Carrie has Doug sign a congratulatory card for his boss' twenty years at the company and the whole thing blows up in Doug's face. Now, Fisker, the boss, wants Doug to participate in the banquet roast and Doug blames Carrie for this fiasco. He does rise to the occasion, however, and even manages to get some good laughs out of the audience. That is, until he starts to tell some jokes that hit a little too close to home.
Doug feels the urge for a new car and against Carrie's advice buys it for himself only to find out moments later that the workers at the IPS company are going on strike. He unsuccessfully tries to return the car, forcing Carrie to work major overtime to compensate for his mistake.
Doug and Deacon, who are out of work because of a strike, resort to playing sophomoric pranks, along with Arthur, to keep from going stir crazy. But they're driving Carrie and Kelly nuts. Eventually, Doug and Deacon return to work leaving Arthur alone.
After a great Thanksgiving, Doug and Carrie tries to recall their first Thanksgiving together who said, "I Love You" first. They consult Arthur who quickly recalls some other Thanksgivings and finally recalls 1993 when he was having a fight with his new wife Lily. When Doug arrives to the house to meet Carrie's family, Carrie, ashamed of her family, runs off and leaves Doug to have a dinner with each parent one at a time. Even though he physically engraves and rebuffs the bowling balls, Arthur criticizes Doug's job at IPS to be replaced by a robot in the near future. When Carrie comes back, they both express their love for each other as Arthur proclaims that her relationship with Doug will not last.
Doug and Carrie watch Deacon and Kelly's kids while they are out of town. When one of the kids sees them making love, they must keep him from telling his parents...
Doug becomes jealous when Carrie makes the mistake of telling him she finds Deacon attractive; The gang go paintballing to celebrate Deacon's birthday, which turns into a war of jealousy.
Doug is surprised to find his married best friend, Deacon, out with another woman. Meanwhile, Carrie questions her relationship with Doug because of their different views on cheating.
After Deacon and Kelly's separation, Carrie begins to wonder about her own marriage. She and Doug agree to put their sex lives on hold for a few weeks because Carrie feels that they should resolve arguments verbally, not always physically. Meanwhile, Arthur dates a woman who claims she was once Frank Sinatra's girlfriend.
Doug lies to Carrie about having to work late so he can play mud football and get out of going to her seminar. Now sick from his night of football in the rain, Doug starts watching TV and begins to drift off to sleep... Doug, finally full of guilt, goes to tell Carrie the truth of what happened and she doesn't react exactly the way he thought she would.
Doug feels sorry for Arthur and agrees to let him go to a cocktail lounge instead of to the weekly dance at a senior center. When Carrie finds out, she goes ballistic and turns her father's care over to Doug-a job he soon regrets taking on.
Doug, feeling underappreciated at work, hears that drivers at FedEx are making twice what he makes. When he runs into a former co-worker now working for the big overnight service, he takes his friend's casual banter to mean that FedEx wants to hire him. Doug uses this information to play hardball with his supervisor and instead of getting a raise and a better delivery route, he gets fired. Meanwhile, after Lou Ferrigno asks Carrie to smear his body with tanning cream while his wife is on vacation, she gets addicted to the stuff and overuses the it on her face, dramatically darkening her skin.
During the Palmer's separation, Doug and Carrie go to the movies with Kelly while Deacon takes the kids. While there, Carrie runs into a co-worker who seems interested in Kelly. The two end up going on a date, and when Deacon finds out he is ready to patch things up with her.
Doug, Carrie and Arthur head out to the airport to visit with Doug's parents while they have a short layover at Kennedy Airport on their way to Montreal. While there, his parents ask him to sign their living will, making him the one responsible for pulling the plug. When his sister Stephanie gets wind of this, she is offended that she wasn't the one asked to be responsible.
Doug and Carrie meet the neighbors after a hurricane destroys both of their backyards. Carrie breaks their hearts by telling the truth and rejects the idea of a combined backyard. So the neighbors retaliate by disrupting their privacy by making an aboveground pool in a small space. But as Carrie tries to mount a lawsuit, Doug can't deny the temptation and joins the other side. But before the pool goes down, Carrie takes a quick swim and later, Doug tries to enjoy the lawn sprinkler.
Doug's Uncle Stu asks him to get his son, Danny, a job at IPS. Doug doesn't want him working there but he doesn't want to look bad to the family so he instructs his boss to interview him but not hire him. Eventually, Doug feels guilty and goes back to O'Boyle to ask him to reconsider Danny for the job. Meanwhile, Arthur fills out audience comment cards on a new movie.
Carrie discovers that she is pregnant and she is panicked that the timing is all-wrong. Meanwhile, Deacon and Kelly begin to reconcile and Spence is left out in the cold and Arthur insists that Doug build him his own bathroom in the basement.
Doug tells Carrie not to panic about having the baby, that he will take care of all her "burden," so he takes on a second job so that they can store a little extra money before the due date. Meanwhile, Arthur is annoyed that Doug still hasn't finished his bathroom and Deacon and Kelly reconcile.