’s poop diaper, so Sam goes to get it from the trash can, winding up in an altercation with the garbagewoman Barbara (Bergen Wiliams) who he misgenders. Barbara winds up pouring the trash can all over the front yard. When the caterer shows up at that moment, he shoves the diaper into his pocket for later. Everyone smells the diaper on him and thinks that the catered food is the culprit. When Sam takes Angela’s side in another dispute with June, she decides to ask for her rings back. Sam then facilitates a reconciliation between them and tells Angela that she only got drunk at their wedding and acted horribly because she was so happy that Dick had married such a wonderful woman. With them now getting along, they decided to go check out Melanie in Angela’s wedding dress and June’s rings. Sam rushes upstairs to look through the diaper and does in fact find the ring. As they all come into the room, Sam hides behind the door where the dress is and ends up sticking the dirty diaper to the wedding dress. Angela is naturally aghast, but Melanie is grateful and thrilled to finally be rid of it. 10/20/24
- 008. The Vows – 11/10/2008
- Hoping to turn around his run of bad luck, Sam decides to wear some of Melanie’s underwear, which is what baseball pitchers apparently do sometimes when they are in a slump. Angela is nervous about Reverend Tom Lowell’s (Philip Baker Hall) visit with Sam and Melanie before he performs their ceremony. She wants things to go as smoothly as they did for Sarah and Chad, so she wants to replicate using the same tea service that they used for their meeting. Chad stops by the house with a name sign reading “The Claytons” for them to hang in the front yard. Sam is mostly annoyed as they seem to think that Chad walks on water. Chad offers to get the tea service down from a high shelf, but Sam insists on doing it. When Chad spots his girls underwear and calls it out, it nearly causes Sam to spill the tea service. However, he only causes one to fall and somehow manages to catch it. Then he ‘toasts’ Melanie with the teacup and it shatters. Chad takes the porcelain pieces to glue back together. Sam then goes to his office to pick up the wedding invitations from Adam and is surprised to find that Adam has hired a stripper (Mercy Malick) for him. Sam is uncomfortable and makes a hasty exit, accidentally picking up the stripper’s bag and leaving his own that have his wedding vows in them. When he gets them back to Melanie’s parents’ place, Dick points out that he has spelled her middle name “Doucey” as “Douchey.” Angela has Chad go to get the invitations fixed and assigned Sam to do the weeding outside. When Chad makes fun of Sam’s pink gardening gloves, Sam removes them altogether. As Melanie struggles to write her vows, Sam realizes that he has brought home the wrong bag and heads out to go swap them back. On his way out, Chad notes that Sam had been working in poison ivy, so it was a ‘good thing’ that he had on gloves. Sam’s hands start to itch, so as he drives out of the driveway, he is using the steering wheel to scratch them while trying to apply Calamine lotion. He winds up losing control of the car and running over the new “Claytons” sign. Dick agrees to drive him to the office, and Sam tries to explain to him that he’s not always such a nervous, clumsy wreck and invites Dick to come inside and see his office. When he gets in there, a new security guard (Christina DeRosa) does a bag search on him and pulls out the sex toys that were in the other stripper’s bag. Dick decides to wait outside, while Adam apologizes and tells him he had no idea Dick would be with him. When Sam gets back home, he finds that Melanie still hasn’t written her vows. Reverend Lowell shows up and says that he’s chilled to the bone and can’t wait for his tea. Sam goes in to get the tea and the service, but Chad, who is still furious about the sign that Sam destroyed, warns him that when the tea hits the cup that he glued back together, it will fall apart. Sam then nervously serves everyone tea and is relieved when no one gets the broken cup. However, after he pours himself some tea into one of the two remaining cups, his cup suddenly shatters and spills scalding water into his lap. He has to lower his pants, revealing the girls’ underwear he is wearing. Reverend Lowell is so offended that he says he won’t perform the wedding, and he storms out. Sam loses his cool and says that clearly everyone wishes he was more like Chad, even blaming that on the reason that Melanie can’t write her vows. She says that she loves him because he is nothing like Chad and is much more fun and impulsive. Furthermore, every time he screws up, it is because he is trying to please other people, especially her. Sam is incredibly touched, and everyone realizes that she has just written her vows. Sam decides to take Dick’s car and try to find Reverend Lowell. In the meantime, Angela remembers that one of her friends has recommended their new pastor, Reverend Gage (Robin DeMarco), so she looks her up and invites her over. While driving around, Sam talks to Adam, who apologizes for the stripper and tells him that he sent something to the Clayton house for him. Sam, thinking that it is yet another stripper, rushes back to find the very attractive Reverend Gage arriving. Sam quickly intercepts her and tells her that she has very nice breasts but that he isn’t interested. Only after she speeds off does everyone tell him that she was Reverend Gage…and that Adam had sent a fruit basket. NOTE: Oscar Torre is credited but does not appear in the episode. 10/20/24
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