In the original 'October Surprise', three weeks before Election Day 1964, President Lyndon B. Johnson discovers that police have arrested his top aide of twenty-five years, Walter Jenkins, in a public bathroom sex sting. Worse, the media uncover that it's not Walter's first arrest. After Johnson orders an FBI investigation to establish how Walter passed his White House background check, the two can no longer be observed interacting.

Four men from Harlem in their early 30's, friends from childhood, take a late summer break, heading out of town in a Mercury Monarch on a 30-plus-hour drive to a vacation spot. Wilson is an FBI agent, George a mechanic, Phil teaches African-American studies, and Dre's a doctor. They tease and reminisce, mostly about sex; they argue, mostly about racial politics. Then, late on the second night of the trip, they stop at a roadside diner. Phil and a cracker get in a pushing match, and soon fists are flying. The four drive off, but their woes have just begun as they get lost on a county road and the deputy sheriffs get a call to watch for four drug dealers who tried to rob the diner.

When a devoted café owner returns home to help her family host the town’s cherished Yuletide Potluck, she unexpectedly reunites with the man from a disastrous blind date twenty years ago – a military engineer – only to discover that Christmas may serve them both with a second chance at love.