Martin Dorschman is a tightly-wound 50 year old man who thinks he will be promoted on his birthday, BUT is instead fired. He only then agrees to use a convert organization to fake his death so he can come back to take a wrong-headed approach at being his boss's boss and to even more wrong-headedly try to get that same unimpressed company to plan a memorial for his former self so as to impress his now widowed but still bitter former wife

SYNOPSIS:

Martin Dorschman is a tightly-wound 50 year old man who thinks he will be promoted on his birthday, BUT is instead fired.

Afterwards, in an episode of drunken stupidity he not only fails to tell his wife of his fate, he also starts a fight in the restaurant she had chosen for them to celebrate his big day. Once home - he still cannot tell her and he leaves through their bathroom window while she pleads with him to open the door, and explain his aberrant behavior.

Desperate, he shows up at the door of the Fresh Start and pleads for their help. He learns that their help will involve the necessity of faking his death so they can capitalize on various backdated insurance policies.

Despite being free to chose nearly any other new existence with his part of the proceeds. He, contrary to all of Fresh Start's advice - insist on wanting to be positioned as his old boss's new boss.

Given a new look. Fresh Start manages to install Martin as his former-self's company's new CEO, where

Martin starts in and abruptly fires the person who fired him, and soon does the same or mistreats everyone else, he had previously disliked.

When Martin's wife comes to collect her deceased husband's belonging's from his office - Martin, in his new persona, gets into an argument with her when she expresses disappointment with his running out on her, and his general miss-perceptions about his due place in life. At the end of the argument Martin insist that she return to the office at week's end for the big memorial (he has just decided to plan) for his former self.

Martin is surprised to learn that he will not get any voluntary participation at the company - but nevertheless, he decides to push it through. And now, the board is starting to realize that with Martin's full attention to the memorial and with the staff reductions, they are already not being able to meet client needs.

Martin then mistakes a major client for the friend who had introduced him to Fresh Start. His belief that his old friend had used Fresh Start to come back to life as this client could not have been more wrong. And now he has insulted the large client who will be making his complaints known to the board.

Still pushing ahead with his memorial, Martin is approached by an old stranger who reports having been Martin's father - before he used Fresh Start, to dodge his own failings.

Martin is more than caught off guard by this revelation. He starts to see the possibility of error in his ways, just as he his learning of the board's concerns about productivity. And so he returns to the office to try to rally a few remaining co-workers that he had kept largely to torment - and surprisingly finds that they had somehow remained well-spirited and ready to work despite his abuse. (Maybe they, not him, are the better people).

BUT, his epiphany comes too late and he is, once again, fired.

Fresh Start, cannot provide second second chances.

Resigned to being his new self, but without position, or finances he goes to his widow to make awkward apology on behalf of both his old and new self.... and finds hope and maybe even a real new life, in the fact that she is attracted to this new apologetic self.