Set in present day New York City, "Happy Hour" is a literate and often funny story of love and how to receive it. Tulley, a once-promising literary star now biding his time as an advertising copy editor, moves from cynicism to acceptance as he secretly hopes to write a great novel only to learn that his life of booze will end all too soon. Levine, his best friend and Natalie, the woman who might have saved him, suffer the pain of Tulley's anger and rejection.