After Alex Marshall commits suicide at Sarah & Harold Cooper's summer house, their fellow University of Michigan alumni friends arrive to attend the funeral. They are Sam Weber, a television actor; Meg Jones, a former public defender and now a real estate attorney; Michael Gold, a journalist for "People" magazine; Nick Carlton, a perpetually-stoned Vietnam vet and former talk-radio psychologist; and Karen Bowen, an unrealized writer who is unhappily married to Richard, a stuffy advertising executive. Also present is Chloe, Alex's rather immature young girlfriend who lived with him in Sarah and Harold's basement living quarters.