While Cornell is in his office, a promising student, Nick Lang (Robert Knepper), jumps off a building right outside his office window in an apparent suicide. This, coupled with the depressing Christmas season, unseasonably hot weather, and a pending divorce from his estranged wife Gail (Jane Kaczmarek) who he suspects was having an affair with Lang, leads Cornell to seek out the local bars for a night of heavy drinking. There he meets admiring student Sydney Fuller (Meg Ryan) and they proceed to get drunk.