Checking Out 1988

Ray Macklin [Jeff Daniels] and Pat Hagen [Allan Havey] are lifelong friends whose shared passion for aviation threads through the years and gives them something like a quiet code to live by. Their bond is put to the test at a crowded family barbecue when Pat suddenly collapses and dies of a cardiac arrest, right in front of Ray, mid‑dad joke: > “Why don’t Italians have barbecues? The spaghetti would fall through the grill.” Pat’s abrupt end leaves Ray reeling, caught between love for his friend and the awkward, almost clinical responses of everyone else around them.

Ray’s grief quickly becomes a full‑blown hypochondria, a shield and a prison at once. He watches as the company promotes him into Pat’s old position, moving him into the same office Pat once held. The transition comes with a cascade of practical upheavals: Barbara [Jo Harvey Allen], Ray’s former secretary, finds herself facing layoffs, while Diana [Kathleen York]—the secretary Pat had a noted affair with—gets reassigned to Ray. The atmosphere at work grows tense: Barbara’s distrust spikes, convinced that Ray is orchestrating a quiet return to Pat’s life through Diana, and Ray’s own wife Jenny Macklin [Melanie Mayron] grows wary of his absence and the mounting sense that something irreparable is happening at home.

To cope, Ray tries to find answers in medicine. His cardiologist sends him to a psychologist, Dr. Duffin [Felton Perry], whose quick session briefly restores Ray’s sense of control and a semblance of his former self. But tragedy strikes again when Duffin dies of a freak infection after shaving, a cruel reminder of how fragile things are. Ray’s tests—although described by the doctors as routine—reveal only a Mitral valve prolapse, yet he pours money into high‑tech home diagnostic gear, chasing certainty that stubbornly refuses to come.

The fragile balance of Ray’s home life begins to crumble. Jenny confronts him, accusing him of an emotional withdrawal that borders on an affair, while Ray buckles under his own obsession—he installs a hydrotherapy device in the tub and spends nights away from the family to chase the next data point. Their daughter’s nightmare about a plane crash underscores the real danger of Ray’s fixation. In their kids’ room, Ray has even strapped their son, Joey Macklin [Matthew Hurley], to a pulse oximeter—a visible sign to Jenny that something is dangerously wrong. The tension explodes when Barbara corners Ray at the office and they end up having loud, public sex in Ray’s car in front of his boss. The humiliation is overshadowed only by a broader crisis when a company plane makes an emergency landing, and Ray is ordered to meet the survivors for a press conference.

On the plane, Ray’s fear spirals: he believes this is the flight his daughter dreamt about, and to prevent a crash he bombs the takeoff with a threat, prompting a panic that forces an evacuation and earns him a firing on the tarmac. He collapses from a burst appendix as the consequences of his grief crash down around him.

On the operating table, Ray experiences a near‑death episode: a cardi­ac arrest that transports him briefly into the company of Pat in a kind of shared afterlife. They are escorted into a version of Heaven—Howard Hughes’ imagined paradise—where there are surprisingly few Black people, a rigid teetotaler culture, and little joy in swimming. The encounter becomes a blunt mirror of Ray’s own grief: Pat explains that the afterlife has been tailored by their aviation ties, and the two men admit their pain and acknowledge that they will miss one another. The moment is tender and necessary.

Back in the hospital, Ray recovers from a weeklong coma and a successful appendectomy, the experience leaving him with a new perspective. As he regains strength, he slowly recalls the joke that opened this wound—the punchline to Pat’s line about Italians and barbecues: “The spaghetti would fall through the grill.” This memory provides a quiet, fragile sense of closure. With his family by his side, Ray leaves the hospital ready to rebuild, carrying with him a refreshed memory of growing up with Pat—flying model airplanes as children—and the knowledge that the bond they shared could still guide him toward a steadier, more compassionate life.