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. 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
Leave a Reply