Doug and Carrie Heffernan share their home in Queens, New York City with Carrie's oddball dad, Arthur Spooner. Doug, who makes a living as a delivery driver for the International Parcel Service (IPS), spends most of his time at his home with wife Carrie. Carrie works as a secretary for a law firm in downtown Manhattan. This is complicated by Arthur, who can be quite a handful — so much so that they hired a dog walker, Holly, to look after him by walking him, with the dogs, in the local park. Doug hangs with his buddies Deacon Palmer, Spence Olchin, Richie Iannucci and his cousin Danny Heffernan. When Carrie and Doug do good deeds (such as donating to charities or helping a person find a job), reconcile or apologize, or do something beneficial for themselves (such as selling a house, or investing in the stock market) it often ends up going completely wrong, and bad often humorously goes to worse, most of the time leaving the characters in a stagnant position by the end of the episode. Unlike the traditional sit-com formula, the central conflict of many episodes is left unresolved at the end. The ending scene of most episodes is a very short joke that often is only tangentially related to the main story line.