Nate dreads having to go to Idaho to visit Lisa's family and attend a service they have arranged. He and Brenda have reconciled and she convinces him that going is the right thing to do. He asks her come along. The visit goes well but after Nate returns to LA, the local funeral director tells Lisa's parents he doesn't think the ashes they interred were in fact Lisa's. David and Keith attend a friend's wedding and decide they want to adopt a child, though David seems to think it's more pressing. Ruth returns home and tells George what it will take for them to continue as a married couple. She invites George's son Kyle and her friend, who are now a couple, to dinner. Claire has a final confrontation with Edie and seems to be getting friendlier with Billy. Rico is happy to have spent some time at home with the kids but is quickly dismayed when he realizes that Vanessa has asked an old high school friend to visit her.

Brenda feels the clock is ticking and wants to have a baby sooner rather than later. Nate wants to think about it for a while. A lunch with her mother Margaret doesn't go particularly well - Margaret is rushed to the hospital. The event does give Brenda and Billy a chance to see each other again. George feels they should be preparing for whatever catastrophe may befall mankind. Ruth tells him of the old bomb shelter and he thinks it's just perfect. Claire's latest project gets raves from Billy and several of her classmates but she reacts badly when Russell claims to have originated the concept with her. She's thrilled though when she gets the opportunity display some of her work at a show. David learns that the man whose ear he's bitten is suing him for $500,000. There's one way he can get out of it but it involves Keith. At the funeral home, Rico and Nate deal with a particularly tragic case when four members of the Gorodetsky family - parents and two children - are killed in a car accident leaving only their eldest son to deal with it all. Nate is forced to admit to Lisa's sister Barb that he buried her in the desert.

George's infatuation with impending disaster is causing him nightmares. His daughter Maggie joins him and Ruth for dinner and she has a lot of stories about her dad. Later, Ruth is quite concerned when she finds George talking by himself to an imaginary person. Claire's showing of her work is a huge success but she ignores her friends in the process. Nate is stressing over Barb's threat to take Maya away from him. He learns more about the circumstances of Lisa's death, leading to another tragedy. David hopes that if he faces his attacker, who is now in prison, he will feel liberated. It doesn't quite work out that way. Keith gets an interesting offer from Roger, who had promised to drop his lawsuit against Dave in return for sex.

In 1954 Loretta Smith Sibley committed suicide in front of her son George. With the anniversary of September 9th approaching, George is haunted by her presence enough to distract him at home, repeats his habit of placing unwanted food in his pockets, telling Ruth he was saving it, and confesses to Maggie that he again needs therapy. Ruth also has to deal with Claire confronting her after she freezes her account since she's no longer in school. Billy buys her the camera she wanted to purchase herself as they consider leaving for Spain, but Ruth disapproves of the whole thing. Rico runs into but is rejected by Vanessa at a church dating meet, so dates his former replacement Angela. Brenda befriends a co-worker after her first counseling experience results in a physical attack, and Nate befriends his stepsister Maggie, a divorcée whose son passed away at a young age.

Lila Simmonds Coolidge passes away just before her 95th birthday...which she happened to share with Nate. This year, Nate's 40th is marked by the news that he'll be a dad, which he doesn't react to as enthusiastically as Brenda had hoped. Claire breaks off with Billy after a final night together because of his wild behavior off medication, while George's apologies to Ruth don't lessen her impatience toward his problems. Rico sleeps with Vanessa when he shows up to remind she forgot to pick their son up, but she ensures it will be the last time. At Nate's unwanted party where his mood is already low after accidentally revealing Brenda's pregnancy and creating more friction, a bird some consider to be an omen and others merely to be an annoyance continues to invade the house. When Nate is insulted for allowing its return by not closing the window it originally entered through, he takes out all his frustration on the bird.

The family prepares for the worst funeral of their lives. Ruth makes things worse on David by taking out her pain on him until he stands up for himself, and Nate makes things worse for Brenda by reminding her she had the chance to marry Joe if she doubted him. Claire, troubled by the fact that mainly negative memories come to mind, again finds comfort in Ted, who explains that it's not unusual. In the middle of the preparations, Keith gets an emergency call from Roger to remove a breaking-and-entering actor...who reveals Roger taped their affair as he promised he wouldn't, so Keith quits working for him. David has no other business so concentrates on the funeral to keep himself together, especially after a brutal insult from his father, who dodges the question on whether he had favoritism among his children but openly condemns David's gayness. Ruth's pain increases when learning it's a green burial so helps David in order to see the body. At the private burial, David is terrified when he imagines he's attacked by Jake in an orange-sweatshirt in the car and suffers another panic attack, so doesn't help. Ruth gets some comfort with Bettina's visit and, after the funeral, with Brenda's request for her to watch Maya until she can recover from her own pain...and anger.